Meigama by Mauro Palmas

MEIGAMA
Meigama in Sardinian language defines a temporal dimension, a mood, the colors of afternoons in a certain part of the year, and it’s the first album by Mauro Palmas e Francesco Medda as a duet.
Mauro Palmas, musician and composer reference artist of Sardinian and Mediterranean music, and Francesco Medda, musician and electronic composer known as Arrogalla.
It is a political, instrumental music record, where every element has been carefully analyzed.
Mauro Palmas plays and composes music with the cantabile lute, the mandola and the mandoloncello, that goes from the Sardinian and Mediterranean tradition to contemporary one, selecting with care small elements and “nodas”. These materials are organized in an elegant and essential way within the production of Francesco Medda, including electroacoustics, soundscapes and ambient, enriched from time to time with abstract hip hop and dub.
The record has eight tracks, lasts 35 minutes and its cover is in black bucchero, one of the oldest ceramic techniques, made by the artist Giampaolo Mameli.
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BIO


FRANCESCO MEDDA ARROGALLA
Francesco Medda, known as Arrogalla, is a sound artist born in Sardinia in 1981. His research, started in 2003, winds through popular cultures, soundscapes and contemporary music. Francesco has always listened to hip hop, dub, techno, traditional Sardinian music but also people's voices, the traffic and the sounds of nature, creating a vast archive of experiences and material sounds, considering and studying them all as potentially useful elements to create new music. All of this is part of his kaleidoscopic aesthetics.
He is what you can call a music pioneer and also one of the leading artists on the island, but not only, searching always for an original and always up-to-date mode of music production. Together with the research and composition work, he has always associated many live shows, in Sardinia and also outside the island.
Since 2003 carries on his main personal project "Arrogalla", in numerous e diversified productions and hundreds of concerts all over Europe.
The sound of Arrogalla is a very creative and sophisticated blend of Sardinian folk sounds, together with tropical and Mediterranean music that meets abstract hip hop and contemporary one, all of it elaborated through the language of the original dub.
In addition to his personal artistic path, he has always collaborated with other authors and artists such as Michela Murgia, Mauro Palmas, Malasorti, KOI and Giacomo Casti.


MAURO PALMAS
Mauro Palmas, composer, multi-instrumentalist, researcher, was born in Cagliari and began his career very young in historical-critical research and recovery groups of popular music.
In 1977 he founded the Suonofficina group with the principal aim to make meetings and experiments between the sardinian and the mediterranean music and cultures.
Suonofficina produces the Pingiada albums (Fonit Cetra) and Iandimironnai (Playgame Music).
Professor Palmas then specializes in the study of dance rhythms, creating a technique that allows him to use the language of the ancient "nodas" of launeddas on the mandola.
In 1979 he met the famous singer Elena Ledda, with whom he shared aims and projects, concerts and recording activity (Ammentos 1979, Sonos1989, Incanti 1994, Maremannu 2000, Cantendi a Deus 2009, Làntias 2017).
Mauro meets the great protagonists of international culture on stages around the world.
He composes original music for the films Venti di Jazz, Nel Paese di Eleonora, Filo di Seta, La Destinazione and for vintage films Cainà, Cenere, Sonos 'e memoria, Fiorenzo Serra; in the theatrical field he signs the music for the shows Cristiani di Allah, Mare chiuso, Cronache Italiane, Scavi storie di miniera, Persiane Azzurre and for dancers Etnika, Dances from the Sea, Tango Dream and Transumare.
His discographic works: Cainà, A volte ritornano, Il colore del maestrale, Mare chiuso with Maurizio Camardi, Voglio un chilo di pane with Tama trio, Palma de Sols.
For thirteen years he is the Artistic Director of the traveling music festival Mare e Minere.
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SOUND TRACKS


LUGORI
A Composition for mandoloncello and cantabile lute.
A rarefied moment, probably in the countryside, among junipers, holm oaks, cork oaks, tamarisks and olive trees. You can smell the cistus and helichrysum. The sea is never too far away, there is a sea ​​breeze and a certain saltiness in the air that can inspire a kiss under the light of the moon and stars.


