SUD SOUND SYSTEM
Lecce, Apulia, Italy | MAJOR
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Sud Sound System
“DAMMENE ANCORA”
Comu li nonni nesci se turcianu culla pizzica
Sapianu ca la malvagità se ince cu la musica…
Nui l’imu ereditata e proseguimu sta missione
Moi tamme sulu reggae ca bruciamu ogni oppressione
(Dammene ancora)
“DAMMENE ANCORA”, Sud Sound System's seventh studio album, is a surprising record and represents, in its continuity, a further shift from the previous – and lucky – “Acqua pe sta terra”, from 2005. What surprises in the new work of the most famous salentine “posse” in Italy, is the international level of the arrangements, the draft, the featuring, the languages, dialects and intonations babel. It's a record that explores reggae in all its forms and styles, a journey to the center of a unique and deep vibration. It wants to speak from Salento to the World, and it do it promoting as major contents those that have always been the features of Sud Sound System's music and artistic suggestions: the love for music and its own country, the hate for any form of unfairness and oppression, the tolerance and respect for each other.
18 tracks that develop through the different new reggae styles, dancehall, roots and lovers but explores new sounds closer to the Italian song, r’n’b and soul: the band of Don Rico, Terron Fabio, GGD, Papa Gianni, Nandu Popu is more and more part of the international reggae community, it lives its music with a wide breath, that goes beyond the restrictions and the narrow-mindedness of any kind of barrier, geographical, linguistic, or of a genre. In confirmation of this the large number of guests that warms the record's tracks and forms an amazing line up: Jah Mason, Kiprich, Esco, Morgan Heritage, Neffa, Laza, Bling Dawg, Daddy Freddy. A sign that Sud Sound System's love for reggae and for music understood as a positive propulsion, that the band practises as life religion, reaches not only the audience but also who, in other parts of the world and in different languages, lives with the same values.
In these terms, where a title like “Acqua pe sta terra” was drawing everybody's attention to the environmental emergency's problem and drama, “DAMMENE ANCORA” is just a hymn to the redeeming power of music, to its ability to improve the human been soul and acting, to its strenght, its original fire, its “fuecu”, that keeps burning for whom wants to get closer and warm himself: «Our music is a language that opens other doors. We don't find ourselves in Italy, how it is today, where everybody has to look handsome. We find ourselves in Alberto Sordi's movies, those where Italians are provincial and make you laugh when they play American. We give our best when we make our stuff without having to prove anything. Italy is like this, Milano is a provincial city as well, and Rome is even a metropolis where people speak in dialect».
From the Free Republic of Salento – where Sud Sound System have continued to "run by themselves", supported exclusively by their own people's love and enthusiasm, by their public scattered along Italy and, after a 17 years carreer, also in a good part of Europe – it is coming this new work that, like an imaginary mailbag, can be emptied on a table and transformed in a series of letters and photos that tell with new words of joy and hope but also of problems that belong to their land. The emigration, for instance, that keeps being a constant curse in spite of the tourist explosion of the latest years: «They describe Salento as if it were the new California», says Nandu Popu, «but the truth is that Salento is still a land of mafia and emigration. The tourims isn't bringing any money to our country so we ask ourselves: what would be the use of it? I got friends who are qualified in the hotel and tourism industry and still have to find job in the North, or even abroad, because here they can't find any. Restaurants proprietors prefer to give work to their own relatives or to non-professional people, so to be safe from any possible quarrel. They damage who has studied and could bring professionalism to work, just because this kind of people are considered uncomfortable and expensive».
“DAMMENE ANCORA” is telling these truths, but makes sure to always put beside the most positive and stirring side of reggae: that feeling of “unity”, of community that brings people together in the sharing of an only fate. It's the highlight, a party that continues to the everyday life. We aren't alone, as long as we can share life with friends, as long as there are smiles, human heath, love and hope.
17 years ago the journey called Sud Sound System started and, if possible, today this band's music is even more urgent and necessary than then. It's an antidote to unhappiness, loneliness, but even more to resignation, in times where resigning to what is the less worst seems to be the common evil. “DAMMENE ANCORA” is here to remind us of that, and to drive the evil out with music. As our grandparents did, as we can still do as well.
