This album bridges past and present through the voice and instruments of Maria Violenza and Luciano Turella, with the Irtumbranda project (formerly performing as the duo BrandaMaria), offering an intimate and visceral reinterpretation of Sicilian musical tradition. On Side A, the island’s ancient melodies come to life through an interpretation that enhances their raw and profoundly visceral character. Maria Violenza, who grew up listening to these songs in family gatherings and popular festivals in Palermo, revives them with an intensity that is both personal and collective—private memory and shared heritage. Alongside her, Irtumbranda’s viola, with its classical training, transforms these chants into evocative sonic narratives, amplifying their pathos and revealing unexpected nuances. The result is a work that does not merely reproduce tradition but rewrites it, weaving a dialogue between popular oral tradition and cultivated instrumental sensitivity.
On Side B, the baton passes to Tropicantesimo, a collective known for its ability to manipulate sound as a fluid and transformative material. Here, Sicilian music is transported into an unprecedented dimension, where voice and melodic textures dissolve and reassemble in dreamlike
electronic landscapes. Through delays, reverbs, and synthetic pulsations, the chants seem to emerge from a timeless elsewhere, like echoes of a past becoming the future. Maria Violenza, along with Irtumbranda and Tropicantesimo, presents us with a sonic portrait of Sicily, a land that has always known how to make its roots converse with the outside world, embracing contaminations and constantly reinventing itself. As Rosa Balistreri, the great singer of the island, once taught, Sicilian folk music is a cry of protest, a collective game, a denunciation of the oppressed, and an anthem to love—sentiments that transcend eras and borders, remaining eternally alive.
With this work, Baccano reaffirms its mission to restore folk music with a contemporary breath, stripping it of nostalgia and bringing it into the present as a pulsating and unstoppable force.
