Bandadriatica - Project: Rotta per Otranto

“...this is a first-rate, carefully crafted CD jam-packed with tasty Mediterranean morsels.”
Jonathan Walton - Songlines (Inghilterra)

“...Certaines orchestrations avec clarinettes me font penser à celles des musiques de N. Piovani et l’ambiance n’est parfois pas si éloignée de celle de certains films des fréres Taviani “
Jean-Luc Matte - Trad-Magazine (Francia)

”...La Bandadriatica mette insieme elementi differenti ma non semplicemente posti l’uno accanto all’altro, bensì racchiusi in un linguaggio musicale che li comprenda. E questo obiettivo è stato raggiunto. L’album interpreta un viaggio musicale estremamente divertente e piacevole.”
Welt-Musik Magazine (Germania)

“This is an interesting project that superbly integrates new composition with roots and demonstrates how easily music can cross national and linguistic barriers.”
Michael Hingston - Folk Roots (Inghilterra)

“Contagio è un disco riuscito in pieno, un disco in cui le emozioni giungono facilmente al cuore...”
Folk Bullettin (Italia)

Rotta per Otranto è il progetto di un incontro oltre confine. Un viaggio nel quale i partecipanti possano condividere il senso del movimento geografico e culturale. E’ il Mar Adriatico stesso con tutti i suoi misteri, ripercorso a ritroso nel tempo, alla ricerca di ciò ha preceduto la sua diaspora. La frammentazione culturale che sedimentandosi nel tempo ha creato forme musicali profondamente differenti, figlie illegittime delle stesse acque.

Sotto il segno del mare, 15 musicisti provenienti dalle sponde adriatiche si incontrano su un’imbarcazione che in due settimane parte dal Salento e fa tappa nei principali porti d’Adriatico. In questo viaggio sperimentano l’incontro di suoni e lingue che possano trovare un comune territorio di scambio e di confronto. Condividono le difficoltà e i tempi della navigazione e dell’orientamento, nel mare di tradizioni nel quale sono cresciuti e nel quale oggi viaggiano, lentamente, cercando di parlarsi.

Si ritrovano nel porto salentino di Otranto, riportandovi un patrimonio di culture meticcie che la città ha già insito, da secoli, essendo stata meta privilegiata di approdi e invasioni, territorio di conquista e di scambio, manifesto delle culture migranti.

I concerti nei porti dell’Adriatico sono le tappe di questo percorso. Si fa scalo laddove le musiche hanno avuto da sempre la possibilità di viaggiare e di cambiare. Nei porti dell’Adriatico si incontrano le genti che arrivano e partono, portandosi dietro facce e lingue che ancora oggi vivono una mutazione continua, alla perenne ricerca di un approdo possibile.

Tutte le fasi del viaggio verranno riprese per la realizzazione di un film-documentario. I concerti verranno registrati per la realizzazione di una produzione musicale originale.

Rotta per Otranto is a project of a meeting trough the borders. A journey. Thanks to it, travellers could share the geographical and cultural sense of movement. It’s Adriatic sea itself, with all its mysteries, walked on the contrary searching for what there was before its dispersion. Different kinds of music are born from cultural fragmentation, love child of this same water.

Under the sign of the sea, 15 musicians coming from Croatia, Albania and South Italy Adriatic side meet on board ship that leaves from Brindisi on the 14th of May, lays over Dubrovnik, then over Durazzo and stop in Otranto on the 25th of May.

By this travel they experience sounds and languages in order to find a medium of exchanges and comparison. They share time and troubles of plain sailing and orientation in that sea of traditions in which they grew up and in which they travel now, slowly, trying to talk to each other.

They recover in Otranto’s harbour carrying back an heritage of half cast cultures embedded in the town , end zone of arrivals and invasions, land to win, evident of migrant cultures. The stage of this journey are the concerts in Adriatic sea harbours. From Dubrovnik to Otranto we stop where music has always travelled and changed. In that Adriatic sea harbours where people, leaving or coming, can met, with all their faces and their languages that still nowadays are changing, trying to find a possible landing place.

fRoots Playlist : November 2007
Our last cd has been in the prestigious fRoots Playlist and has a track included on November fRoots Radio hosted by Mondomix.

