Badara Seck with Badamj Ensemble
Workshop Roots&Routes International
Neglizi & Koka Madeinal

a project by Fabbrica Europa and Roots&Routes International
with the support of the Culture and Lifelong Learning programmes of the European Union

Fabbrica Europa hosts an important step of the biennial project Art’n’Go. New Routes to Intercultural Creativity, that gives an opportunity to develop into sustainable productions a cluster of creative works based on original proposals by some of the most motivated and active young artists of the community Roots&Routes.

From May 14 to 23, a creative dialogue will develop between Art’n’Go and the Grundtvig workshop Roots&Routes: the voice of the new Europe, in which 20 adult learners from 10 European countries will explore their own and the others’ roots through music, singing, gesture, dance and video, in a real and virtual “piazza” where new languages can be experimented and shared: a practice that Fabbrica Europa is developing also in the territories of Valdisieve and Valdarno, with the creative dance and music workshops Agorà 2010 .

Held at the youth centres ExFila, Casa della Creatività and Affratellamento, the workshop will also show audio-video installations developed in other European steps (in particular the Urban Media Festival held in Cologne in November 2009), and music and media performances in collaboration with the project Senses in migration promoted by Cultcube and Academy of Fine Arts.

The climax is the night of May 19 at Stazione Leopolda, when the workshop opens up to the public with installations, performances, concerts and DJ sets, hosting masters and friends who have objectives and methods in common with Roots&Routes, based on the exchange between teacher and learner, learner and learner, individuals and community.

“Master of Ceremonies” is the vocalist Badara Seck from Senegal, opening the programme with his new group Badamj Ensemble.

Badara Seck with Badamj Ensemble
voice and direction: Badara Seck
voice: Aurora Loffredo
balafon and percussions: Daouda Diabate
tablas: Agostino Bicocchi
kora: Madya Diabate
management: José García
produced by Fabbrica Europa

This group offers an original, almost “chamber-like” timbric approach to African sounds, combined with sounds from the European tradition. Badamj Ensemble, the acronym of the names of this new group, offers a innovative fusion of Italo-African sounds through the work on the voice of the Senegal griot Badara Seck, artistic director of the project, in collaboration with the singing of the young Tuscan soprano Aurora Loffredo, the tablas of Agostino Bicocchi, whose training ranges from Tuscany to India, the kora of Madya Diabate (Senegal) and the percussions of Daouda Diabate (Burkina Faso), both belonging to the Diabate “dynasty”, one of the great griot families.

Badara Seck, vocalist and author from Senegal living in Rome since 1998, belongs to a family of griots, poets and praise singers who in West Africa had and have the important role of repositories of their countries’ rich oral tradition. He partecipated to various festivals in Italy, Europe and Africa. Invited by Mauro Pagani, in recent years he has collaborated in realising some of Massimo Ranieri’s cds, also accompanying him in his concerts. He has designed the interdisciplinary and multicultural project Rung Pung, where Africa meets Europe on the common field of music, conceived for Fabbrica Europa 2004 and developed in Rome.

Neglizi & Koka Madeinal
voice: Resi Nakaj aka Neglizi
voice: Leandro Ndoja aka Koka Madeinal
guitar: Davide Stroscio
bass: Leonardo Baggiani
drums: Marco Dainelli

After the results obtained at local and national level, Resi “Neglizi” Nakaj presents his new group: the young Albanian rapper and author living since years in Italy, well rooted in the migrant communities of the Florentine territory, interacts with the Roots&Routes community he belongs to.

The programme will end up in a multiethnic and multicultural Roots&Routes International party

artistic direction: Lorenzo Pallini
general coordination: Marina Bistolfi
artistic collaboration: Alessandro Di Puccio, Costas Lamproulis, Nabil Ouelhadj
with Brahima Dembelè, Gianfranco Narracci, Ferdinando Olivieri

and with Ferdi Abel (Netherlands), Irene Alfambra (Spain), Saira Awan (UK), Pamela Barberi (IT), Ava Barnett (UK), Maria Baroncea (Romania), Mehregan Behrouz (Germany), Moustapha “Mousstik” Bellal (France), Filippo Carli (IT), Lorenzo Ciacciavicca (IT), Fabio Corcione (IT), Cécile Delobeau (France), Lucio Di Cicco (IT), Esteban Fernandez (Argentina/Spain), Elena Gkatza (Greece), Anna Kerényi (Hungary), Kim “Kiko” Kovin (Sweden), Réka Nagy (Hungary), Resi “Neglizi” Nakaj (Albania/IT), Codin Oraseanu (Romania), Olga Pavlenko (Ukraine/IT), Stefanos Pallas (Greece), Philip “Phenno” Straus (Germany), Rebecca “Realz” Turini (IT), Ruben Vandendriessche (Belgium/Spain), Kosta Velcsev Dejanov (Hungary), Poliana Vieira (Portugal/Netherlands)

organisation: Sarah Bulang, Marika Errigo, Margherita Picchi