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| "Sanda Necole blues", the new single and videoclip by Fabrizio Piepoli produced by Zero Nove Nove Three years after his last album "Maresìa" (2022, Zero Nove Nove), Fabrizio Piepoli presents "Sanda Necole blues", a single that anticipates the release of his next album scheduled for after autumn 2025. The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Puglia has not by chance chosen the days preceding the celebrations in honor of San Nicola in his hometown of Bari to launch his new work: it is a song that sounds like an invocation to the "protector", for the countless journeys of pain and hope by the pilgrims of our sea, a blues marked by the "percussive" sounds of the Bari dialect and the melismatic style of the Arab tradition, a true gift that Piepoli gives to his "mestizo" city whose history is summarized in the relationship with San Nicola. In the capital of Puglia, the patron saint is celebrated on December 6, the saint's day, but above all from May 7 to 9, annually commemorating the translation of the saint's relics from Myra to Bari, in 1087. Baresi and pilgrims from all over the world participate in the solemn religious celebrations and cultural events in honor of San Nicola, truly transforming, for three days, the city of Bari into a melting pot of devotional cultures. "Sanda Necole blues" is being distributed from Tuesday April 29th, again with the Zero Nove Nove record label (digital distribution Believe), with the videoclip signed by Domenico Larocca, who translated the music and the text into images, telling the tension, the fear, the hope on the eve of a departure. The videoclip is set in Bari and features Balsam Asfour, a young Palestinian, actor and student of medicine and surgery in Bari. This track is the manifesto of a sound for which I coined the term "Tarabtella", a contemporary electronic fusion of the soul-stirring Arabic musical tradition of tarab and the driving rhythm of Puglia's tarantella, combining the microtonal melody of the electric saz and the melismatic style of singing, which aims to induce the ecstasy of "tarab", the state of ecstatic emotion traditionally associated with Arabic music. A sound that is a hymn to the meeting of East and West, a fusion of tradition and modernity, emphasized by lyrics sung in the Bari dialect, with few lines in Arabic. The track opens with an invocation to the Saint, like a morning prayer from the top of a minaret overlooking the sea. It is a song of departure by a young migrant, filled with hope but also with pain and nostalgia for what he is forced to leave behind. The primordial "blues" with its driving beat, in the style of Maghreb Chaabi, supports the melodic, microtonal, and pentatonic patterns of the Turkish baglama which is electrified and filtered through effects. The voice moves between the guttural and "percussive" sounds of the local dialect and the melismatic style, with references to the great voices of the Arabic tradition as well as to more contemporary Arab-pop singers. A suspended and dramatic scene opens up at the center of the track, where the arpeggios of the synthesizer create patterns that echo the waves of the sea, within which a desperate song emerges, unwilling to drown. The return of the beat in the final part, with the voice growing increasingly obstinate and raw, reinforces the protagonist's will to live, the persistent hope that refuses to succumb to the fate of death. Despite the dramatic subject matter of the lyrics - the hopeful journey of a young migran - throughout the track, the beat seems to irresistibly call for dance, the celebration of life, creative energy, and the pride of those who, though painfully far from their roots, feel the desire and the need to inhabit a new land, one that can embrace them and build a common future together. SANDA NECOLE BLUES - the videoclip This song tells the story of a young migrant about to embark on a journey to reach the other shore, the land where I live. For him, it is the "foreign" land of hope while for me it is my "birthright". He asks St Nicholas to protect him from drowning in the black sea. It is the story of the life of a person who tries to escape from a destiny of oppression and death by crossing the sea, the Mediterranean, which is both a promise and a grave. It is blues and it belongs to a long chain of songs, like the beads of a millennial rosary stretched through time. It is a prayer that persistently echoes in popular devotion, in the vaults of every Christian and Orthodox crypt, in the morning calls to prayer from the minarets of the mosques, in the blessing rituals in the old villages, in the urban beat of multi-ethnic cities. And it's precisely this aspect of my city that I want to tell with this videoclip directed by Domenico Larocca. The story of a place inhabited and increasingly influenced by people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. New generations of citizens are redefining the very concept of citizenship and "belonging", unrolling it like a carpet on which people sit together to share food cooked by everyone. We are deconstructing the old exclusivist connotation of citizenship: "A ci appartinë?" "Who do you belong to?" is something we have always said here in Bari, meaning that only those born here "truly belong". I would like my city to resemble more and more what I experience in the intimate microcosm of my dear ones. Some of these people appear as actors in this little film or have contributed to its creation: Balsam, Palestinian, a medical student; Brenda, Cuban, also a medical student; Ana, Afro-Brazilian, a restaurateur and the beating heart of activism and associationism in Bari; Juan, Spanish, a photographer; Rita and her children Selina and Adham who, together with Giuseppe, form a wonderful Italian-Palestinian family; Lorena and Giovannangelo, travelers and passionate hearts of hospitality and curiosity for every human story from any part of the world. My city is lived by people who also bear the marks of genocide, oppression, and discrimination, which are turned into exuberant and generous acts of creativity in a place they feel is their own. This ideal city somehow already exists: it appears as a mosaic of different identities, it is inclusive and curious, horizontal like its sea, pulsating between East and West like the beat and the melody of this song. _________________________________________ FABRIZIO PIEPOLI - Biography "I'm a frontier man, I feel at home where East and West can meet, like two parts of the same heart, feeling free to love each other". The voice of Fabrizio Piepoli is a fluid universe, surrounded by multiple instruments that serve as a countermelody to his strongly melismatic style. It is a light tenor voice capable of touching the deep tones of the baritone register and extending to the high notes of contralto. A sophisticated vocality that constantly plays with its own identity, with the masculine and the feminine, with geography and belonging. His songs are immersed in a cinematic scenario, on the edge between the archaic and the modern, where the strings of the Turkish saz and the Arabic oud intertwine with the arpeggios of synthesizers and the urban beats of the sampler. These are the soundscapes in which Fabrizio tells the story of his roots, with a voice that becomes a meeting point between East and West. A sound called Tarabtella, a contemporary electronic fusion of the soul-stirring Arabic musical tradition of tarab and the driving rhythm of Puglia's tarantella, combining the microtonal melody of the electric saz and the melismatic style of singing, which aims to induce the ecstasy of "tarab", the state of ecstatic emotion traditionally associated with Arabic music. Apulian singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocal teacher of traditional music at the Conservatory of Lecce. His music and academic research lies at the intersection of the traditions of Southern Italy with the Arab-Andalusian and Middle write your comments about the article :: © 2025 Jazz News :: home page |