Visitors to doors beyond borders

We were led to Nabil and Michele by their beautiful lyrics and elegant crossover sounds. We were looking for theme music for this experiment of ours, and could not resist these visitors to doors (Dar Wish in Persian means just that). Their music, simultaneously electronic and acoustic, a hybrid of often very different timbres, crosses musical borders. They live on a frontier, searching for passages linking East and West, exploring the no man's land, the border, the place that unifies as it separates. They tell of a self-sufficient world that exists; of interior paths trodden by men and women who belong to different spaces, cultures and times; of hidden but still vital paths whose traces are the symbols and legends that shape those cultures. Despite the tension that might appear to emanate from the album's title, Lingua contro Lingua is in fact a crossroads where tongues and cultures come together. Our ears transmit the lyrics of the songs - from Due soli (Two Alone, a visionary text by a mystic poet named Rumi, among other things the founder of the Mevlevi Dervishes) to Belzebù (Belzebub) and to Gaza, a song which has preserved intact the power from when the two musicians were part of Al Darawish - directly to our hearts and our minds. Languages and sounds blend, as Italian unexpectedly becomes Arabic, English and French. But this is not philological research; rather, the group are engaged in creating bridges, opening wide the windows of the world and nourishing themselves artistically on everything that happens on this little-big planet Passaggi indispensabili su di me, segnano lentamente (Indispensable transitions touch me, slowly marking): this line from one of their songs seems to encapsulate the secret of their work: matter, atmospheres and seasons in transition, imperceptibly leaving a mark - on us too. In addition to the music and the lyrics, our encounter with Radiodervish is also due to the fact that their themes and sensitivity to events are close to our own. "Questi che stiamo vivendo sono giorni strani" (These are strange times we're living through), said Nabil at the beginning of a recent concert: the strangeness of our times does not mean we shouldn't reflect and meditate: here perhaps, music alone can help.
Elettra Stamboulis