Thursday, June 12 – 8:00 PM

B7L9 Art Centre

B7L9 and the Italian Cultural Institute of Tunis present Saracena by Cesare Basile.

Sicilian singer-songwriter Cesare Basile ipresented for the first time in Tunisia his latest musical project: Saracena.

Saracena is a song of exile and separation.
A song of rupture—from childhood, from places, from language.
A song of stones and forgotten names, of abandoned houses, of anger and nostalgia.

It is a long chant, written and recorded in a single breath over the span of two weeks, while chewing on the words of ancient and modern poets:
the Arabs of Sicily like Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdis, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, the verses of Santo Calì, and popular stanzas about the abandonment of a Saracen island—all carried in the silences between the melodies of his Cantaturi.
These seeds, crushed together in the mortar of memory, tell stories of uprooting and departures.

A unique live performance by Cesare Basile (strings, vocals, electronics), Marco Giambrone (electric guitar, vocals, electronics), and Massimo Ferrarotto (percussion, vocals, electronics).