Babel Music XP returns to Marseille from March 23 to 25, 2023. With its professional trade fair and international festival packed with outstanding world music acts, Babel Music XP is located at the heart of the Mediterranean hub on the world music map.
The international event contributes to the revival of a branch of the music industry that is facing new challenges every day, while bringing musicians and audiences together, promoting information sharing and the exchange of ideas between major players in the sector, and also experiencing the very latest world music trends.
Four awesome Italian artists are set to perform at the festival this year: Maria Mazzotta, Davide Ambrogio, Rhabdomantic Orchestra and Spartenza. Check them out!
MARIA MAZZOTTA
Schedule: Mar 24 from 8:15 pm to 9:00 pm
Maria Mazzotta, a major artist on the Apulian vocal scene, has been developing the musical tradition of Salento’s tarantellas for quite some time. From pizzica to ballads, the Italian singer is now exploring the meanderings of love, and all its ups and downs, with palpable grace and emotion. Known for her poignant interpretations of a variety of songs from the Mediterranean basin, Maria Mazzotta brings to it, with her tamburello and golden voice, a real breath of fresh air that makes the traditions take on a whole new light.
DAVIDE AMBROGIO
Schedule: Mar 23 from 9:45 pm to 10:30 pm
Attached to the deep meaning of songs and the ecstatic power of music, Davide Ambrogio sees himself as part of the oral tradition of Aspromonte (Calabria, Southern Italy), where each sound and piece feeds a ritual. This singer and multi-instrumentalist from Calabria offer an immersive performance centered on the voice, alongside a lyre, pencil guitar, frame drum sumpettana, bagpipes and live electro. From lullabies to protest songs, Davide Ambrogio sweeps aside the conflict between tradition and modernity by placing the voice at the heart of the matter.
RHABDOMANTIC ORCHESTRA
Schedule: Mar 25 from 10:30 pm to 11:15 pm
The Rhabdomantic Orchestra is an adventurous ensemble that plays everything from Afrobeat, spiritual jazz, and southern melodies, to salsa, kraut-rock and Yoruba percussion. The nine Turin-based musicians sketch out an unbridled, sensual Mediterranean fantasy, inspired by surrealist aesthetics and Latin American magic realism. Led by multi-instrumentalist Manuel Volpe and the voice of Colombian singer Maria Mallol Moya, the band alternates between the sensuous atmospheres and the frenetic rhythms of a migratory Afro-beat – fiercely groovy.
SPARTENZA
Schedule: Mar 23 from 2:30 pm to 3:15 pm
If Spartenza means separation in Sicilian, it is indeed a sensitive bridge between the two shores of the Mediterranean that Maura Guerrera and Malik Ziad are building together. Between songs, the Sicilian tammureddu drum, the gumbri and the Algerian mandole, the duo revives the invisible thread of the songs of their ancestors. The Sicilian vocal traditions including lullabies and work songs collected “sul campo” [in the field], echo the exalted rhythms of the gnaouis and chaâbi music in a familiar way. An ethereal and deep-rooted cultural concordance.