Italian presentation: 10th of October in Rome, Auditorium, Parco della Musica.

"CONTAGIO is a hypothetical voyage through the ports of the Adriatic Sea. A long trip made of chance encounters and spasmodic research. To travel by sea is not the same as to travel on dry land. Sea journeys are at the mercy of the shifting will of waves and currents. From the shores of Italy’s Salento to Albania, from Venice to Dubrovnik and as far afield as Crete, dreaming of a safe haven.

The Adriatic is a sea of incongruities, of barely covert diversity. All of its ports are different, profoundly different. Its myriad languages are like winds seriously jeopardising those who sail. Its peoples, separated by centuries, rarely meet by choice, more often than not because of necessity. Its musical traditions, the illegitimate offspring of a common root, have always taken different routes.

Donning their worn-out apparel during their Calabrian tours or their best suits for wedding feasts, their teeth of gold worn as accessories to their instruments and the ornaments stuck in their hats, they walk slowly behind the saints, they hurry from town to town, from fete to fete, up steep hilly streets after Madonnas, across the open sea after small processions of boats or aboard large ships taking them overnight to the opposite shore. The quest for the common linguistic denominator between the bands and fanfares of East and West is no easy task. It is a challenge which has become a long- term project. This is our point of departure."

“Contagio is the name of the first cd by Bandadriatica. It has nicked lips and hair carried by the wind. The same wind first blew up our sails now blows in our instruments carrying on languages and music escaping each other now and forever.

Contagion spreads voices and instruments. Infected by a rhythm coming from abroad, the music of Puglia bands is more charming and patchy, enriched with unexpected sounds (Brindisi DC, Tourbanda). Fluent and frantic composition (Penza e ripenza, Tarantella adriatica) and slowly marches (Erdi dethi tallas tallas, To ghiasemi, Le mille e un valzer) entwine in an impervious path. Lyrics tell of an eternal cyrcle: santa paranza is a lay prayer telling about the sea loneliness; i giorni del contagio is a modern rumba, an elegy of a cultural invasion.

Guest star ‘King’ Naat Veliov slave trumpet, author of Pizzica estam, together with Claudio Prima, a Salento Macedonian music mix. Here italian organetto meet the Kochani Orkestar trumpet. The Kohcani Orkestar is one of the most famous Balkans music brass band. Bandadriatica and Kochani Orkestar have played together in August 2006, on the occasion of Notte della taranta Festival 2006 and again in Rome in Septemebr 2007 during the famous Notte Bianca festival.

Claudio Prima, eclectic organetto player, is the leader of Bandadriatica; the band is made up by musicians from different cultures and origins under the sign of the Adriatic sea. The cd is the outcome of a long path, searching and experimenting relationships between the music from the South of Italy, Albania (thanks to Redi Hasa, the Albanian cellist of the band), Greece and the north-east Adriatic side. Traditions blend with slowly marches of processions, rumbas and cocek of the cruise party. Original lyrics and music search for a new kind of language able to match traditions and peculiarities of Adriatic cultures, in which music is always carried by a ‘banda’ or a ‘fanfara’.

During 2007 Bandadriatica teamed up with Eva Quartet, vocal bulgarian quartet of “Les Mystere des voix bulgares”. The first introduction of their cd “Contagio” has been done live in Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.

Moreover the group is hosted in a lot of important ethnic music festivals (Mundus, Vincoli Sonori, Gipsy and klezmer music festival, La notte della Taranta Festival, La Notte Bianca a Roma, Festate - Svizzera, Libra Festival). Tribù Italiche – Puglia by World Music Magazine has chosen one song by Bandadriatica as one of the most representative musical bands of Puglia. In November “Contagio” is in the Folk Roots top ten, one of the most important European world music charts.