folk holidays

JUSTIN ADAMS & MAURO DURANTE & YOUSRA MANSOUR & ALESSIA TONDO

THIS YEAR'S RESIDENCY PROJECT WILL BE ABOUT A SHARED LOVE OF TRANSIT MUSIC

The old saying goes that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, so expecting Justin Adams and Mauro Durant to come up with something we wouldn't know from them is pointless. But the secret to this year's residency project will lie in their well-known shared love of trance music, so yes, we'll probably be hearing a brilliant guitarist and a no less brilliant violinist and percussionist again, this time, even at their explicit request, but mostly in much sharper rhythms. And not just any rhythms, because every single one of them will be the trance rhythms of ancient healing rituals, which both singers, Alessia Tondo and Yousra Mansour, who can also be heard on the album Sweet Release, have a lot of experience with.
In the southern Italian town of Salento, since pagan times, tarantula spider bites have been treated with ritual tarantism, based on the trance dance pizzica. Although the spider's venom has been shown not to fatally harm humans, the bites on poor, illiterate peasant women symbolised mental illness, and the wild manic pizzica, stirred by large tambourines, put them into a healing trance, culminating in a cathartic breakdown. Tarantism has not been practiced since the 1950s. Although the pizzica and the songs associated with it have lost their music therapeutic meaning, they have turned into a cultural identity of Salento and a musical phenomenon, famous worldwide for the group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, led by Mauro Durant, in which Alessia Tondo also sings. She has had an impressive career of her own: she has recorded great albums and collaborated with many great personalities, including the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi, and interest in her great vocal art is growing.

The Gnawa are descendants of black slaves brought to Morocco in the 16th century from sub-Saharan Africa. The Sufi Brotherhood lived in closed communities and its culture - a mix of African, Arab and Berber influences - has long been shrouded in mystery. Guarded in part because the Gnawa still practice an all-night mystical lila ritual associated with spirits. The gnawa: music, symbolised by the sound of the three-stringed guimbri bass lute and the clanging of metal castanets, puts the 'sick' into a healing trance. Although the gnawa and the lila ritual have been listed as a UNESCO cultural heritage site since 2019, they remain the preserve of men, and as for the guimbri, until recently it was unthinkable for a woman to play it in public. This is no longer the case, times are changing, yet it remains a rarity for a female rocker to take up the lute, even an electrified one. In addition, singer Yousra Mansour founded the excellent Moroccan-French band Bab L' Bluz, capable of making your head bang with the same force as Led Zeppelin of yore. The band also gustofully emphasizes how much the gnawa owes to its Malian and Mauritanian blues roots, and not to confuse anyone, they declare, "More than anything, we are mainly a rock band."

This is water for the mill of Justin Adams, a lifelong devotee of the gravitational pull of raw blues from the confluence of the Niger and Mississippi rivers and, more importantly, rhythmic music from North Africa. Whenever he is mentioned, he is most often cited as Robert Plant's guitarist, as if this undoubtedly fortunate pairing should represent a career highlight for Adams. As it happens. With the legendary Zeppelin singer, he did indeed get out of his usual listening zone and made a name for himself around the world, but to his misfortune, it was often forgotten what he had accomplished so far in his life, either alone or as a producer. It's not easy with Adams, though: he jumps from project to project until you're often mentally berating him for simply not keeping up. But the rewards never pass you by. When he played with the Italians for the first time in London, where Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino accepted Songlines magazine's prestigious award for best group of 2018, he reportedly fell for the thrilling rhythms unknown to him on the spot and decided to go to Salento and produce their album Meridian. The established friendship with Mauro eventually turned into a close collaboration in the form of a duo.

So, now that you know how all four exceptional musicians and singers found their way together, there is nothing to do but wait to see what music they will come up with in the Trance nad Oslavou project. But it's probably already clear from the name: we're expecting blues, rock and a proper rhythmic trance.

 

Photo: Yvett Stránská