Eugenio Bennato World Music – Tour 2024

Eugenio Bennato – vocals, classical guitar, mandola, strummed guitar
Ezio Lambiase – classical and electric guitar
Mujura – acoustic guitar, bass, vocals
Sonia Totaro – vocals and dance
Francesca Del Duca – percussion, vocals

“In the Seventies, as a young man, I invented the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare, a musical band that started from the models of the unknown singers of the south and began to tour the world. Then came the brigands of southern history, then came the migrants of the Mediterranean, then came Taranta Power, which marked the entrance of Italian ethnic music into World Music. Always a music of minorities, a music that counts little in the business of global civilization. Music of the world is all this. They are thoughts, ideas, ideals, transformed into words and music without boundaries. I find my starting point and my landing point here, the conviction at that time that music can contribute to opposing the logic of profit with the logic of beauty and human contact.”

Eugenio Bennato is the great Master of Italian folk music. With Taranta Power, he has breathed new life into and opened international markets for the great musical traditions of our south. Approaching almost fifty years of career, he continues to be a reference point for the modernity of sounds and the relevance of the lyrics, focusing on the “hot” topics of our contemporaneity: migrations, respect for diversity, solidarity, dangers of globalization and extreme capitalism. From the southern shores of the Mediterranean, from meridian thinking, from encounters with different stories and cultures, Eugenio Bennato has written his personal history of rhythms and words, always true to himself and his ideas. A musical journey that continues and continues…

Eugenio Bennato founded the Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare in the Seventies, and in 1976 Musica Nova. In the nineties, with Taranta Power, he initiated a movement that introduced Italian ethnic music into the international network of World Music. The most significant discography includes Brigante se more (1980), Taranta Power (1998), Che il Mediterraneo sia (2002), Sponda sud (2007), Questione meridionale (2011), Canzoni di Contrabbando (anthology 2016), “Da che Sud è Sud” (2017). In 2018, he performed in the major capitals of the Arab-African world: Tunis, Rabat, Cairo, Algiers, Tangier, Oran. He participated in the festival 7Sois7Luas in Portugal and was invited by the European Parliament in Brussels to perform on Human Rights Day. On December 1, 2018, he celebrated the twenty years of Taranta Power with a grand festival in Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples. In 2020, a new album, “Qualcuno sulla terra,” was released, along with the single “W chi non conta niente.” In the summer of 2022, the new single Welcome to Napoli was released, which became the anthem for the events in Naples, the city of music. In 2023, he performed in the United States (Los Angeles, San Francisco) and for the first time in India, on the occasion of Republic Day (New Delhi, Bangalore). Also in 2023, he composed the soundtrack for the docufilm on Massimo Troisi, thirty years after his passing, produced by Raiuno. In 2024, his new album Musica dal Mondo will be released.