RADIODERVISH

After three months in studio, in April the band's new album is released, the fourth of the career of the group, In search of Simurgh, published always from the Cosmasola label and distributed by Il Manifesto CD. In eight months Simurgh sells more then 10.000 copies, placed also among the best albums of the year according to Radio One Village Music that introduces in preview already in March the album with Radiodervish guests in studio.
Produced by Saro Cosentino who has managed also the music arrangements with Radiodervish and the keyboard player Alessandro Pipino, Simurgh is inspired to a classic of the Sufi's literature of XIIth century, The conference of the birds, of the mystic poet Farid ad din Attar.
As in an oriental suite , the emotions of the literary text gives a shape to fairy-tale atmospheres and to moments of rarefied and meditative suspension. The lyrics speak the multiplicity of languages typical of the Radiodervish's writing stile, touching mostly Arabic, English and Italian.
Introduced to the public with a fortunate tour in the main Feltrinelli's bookstores in Italy (Rome, Milan, Naples and Bari), the album has been reviewed with great critical approval from national press and also from the specialized reviews. The new album is presented in many radio and TV's specials and interviews.
In May the band is the guest of the International Fair of the Book of Turin where they introduced some new song within a live set performance broadcasted on the third channel of the Italian national radio (Radio Tre RAI).
The binomial music-literature accompanies the artistic planning of the band that, in a long tour started in the last summer, alternate the concert in which Nabil and Michele with Alessandro Pipino are accompanied by a trio string's section and a percussions set, to another show where they propose in trio formation the project "Between words and music", alternating to the songs of their repertoire various readings of the literary textbooks who have inspired them.
In September they play in the superior Basilica of Saint Francisco d'Assisi in occasion of the "IX international Festival for the Peace". In December, in conclusion of the festival The voices of the spirit- East West (Bari/Italy 12-29 December), they present the project The conference of the birds with the actress and theatre director Teresa Ludovico: a musical reading, unique for theme and emotion, constructed on the encounter between the music of their album and "Wings of dust", a dramatic text written by Teresa Ludovico and always inspired from the poem of Attar.

Radiodervish presented their new album in their home town of Bari at the Teatro Kismet OperA. Three nights, once again sold out, with a live project created specially for the occasion in conjunction with the lighting designer Vincent Longuemare who dealt with the stage and lighting: ten musicians on stage reproducing the sounds and atmosphere of Centro del Mundo, including a string quartet and the percussionist Zohar Fresco.
On the 26th and 27th March they played at the prestigious Théâtre de l'Olympia in Paris, an important venue where so many top names on the Italian music scene have played.
In July they were guests at the Arezzo Wave festival, and in August they played at the grand final concert of the Notte della Taranta festival, playing a piece of music from the Southern Italian Salento tradition arranged for the occasion by Stewart Copeland, ex drummer in the Police, who was a guest at the festival.
December saw them back playing live with a date at the newly-opened Feltrinelli Libri e Musica book and record shop in Bari, where they presented a journey through music and literature. In the meantime they began work on their new album, which they completed in February, the album being released in April 2004.

On tour again with the In Acustico project, Radiodervish played at the Twelfth Night concert which was broadcast on the main national TV station, RaiUno, on 5th January from the Santa Chiara Monastery in Naples. There for the first time, they played a new track, Centro del mundo, which was to come out on CD in the summer of that year.
On May 1st, Radiodervish played in Brussels, at the traditional workers' day street concert, dedicated to the topic of peace in the Middle East.
And the same issue was at the centre of their next key date "Time for peace", televised around the globe from the Coliseum in Rome, where they played Centro del mundo with Noa and then took part together on the peace march from Perugia to Assisi.
July saw the release of Centro del Mundo, Radiodervish's new album, published by the new Cosmasola label and distributed by Il Manifesto CD.
The album is a hymn to rootlessness and to the inherent uncertainties of human mobility, music capable of capturing the emotions of those who live in two cultural contexts at the same time.
Twelve new tracks, two of which were also produced in a pop version, a total of 14 tracks which delineate a refined journey through images, words, language and sound.
The lyrics are by Nabil Salameh and Michele Lobaccaro. The music was composed and arranged in conjunction with Alessandro Pipino.
Special guest appearances by Massimo Zamboni and Zohar Fresco. Artistic production was by Roberto Vernetti and Mauro Andreolli.
In just three months Centro del Mundo sold 5,000 copies and soon had to be reprinted.
Their popularity was assured, backed up by the music critics who acclaimed Radiodervish as one of the best new acts of recent years.
The new tour, which continues to this day, started immediately, taking them to some of the major festivals in Italy, from Villa Arconati via Folkest to Negroamaro where in a special project with the Arab Orchestra of Nazareth they played classics from 20th century Arab music and arranged some of the tracks from their latest album for orchestra.
The Italian tour continued from August to December and, in line with their social commitment, Radiodervish took part at the Jubilee for the Oppressed and were invited to Athens to take part at the second "World Mayors' Peace Summit".
In October they were guests at the Premio Tenco in Sanremo.
In December, they were invited by Bari University and the Meridiana Editrice publishing house to meet and interview Arie Nadler, an Israeli sociologist and director of the Peres Centre for Peace in Tel Aviv, on the topic of "Building a memory of peace".