- ITALIAN MUSIC MAGAZINE
Discography
Fuecu - 12'' (1991)
Ta Sciuta Bona - 12'' (1991)
Reggae Internazionale - 12'' (1991)
Tradizioni - CD (collection single 1991 - 1996)
Comu na Petra - CD (1996)
Reggae Party - CD (1999)
Musica Musica - CD (2001)
Lontano - CD (2003)
Fuecu su Fuecu - CD (collection 2004)
Acqua Pe Sta Terra - CD (2005)
Live & Direct - CD/DVD (2006)
Dammene Ancora - CD (2008)
Photos
Bio
The origins of Sud Sound System reach back to the Italian movement known as "posse" and considered today 15 years after its birth and growth as a reality on the national music scene the most explosive and creative music event that has happened in Italy in the '90s. Of that movement, antagonist at the same time both on the music side and the more social side, Sud Sound System has been a prominent part and a primary propulsive energy.
The Sud Sound System consisting of a group of friends called with meaningful nicknames: Treble, Don Rico, Terron Fabio, GGD, Papa Gianni, Nandu Popu - make its debut in June 1991 with the 12 single FUECU/TA SCIUTA BONA, causing a great sensation in the Italian music business thanks to the toasting in Salentos dialect, the conscious lyrics and the musical freshness. But the true beginning of Sud Sound System is actually earlier than that, as the best tradition of Jamaican reggae dancehall - with speakers, two turntables and a mic. The first dancehalls start for the closest friends, at home. But soon the small houses wont be able to contain anymore the many people that come to see them thanks to the word-of-mouth, and the parties continue in the Salentine countryside, among ancient olive trees, abandoned oil mills and in 40° in the summer.
The genuineness of Fuecu and Ta sciuta bona makes the bands success grow as the number of people at the concerts and the apparitions in national radio and television, like Avanzi and Rai Stereo Notte. Soon after they perform at Festival delle Nuove Tendenze dAutore in Recanati (the festival is broadcasted live on the national radio Rai Stereo Notte).
In 1992 Sud Sound System releases two 12 singles: the first with Reggae Internazionale and Punnu Ieu, the second with Turcinieddhri and Chiappalu. These new songs become immediately true classics of Sud Sound Systems shows that meanwhile follow one another without a break.
The interest in Sud Sound System isnt just circumscribed in a musical context: the director Renato De Maria produces a short movie about the Salento reggae scene, broadcasted on Rai 3 (the national television) and director Gianluca Sgalambro makes a video for a Rai 2 show called Effetto 8.
In addition to that, Sud Sound System - because of its common points with the pizzica tarantata, understood as a ritual moment of catharsis, creator of altered states of conscience - is the subject matter of sociologists George Lapassade and Piero Fumarola's lessons in Italian universities.
As a testimony of a strong live impact, from 1993 to 2002 Sud Sound System shares the stage with international acts like Macka B and Mad Professor, Little Owie, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Asher D, Chubby Rankin, Daddy Freddy, Thriller Jenna, Sweete Irie, Echo Minott, Shabba Ranks, Wailers, Anthony B, Sizzla. From 1993 to 1994 important tours take the SSS through Europe, reaching France, Germany, Switzerland and England.
In the beginning of 1994 they produce SALENTO SHOWCASE '94, a compilation that involves promising young artists from the reggae scene of Salento; the album enjoys general esteem and encourages the spreading of the reggae and raggamuffin movement of their country.
Preceded by a compilation that sums up the discography from 1991 to 1996, entitled TRADIZIONI, in 1996 SSS releases its first record COMU NA PETRA (for the label CNI) with the participation of some tambourine players from Salento: the record puts the basis for a raggamuffin steeped in pizzica, that has always been the absolutely necessary feature of the band's nature. Songs such as Afro ragga taranta jazz and Crisce start taking shape.
In April 1997 SSS releases the record NO PLAYBACK (CNI), which contains songs taken from the album COMU NA PETRA remixed by important artists from the international reggae-hip hop scene, as well as an unreleased song called Mena moi. In the meanwhile djs from Sud Sound System collaborate with some Italian sound system, re
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