Grandi & Fanti: Riomaggiore dialect at 36th Cinque Terre International Music Festival
Monday, 24th July at 9.15 pm, at the Castle of Riomaggiore, the dialect band that has repeatedly won Albenga's Ligurian song contest
(Manarola - Sede, 24 Jul 17) Grandi & Fanti are a band from Riomaggiore (Cinque Terre) that plays in local dialect. As their name suggests, band members are mostly young people ("fanti"): Irene Somovigo (voice), Luca Scapin (bouzouki), Leonardo Franceschetti (guitar), Lorenzo Beschi (electric guitar) and Marco Curti (drums). The band's "grandi" (adults) are Francesco Buttà (voice) and Enrico Bonanini (voice, bouzouki and bass guitar).
All the band's original songs were written in the local dialect of Ligurian language. The band's name refers to the different ages of its members, but also to the need, for musicians and poets, to preserve the spirit of youth in themselves. They draw musical inspiration from the Mediterranean sounds that Fabrizio De André and Mauro Pagani put at the core of their masterpiece album "Crêuza de mä". That is why the band's instruments include the bouzouki, which is not played with the Greek tuning but with its strings free, just as the Genoese singer-songwriter did.
Grandi & Fanti received several awards, twice winning the San Giorgio Festival of Ligurian Language Song, held every year in Albenga.
