Open Sound Festival – Matera European Capital of Culture 2019, September 2019

Geographic musical score for over 300 traditional and contemporary musicians of Basilicata region, electronic and theatrical actions

Urla (=“shout”) is an immersive and itinerant sonic work involving over 300 performers, along the streets of Sassi di Matera, the ancient part of the city, including some of the most significant and rare musical traditions of Basilicata region, interpreting a contemporary score, together with “grapes” of electric guitars, basses, drum sets, theatrical actions, megaphones and mobile loudspeakers.

Yuval Avital has accustomed us to works of great complexity in which the sound and artistic dimensions are connected to interdisciplinary and transcultural implications. Each of his creations has his specific characteristics, but also organic links with the rest of his production, as if to constitute the momentary outcome of a constant creative flow.
In URLA converge all the paths that had made this project for long time and from their intersection emerges his unique stylistic cipher: the dialogue between creative practices and musical ‘alterities’ with dense cultural and identity implications; the trend of Crowd Music, pursued with always innovative solutions; a massive use of technologies (understood in the widest possible meaning) that go from the "technologies of the word", to the reinvention of traditional instruments, from the sound system to the electronic elaborations.

At the basis of URLA there is also a deep knowledge of the Basilicata musical phenomena, which have fascinated Yuval since the first stay we did together in the region, summer 2010, following processions, excursions on the Pollino and village festivals. They have marked a constant thread in the intense collaboration and in the continuous dialogue that has characterized our personal relationship over the last few years.

The sound and ritual picture of Basilicata to which reference is made, far from the easy to mediate stereotypes, is the one that emerged in the course of long research that I conducted in the field, not only on the sound but also on the visual and ritual, through complex dialogic investigations and collaborative landings in numerous multimedia projects. These researches have led to the identification of some authentic Basilicata ‘sound monuments’, which were discussed with Yuval for a long time, and which are composing the sound flow of URLA: from the teams of cowbells to the bagpipes, from the cupa cupa to the "shouted" songs to arbëreshe polyphony.

URLA therefore presents a long underground history whose threads have been knotted and cemented over the last year and a half, with its involvement as an artist of the Matera 2019 Open Sound Festival, above all thanks to the stays and residences that took place in various centers of Basilicata (Accettura, San Mauro Forte, Satriano di Lucania, San Costantino Albanese, Tricarico, Tito). On these occasions, Yuval has woven a work of sharing and reinvention with artists, masks and performers, who in many cases have involved entire communities.
Everything was then lowered into the specific space of the Sassi, which are not limited to being almost a scenographic setting of undoubted suggestion. The spaces of the city are a compositional parameter in URLA, which invites the viewer / listener to carve out an active role of fruition. In fact, he will be able to choose his specific path within the city and the work, following the sound flows through the Sassi, interacting with the performers or stopping at fixed positions. Whatever his choices - planned or random - he will live a unique and personal experience in any case.

URLA provides four parallel processions of artists that go along strictly established routes; they are composed of performers from authentic ritual and sound contexts of Basilicata. However, for these groups the author foresees specific actions that reinvent their roles, making them functional in a new creative framework. In their path, sound stations composed of electric guitars, electric basses, drums, deep dark amplified guitars, and small stations of traveling amplifiers, intersect.