BANDAKADABRA
Entomology

fy 8222

885016822224
Felmay Records

 

Founded in 2005 in Torino (Italy) , BANDAKADABRA is a brass band playing nearly everything from Balkan to jazz, latin and jamaican rocksteady. Along with such a wide-range repertoire, BANDAKADABRA blends music with improvisational sketch comedy. The result is an exhilarating show that would literally blow away every kind of audience, from theatres to city streets. With their show, the band started performing around Europe. Able to deal with the same ease with the stage and the street, BANDAKADABRA established itself as a brass band able to join the characteristic energy of marching groups to the musical atmospheres of a Big Band. Please enjoy this record, to savor the style of an ensemble whose flavors are street, people, history, dance, feast.

This record is the most accurate picture of BANDAKADABRA today. It’s a musical portrait by Giulio Piola and Fabio Barovero, as arranger and artistic producer, respectively, and as with all portraits, there are a subject in the foreground, and a background.
Behind, we can see some musicians, the Aster, playing the music of the Allies into the microphone of the first free Italian radio in 1943: Radio Sardegna. They are four Sardinian boys and a Piedmontese one, Ferdinando, a good violinist and singer. Two years later, when Italy is preparing to economic miracle, this band moved to Turin changing their name into Fred Buscaglione e i suoi Asternovas. Here they are, in the city-factory, where guys and dolls and soft-hearted gangsters come to life, while pink Thunderbirds cruise the streets.
Alongside Fred we see a director, Emir Kusturica, and a musician, Goran Bregovic, next to his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra. Here, we are in the 1990s Balkans post-war. An epic poem of heroes-musicians ready to pick up their instruments, as soon as they put down their kalashnikov. Wild parties and fanfare contests trumpet-driven and slivovitz-powered.
On one side we have Giuliano Palma and The Bluebeaters, among the distinctive teams of post-tangentopoli short Italian musical renaissance.
Then, another village band, one of those opening with a banner, one among the myriad of municipal ensembles spread throughout the globe since late 19th century. The very ones that play marching on the road, accompanying most important moments for the community.
This is the background: ultimately, nothing but contemporary history and the music of its winners and losers.
In the foreground, here is BANDAKADABRA, with its leader, Gipo Di Napoli, the smaller one on the bass drum, the cannon fire that starts the combat. That's the one saying: "Here we are! We are the band playing and it's time for moving!" Then, we gradually see all the others and we can play a guessing game with the names of instruments: horns, woodwind, brasswind. BANDAKADABRA uniform pays tribute to the art of the friends on the background, merging Balkan style, black suit and white shirt, with 1950s club style. Sometimes, looking at BANDAKADABRA you can remember the legendary Harlem Hellfighters, the first fighting battalion made of African-Americans who fought in France during WWI and brought their music along with their guns, too. Musician-soldiers, which imported ragtime into Europe and made the history of jazz, led by James Reese Europe.
Founded in 2005 in Torino, (Italy) , BANDAKADABRA plays nearly everything from Balkan to jazz, latin and jamaican rocksteady. Along with such a wide-range repertoire, BANDAKADABRA blends music with improvisational sketch comedy. The result is an exhilarating show that would literally blow away every kind of audience, from theatres to city streets. With their show, the Band started performing around Europe. Over the last three years, they played over 200 gigs, being invited to play in some of the most important music festivals in Europe: Durham Brass Festival (2012-2013), Edinburgh Jazz Festival (2013-2014), Torino Jazz Festival (2013), along with long-time residencies at the Musica sulle Bocche Jazz Festival and the Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival, two of the most important and long-lived music events in Italy. BANDAKADABRA has long-term live collaborations with some of Italy's hardest-working artists: Roy Paci, one of Europe's most requested trumpet players (former member of Manu Chao's Radio Bemba Band); Italian indie-rock band Marta sui Tubi; Guido Catalano, histrionic Turin-based poet and writer; Gianluigi Carlone, member of Banda Osiris; and Fabio Barovero, producer and composer.
Able to deal with the same ease with the stage and the street, BANDAKADABRA established itself as a brass band able to join the characteristic energy of marching groups to the musical atmospheres of a Big Band. The band recorded two full-length albums, along with the original soundtrack of the film La Luna su Torino (written and directed by Davide Ferrario), and appeared as a guest in Marta Sui Tubi's Salva Gente LP.
.

 

 

  HQ Image