Zona Briganti
Ritmu Novu

ZONA BRIGANTI – “RITMU NOVU” (Volta la Carta/Venus)

“Ritmu Novu” is not exactly the freshest and most original thing I've heard lately. Zona Briganti is a group of very young Calabrian musicians who, riding the wave of the “Power of Taranta” and with the blessing of its Guru, bring a mix of folk music and a very light world contamination around Italy. The album is artistically produced by Angelo Sposato (Konsentia) who, by adding electro-world inserts here and there, brings to the album a breath of freshness and a touch of originality.

The most successful tracks ("Ritmu Novu", "Re Niliu" and "Gigantaru") contain an interesting blend of Calabrian roots and that non-invasive electronics that enriches traditional music without distorting it and never being kitsch. “Zona Briganti” are the winners of the Radici Etno-Contest, a world music contest held every year in Basilicata, which, with Volta la Carta, promotes and produces artists from all over the Boot. Ritmu Novu is a leap into the past, into that Folk revival that figures like Eugenio Bennato, NCCP, Musica Nova, D’Angiò, Anna Nacci, and many others have helped bring back to prominence in our nation and especially in Southern Italy.

In “Ritmu Novu” research and modernity are thus combined: traditions and popular stories projected into a sort of “Contemporary Background”. A journey alternating between the two most significant dimensions of time, past and present. The guys from Zona Briganti love their folk culture and their land, they become sponsors and healthy bearers of a South anchored to its roots, but ready to assume them as a given and cultural baggage for a transcendence and a future research in sound and global proposal.

Great openings for a future of contamination and “Ritmu Novu”.

Rating 8/10

Giovanni Rizzo