Paolo Angeli & Tenore Murales De Orgosolo

The encounter between Tenore Murales de Orgosolo and Paolo Angeli begins with an immersion in the grammar of Orgosolo’s traditional musical languages and extends to the guitar practices and repertoires of Gallura and Logudoro, of which Angeli is a custodian.

On one side is the prepared Sardinian guitar, an instrument that has captivated music critics in Europe and across the Atlantic; on the other, Orgosolo’s guttural singing, an expression of one of the Mediterranean’s oldest polyphonic traditions, whose only parallels are found in Tuva and Mongolia. It is performed and passed down by Tenore Murales, a vocal ensemble that has helped shape the community’s history and shared its beauty with the world.

Paolo Angeli and the Tenore di Orgosolo embrace the complexity, diversity and innovative power of a musical tradition that, in this encounter, seeks dialogue with other musical languages, opening itself to an exchange with contemporary music.

The perspective is that of an island in the heart of the Mediterranean, but above all of an island within an island: Orgosolo, which enters into a textual and dialectical exchange with other musical cultures without ever relinquishing its distinctive identity.

The result is celebratory, meditative, startling in its solemnity and unpredictable. It unfolds in a flow from which Isterridas emerge, along with rhythms and turns of phrase from ballu anthau, amutos, a sa seria, lestra, vardeina, religious songs and songs sung when going from house to house collecting offerings, gotzos, and dizzying dances marked by the sound of sa trunfa (the jaw harp). Eventually, it reaches uninhabited lands, where sound erupts into jagged, acidic pulses on the verge of punk.