KUBORAUM IN CONVERSATION WITH CANZONIERI
Credits
Images courtesy of Berlin Atonal by Frankie Casillo, Helena Majewska, Helge MundtAtonal 2024: OPENLESS proved to be an extraordinary event, a true journey of three days filled with intense emotions and breathtaking performances.
Among all the acts, the one by Canzonieri with Lara Dâmaso and Lord Spikeheart particularly captured our attention, creating a unique atmosphere that deeply resonated with the audience.
To delve deeper into their musical vision and the creative process that drives them, we asked Kuboraum’s creative director Sergio Eusebi to share some insights about this fascinating electronic group.
Canzonieri is a multimedia artistic and musical project by artist Emiliano Maggi and musical artist Cosimo Damiano. The project blends electronic and electroacoustic experimentation with elements of neofolk, aleatory, and minimalism. Canzonieri’s performances feature live electronic manipulation of acoustic instruments such as voice, harmonium, flutes, string instruments, and percussion. They often use self-built or customised instruments, which vary based on the venue and circumstances.
Allegory, symbols, horror, desire, deconstruction, metamorphosis, otherness, and counter-cultural sentiments are reflected in Canzonieri’s dreamlike imaginary which directly translates into their self-made costumes, bringing to life figures like poets, storytellers, jesters, goblins, or artists.
Kuboraum: How does being Italian or Roman influence your relationship with experimental music?
Canzonieri: Within Canzonieri, there is a vibrant artistic and musical knowledge tied not only to the tradition of our country; the fundamental aspect of experimental music is listening and research in all directions. We can draw from many solid cultural references from our childhood.
Kuboraum: What do you feel when you courageously draw from popular tradition? Is there a cultural claim in your frequent use of whistling in experimental music? Whistling is generally used in popular songs from the suburbs. What does it represent for you?
Canzonieri: We must be free; we are two and we each do it in our own way, traversing worlds and obstacles. If we are working on specific sounds or a particular atmosphere, we do so in a very subjective, sincere manner, freeing ourselves as much as possible from superstructures to create our own language; through spatiotemporal portals and parallel future or past worlds. We breathe in what surrounds us and investigate social and political motives and processes that have led to the current state of music in order to go beyond.
Whistling is an instrument that has left its melodic mark in rituals and ceremonies since prehistoric times, and it is the human instrument—the mouth and body. We can never be as rich and complex and impossible to imitate as a bird, but by observing, we have managed to learn, communicate feelings, emotions, and behaviors in the social and political world.
Kuboraum: In addition to synthesizers, electric guitars, and drum machines, you use ancient instruments like the harmonium or self-built instruments, which are sometimes a mix of analog and digital. Can you describe them?
Canzonieri: The instruments we use are varied; the need to build or modify some of them is continuous; bringing them back to life or giving them a new voice, dead bodies like the tree-guitar or new bodies like the wooden board where we transform and modulate dance steps.
Kuboraum: Can you describe the process through which you arrive at a composition, to a piece by Canzonieri?
Canzonieri: The ways of composing are different; we don’t have a fixed scheme but a very free one that allows us to experiment as much as possible in the creative process; inspiration can come from the place, the instrument, or simply from a vocal line. Damiano may write a part, and then flutes or vocals linked to open-air field recordings can be added; sometimes, it starts from an idea related to a collaboration. Everything can be the beginning—a noise, a melody, a word, an image.
Kuboraum: Damiano, what are the musical influences and references of Canzonieri?
Canzonieri: Our backgrounds are very distant and heterogeneous, as are many of our influences, which we consider a great added value; the sensitivity is the same.
Kuboraum: What does it mean to contaminate your work with ancient and harmonic music, such as medieval music, to create something extremely contemporary, fresh, and never heard before?
Canzonieri: It’s important for us to be detached from a form of self-analysis; we see music, we listen to it, and we compose it to rediscover, to rework something that already exists that gives us strength and survival. Popular music and ancient music is the main point where the two of us meet; Damiano, through his work, has had the opportunity to record a lot of classical material, studying vocal counterpoint in the 1500s, and enriching themes and materials included in his archive over the years. Emiliano, with his visual interest in art, costume, and dance in the Baroque and Renaissance world.
The voice, when it remains on invented melodic lines, draws inspiration from nature and especially from the animal world. In terms of lyrics, everything is currently linked to the love poems of the Canzonieri Sayat-Nova, AL-Ballanubi, and the precious repertoire of female Persian poetry.
Costume and makeup are fundamental parts of embodying the figure of the narrating voice. We have found in blue and black two deep colors where we can encapsulate love and its pains.
Kuboraum: What did it mean to prepare a show for Atonal? Do you think this stage, for what it represents and offers, is different from others?
Canzonieri: Absolutely, the audience is very particular and different from what we are used to; they are very attentive. Having a lot of interested people who understand what you do makes you feel that what you are doing truly reaches them. It was a lot of work and a great pleasure; my favorite part, as often happens, is the whole process leading up to the concert where the show is conceived, and everyone’s humanity comes through.
Kuboraum: How do you prepare a show for Atonal and what was your narrative?
Canzonieri: We built a sound and visual dramaturgy around the various pieces, complete with choreography, interventions, and collaborations that could further enhance the overall structure of the performance; keeping everything together in a single story while also maintaining improvisation and repeatability. We worked a lot on this performance; we wanted to find the most transparent and sincere way to express our work and our world.
Kuboraum: What was the basis of your relationship with the audience in your representation?
Canzonieri: The relationship with the audience was based on ourselves, on our emotions. The desire to play, the pleasure, the great tension made it so that what we felt and experienced during the performance came across with purity… as it should always be.
Kuboraum: How did Lara and Martin influence this relationship?
Canzonieri: We met Lara and Martin in Venice during the event curated by Kuboraum in collaboration with Terraforma and Combo during the opening of the Biennale, and from there, ideas immediately began to emerge. With Lara, we recorded some electroacoustic experiments with a system of actuators for piano and voice; with Martin, we worked remotely on some tracks, and when we all got together in the Morphine Raum studio in Berlin for rehearsals and recordings, we understood which directions to take. Lara and Martin, besides being true musicians, are strong and fiery figures in terms of physical performance.
Kuboraum: Audience or witness? Are you happy with how it went?
Canzonieri: We are happy and grateful because everything reached the heart. The audience was part of us and thus a witness.
Kuboraum: In your show, more than others, the voice was central. Can you tell us about it?
Canzonieri: Yes, four voices alternated, but it was a show rich in many other things: costumes, various instruments, electronics, and the elaboration of the instruments and voices themselves. The voices were certainly used in very different ways, both in terms of singing style and the roles they played and the processing applied to them.
Kuboraum: What can we expect from the upcoming album to be released on Kuboraum Editions?
Canzonieri: A single journey suspended between a magical and ancient world connected by moments recorded in the studio and others gathered in outdoor or natural settings.
