Various Artists

Compiled by Ma Nu in partnership with Denis Longhi. "South American Jazz & Bossanova flavours from 60s & 70s in Liguria, north west Italy. Melody sounds really close to Brazilian Portuguese and instrumental tracks smells of  South American Jazz. Nonetheless, the sound landscape clearly reflects the Italian Library Music of the time. This mingling was made possible by the commercial and cultural interconnections during the discovery of the New World: the local Ligurian language was influenced by new stimuli from the new territories and vice-versa.

Moreover, from the end of the Nineteenth Century, a strong migration of Italians involved South America, with numbers comparable to the Italian migration in the USA, but less known because less represented in films or narrative. As a result of these connections, these songs sound mellow, carioca and exotic, based on the phonetics of one of the most musical, folkloric and peculiar Italian dialects.

The artwork project is a homage to lithographs and ADV that were inspired by the first tourist and migration trips departing from Genoa towards Rio De Janeiro. The lithographs were recovered by “L’Image” an existing art gallery in Alassio, a small town in Liguria. "Bossa Ligure" can be seen as a micro-genre and a different form and aesthetic of Brazilian music, which is unknown to many, but that we would like to make available with this collectanea. A musical and a cultural expression which reveals a strong influence and connection to the Brasileiro sound in an unexpected territory.