At La Vallisa in Bari, a 10th century church which has been transformed into an auditorium, Radiodervish presented their new music project where for the first time they looked back over their artistic career with the help of acoustic instruments.
On stage, Radiodervish were accompanied on keyboards by Alessandro Pipino and on cello by Giovanna Buccarella.
The project supported the work of the “Salaam Olive Tree Kids” international association with Palestinian children in the refugee camps of Al Fawwar (West Bank - Hebron). The event was a great success, with a total of six dates, all of which were sold out, and provided the material later to be published on the In acustico album, which also contains some photos and a short video clip and which was distributed through the daily newspaper “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno“’s channels.
The month of May saw the start of the acoustic tour, which ran the length and breadth of Italy, playing mainly theatres and churches.
In June, Radiodervish were invited by the Italian Cultural Institute to play at the Beirut music festival on 21st. They went there with the film director Marco Preti, who had a number of television documentaries and travel reports to his name, and he filmed the stay in Lebanon and produced a documentary called Li Beirut. They were also joined by Massimo Zamboni, who wrote of his experiences following Radiodervish in a long article published by Diario, the weekly magazine run by Enrico Deaglio, in the special issue which came out in December 2001.

Jovanotti’s single Dolcefareniente was published this year, containing the medley version of Stella Cometa in a duet between Lorenzo and Nabil with the Arabic-only version being sung by Nabil alone.
Meanwhile, the musical partnership with Noa had turned into a lasting friendship, all the more meaningful given the delicate Middle Eastern situation. The municipal authorities of Melpignano (near Lecce) awarded them honorary citizenship for their peace-seeking efforts and named them ambassadors of peace throughout the world.
At the invitation of the United Nations, they sang together in December at Palermo’s Monreale Cathedral, conducted by Nicola Piovani, in front of an audience made up of a number of heads of state.

A tour of Italy with dozens of concerts all around the country brought Radiodervish to the attention of the national market and of the international festival scene. They struck up partnerships and shared ideas with a number of Italian and international artists, including the Middle Eastern musicians Rim Banna, Amal Morkus, and Noa.
The group took part in several radio and television programmes broadcast by Rai, Tele+, Tele Montecarlo, ART Europe and many others.

Radiodervish first album Lingua contro Lingua (Dischi del Mulo/PolyGram), was released and presented at the Turin Music Salon, and won the Premio Ciampi prize for the best debut album of the year. Recorded in the studios at the Episcopio Castle in Grottaglie, the album features the artistic talents of producers Fabio Recupero and Mauro Andreolli.

Nabil Salameh and Michele Lobaccaro founded Radiodervish after the break-up of Al Darawish, one of the most influential groups on the Italian world music scene, which had been together since 1988 and right from the outset had received great critical and popular acclaim.
Lyricists, and respectively singer and bass player, in Al Darawish, Nabil and Michele met in the mid 1980s in Bari, where they went to the same university. Michele graduated in Philosophy while Nabil, a qualified journalist, studied Engineering.
An important meeting for their artistic development came around this time - Alessandro Pipino, a versatile keyboard player who Radiodervish were to work with from the start on compositions and arrangements.