La Niña is the solo project of Carole Moccia, an attractive Italian singer-songwriter and producer. Photo: DG archive
The days of second-class bands
The international festival Druga godba, the 42nd in a row, sets sail tomorrow for new musical adventures. This is not a festival of one star, around which the program is woven, but each of the performers brings their own creativity, uniqueness, surprise for the listeners. With such “live music”, as this year’s slogan reads, there is always dancing, on and under the stage.
The Druga Godba Institute recently succeeded in applying for a four-year program co-financing from the Ministry of Culture, which gives them some more certainty in the future. That’s why the festival wind will be significantly stronger this year and the sailing speed will be such that only the most trained skippers can handle it, the head of the program committee is convinced Bogdan Benigar. And he adds: “When the second band lifts anchor in the Norwegian Sea, it will sail across the Atlantic, sunbathe in the Mediterranean and at the end of the journey, anchor somewhere between the islands of Madagascar and Réunion.” The musical journey will last four days.
Benigar lists the genres that will be heard in between: Neapolitan futuristic folk, Indonesian psychedelic groove, new generation Portuguese fado, West African guitar traditions, avant-folk with Welsh triple harp, club mutations from the Arab world and more.
According to world traditions
The festival will offer a variety of concerts, but it also opens up space for critical reflection on the future of the music scene and highlights the vulnerability of musicians. The round table will be the one with which everything officially begins – at 5 pm in the CD Club under the title What about the USA?. The talk will be about artificial intelligence and the transformation of the music industry.
The concert program kicks off the project iT’s Another Crying Gamewhich will be performed by a Slovenian vocal researcher a year after its release Irena Tomažinwhich returns to the festival after seven years. It will be a “deep confessional singer-songwriter experience, in a performance that is surrounded by perfect sound finesse”, according to the organizers.
Idea for a new trio Guitari Barowith two guitarists from Guinea and Mali, came from probably the world’s most famous balaphonist Lassan Diabaté. If the music on the album released last year is a homage to the Mandis griot tradition, at the same time it flirts innovatively with Congolese rumba, jazz, Guinean dance, as well as jazz and rock’n’roll. The concert will be held in Linhart’s CD hall and is also part of the world music subscription. The listeners then move to the CD Club, where the first day of the festival will be closed by the band Reolôwhich travels between Norwegian folk and modern jazz. Eyewitnesses assure that it is currently the best concert Norwegian band. Among the members are also those with doctorates in traditional playing and singing.
Italy’s La Niña attraction
Festival Thursday will focus on an evening concert in the Šiška Cinema with an extremely popular Italian musician and author La Niña (Carola Moccia). That is why there will be a conversation with her at 11 a.m. at the Slon Hotel. Her music interweaves Neapolitan musical heritage with electronica and contemporary urban influences, with language – often Neapolitan – being the key carrier of meaning and emotion. Before her, they will perform in Šiška Nusantara Beatthe new attraction of the Amsterdam music scene. They delve into Indonesian roots, hypnotic folk melodies, vintage Indo-pop, throbbing psychedelic grooves and modern sound textures. The band is led by a singer Megan de Klerk.
In the afternoon at 5:30 p.m., there will also be a second musical workshop (free of charge), which this year is devoted to sabar, a dance-music tradition from Senegal associated with the Wolof and Serer peoples and traditional drums. It will be led by a dance anthropologist in the Duše Počkaj Hall Sophie Sabar.
Fado, jazz and African traditions
Orchester Jigeen Ñia unique and innovative musical group from Dakar, consisting entirely of female instrumentalists and singers, kicks off the third day of the festival. Attractive female musicians are writing a new chapter in the history of Senegalese and African music, and as part of the festival, they will perform in Klub Gromka at a free concert at 6 p.m. (in co-production with Exodos Ljubljana).
The event will then move to the Šiška Cinema, where there will be three concerts. Portuguese fado star Gisela João will present the album released last year Restless. The guitarist enriched the album with arrangements Carlos Rodenas Martinezand tells about the themes of freedom, memory and collective identity. They will also have a keyboard player Luis Pereira. The cast Lagoon Nwar with a singer Ann O’aro (she guested on the CD two years ago) recreates jazz and African bands, which are intertwined with the depth and warmth of Creole original poetry. Bobo & Behaja but they are a French saxophonist Bobo Maxime and the Beha band from Madagascar, who met when Bobo found himself there as part of his musical explorations; tsapiky, a dance music genre, takes us into a psychedelic trance.
On the last day, Other bands will open Olfamož (it’s for children!) with a concert for children (at 10:30 a.m. in Vodnik’s homestead), continued by renowned local musicians Žiga Golob and Andrej Hrvatin at 3 p.m. in the CD Club. At 16:30 he replaces them on the same stage Cerys Hafana from Wales (concert and talk), who explores the depths of sound on the harp and discovers unknown corners of the Welsh musical tradition. At 7 p.m., the festival moves to LGL for a musical-visual performance A wolf in sheep’s clothing (in collaboration with Zavod Exodos), whose concept and direction he signs Inti Šraj. The end of the festival will be on Metelkova, when a Swiss-Moroccan trio will perform in Channel Zero Galbi themselves and then the Tunisian star AMMAR 808.
