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The MARENOSTRUM music project aims to explore different ethnic cultures of the world, an exploration made possible by the evolution in modern technology and communication. Nowadays cultural exchanges are almost forced upon us by the weighty action of mass media and by the migratory flows from the south of the world to western countries, together with the tourist flows that go in the opposite direction. However, the Mediterranean Sea - in Latin Mare Nostrum - being a warm sea, navigable with the most primitive means, has always been a melting pot, crossed innumerable times by peoples of ancient, different, and deeply rooted cultures. Sardinia, thanks to its geographical position, has always been a natural landing place for all ships cruising the Mediterranean, and maybe even for those sailors who had fallen overboard during a storm and floated around clinging to pieces of wood. San Pietro, little more than a rock not far from the south-western end of Sardinia, is inhabited by the descendants of a group of Genoese people who in 1798 left Tabarka, an island a few hundred metres off the Tunisian coast, which they had colonised two centuries before. The new village, called Carloforte, saw its population increase thanks to the arrival of fishermen from Neaples and, later, of neighbouring inhabitants of Sulcis, called, not by chance, “maureddus”, from the Moors. And it is on this island that as a teen-ager I listened to Radio Tunis, with great curiosity and pleasure (it was the soundtrack of my nights!). It is not by chance, then, that in such an environment free and open minds can absorb the most diverse musical influences and add them to the elements more typical of our own western culture and to those accumulated through a lifetime's experience. What is important is that the final product is the fruit of a complete assimilation of these different components. The single elements should not only be “chewed”, but also “digested” to be re-created with authenticity and freshness. In other words, music must be filtered though each musician's sensibility and then given back in a true “Mediterranean sauce”. The black component has great importance in MARENOSTRUM as it has in all modern western music, together with blues, jazz, funky, rock, disco-music, reggae, etc. The lyrics are in Italian and in Carloforte's dialect (“Tabarkino”, a dialect of Genoese origin), flexible and rich in all the sounds that its sea-faring people brought home from their travels all over the world. The dialect allows us to maintain one of the pillars of the traditional culture, which at worst might be integrated, but which modernisation should at no cost destroy, while at the same time overcoming the limits of the overmelodic Italian language, which induced many young local bands to write their lyrics in English, a sharper and more rhythmical tongue. The songs, all original, follow my musical path, starting with the Joe Over Band, the first Carloforte-born band to write its lyrics in dialect (L'omu u l'è stancu [The man is tired], and Gh'ea n'erbu [There was a tree], an arrangement of a popular song), going on to the afro-reggae of GIT & les Poulettes (Oh amigu ma [My friend the sea]), to the most recent songs by Pangea, among which U cheuttu e u cruu [Black and blue], L'amù e a forsa [Love and strength], and Dème a me roba! [Give me back my things!]. The project made its first steps in '94, when I began giving solo concerts (guitar and voice) with a “menu” of rock-blues and multiethnic music in Mediterranean “sauce”, also outside Sardinia. In '98 MARENOSTRUM developed into a band, or better still an open group of musicians who revolve around the project. During the following years the project continued its progress until the summer of 2000, when it landed at the University festival “Evenings on campus” in Malta, the “Mediterranean Festival” in Bisceglie (Bari) and the “Summer in Florence” festival. In these occasions the group was also enriched by the participation of some special guests, such as Maltese percussionist Renzo Spiteri, Italian guitarist Riccardo Zappa, Greek singer Georgia Sylleou and Italian violinist Mauro Pagani, who some years before had already landed in San Pietro with Fabrizio De Andrè for the presentation of Creuza de mà, his LP in the Genoese dialect. The basic group is made up of several musicians/friends that have moved together through most of their musical life, across the most varied genres and bands, thus giving the current project a feeling and harmony that catches the eye (and the ear). This solution, besides solving the practical problems caused by the members' different commitments, also allows a lively exchange of experiences and points of view, thus enabling both the music and the musicians to grow. It is a jazz approach then, given the importance of improvisation, that leads to a music that is always new - this is of primary importance in a closed environment like Sardinia - and facilitates tours in the rest of Italy. Mario Brai |
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