Stefano Saletti & Banda Ikona's Mediterranean is stubborn, combative, resistant. It refuses to give up, as they sing in the album’s title song.
As stubborn as the peoples of the Mediterranean are strong, ancient, obstinate and resilient.
As stubborn as repetitive music that produces a stun, trance and ritual to which we surrender.
As stubborn as the identity of a generous South that defends itself against any dominant single idea and a cultural, social, economic and political homologation that has produced new forms of marginalisation and an ever-increasing gap between wealth and poverty.
Mediterraneo Ostinato, published by the Finisterre label on March 20, 2021, is a manifesto of a possible new "Mediterranean Power" in the name of a past comprised of art, culture, open ports, encounters and exchanges that, like a great, intertwined network has created new paths, stories and a common Mediterranean soul. “Mediterraneo ostinato” has reached the n. 2 of the World Music Charts Europe on July and remained on the charts for three months of the WMCE and the Transglobal World Music Charts.
The album is sung in Sabir, the ancient language of the Mediterranean forgotten by history and revived in Stefano Saletti’s original compositions, which also draw on the great legacy of Mediterranean literature, from Calvino to Pasolini, from Matvejević to Machado and Kavafis, from Cecco Angiolieri to Rilke to the Kurdish poet Abdulla Goran.
Twelve songs narrate the stories and the passions of a sea that unites rather than dividing, that fosters dialogue between peoples with different traditions who have always known how to live together and coexist.