DROMI
A Composition for cantabile lute.
It is a contemporary lullaby and the theme played is inspired by the introductions of the dances performed from the launeddas. The soundscape was recorded during a religious procession and it fades gradually within an electro-acoustic drone.


CAMPUOMU
A Composition for cantabile lute and mandoloncello.
The melody contains the basic elements of the cantada campidanesa and it is divided into four different moments between atonal drones, dub atmospheres and hip-hop beat.
Campuomu is the name of one of the most evocative streets in south-eastern Sardinia, whose magical scenery changes constantly.


BENTU SALIU
A Composition for cantabile lute.
The freshness of the abstract hip hop sounds mixed with gòcius (or gosos), liturgical songs of the traditional Iberian music.
Bentu saliu (salty wind), is one of the many synonyms of the west wind, wind that comes from the Iberian Peninsula.


MINORE
A composition for cantabile lute.
It is a traditional Sardinian dance, performed in a minor way.
Today the traditional music of Sardinia is predominantly in major. In the song you will hear a bass sound stolen from an old Jamaican vinyl integrated with Saharawi voices, sounds of old tape recordings together with sounds of starlings that slowly becomes electroacoustic music.


TORRA
A composition for cantabile lute.
Su passu torrau is one of the best known and most danced traditional Sardinian dances.
In this case it is performed in minor.
The electroacoustic structure is composed of multiple samples taken from Celtic music records and Mediterranean one, then reworked. The soundscape, recorded at night, represents several types of listening levels: the water, the crickets, the cattle and the gunshots in the distance.


REQUIEM
A composition for cantabile lute.
The sound of the sea is recorded in Tunisia, in Kélibia (Cape Bon), one of the many starting points of the immigrants from Africa.
The sea plays inexorably with the elaboration of samples of different lutes creating a sound magma over which a sad Mediterranean ballad flows.


NOTI DE INCANTU
A composition for mandola.
It is a very fast traditional Campidanese dance, performed in Mauro Palma’s style, able to transfer the “nodas” of the launeddas to his instrument.
The rhythmic pulsation remains constant, changing only in its colors and dubbing and works around a percussion sampled from a Salento’s pizzica, which penetrates the dance, transforming it.
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THE PRODUCTION
The production of Meigama has been entrusted to Meigama, the production and management team directed by Luca Zoccheddu. Meigama coordinates all the aspects of the production of the record, which, by a curious coincidence, has the same name of the producer Company. The graphics have been committed to Rinaldo Crespi who, together with Luca Spano, took up the graphic elements from the works by the artist Giampaolo Mameli who created the cover in black bucchero.
The recording, mixing and mastering were commited to Corrado Tolu. The record received fundamental support from associations, festivals and cultural institutions such as Antas Teatro, Chourmo / Marina Cafè Noir, European Jazz Expo ', Fondazione Giuseppe Dessì, Le Ragazze Terribili, Mare e Miniere, Museo Nivola.


GIAMPAOLO MAMELI
Giampaolo Mameli is an artist from San Sperate. The study of Proto-Sardinian and Nuragic cultures of the relationship with the Divinity-Nature is at the basis of his reinterpretation of symbolic figures and of the rock graffities of the Mediterranean prehistory. Giampaolo reworking the images of the Taurus God and the Mother Goddess, archetypical figures of the fertility and vitality of the earth, shapes and decorates the best-known nucleus of its ceramics production. Giampaolo created the cover of Meigama, in unique pieces in Bucchero, as I said, one of the most ancient ceramic techniques, used in Sardinia since the pre-Nuragic period
(2200-2000 BC). In the bucchero the earth becomes black, rather than red, due to the failure oxygenation during the cooking.

Meigama è il primo disco in duo di Mauro Palmas e Francesco Medda.

Mauro Palmas, musicista e compositore, è considerato pietra miliare della musica sarda e mediterranea.
Francesco Medda è un musicista e compositore elettronico già noto come Arrogalla.

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