Sergio Berardo: voice, hurdy-gurdy
Alessio Carletto: hurdy-gurdy
Gioele Bernardi: hurdy-gurdy
Roby Avena: accordion
Riccardo Serra: percussions
Cristina Saletto: vocals
“Crossing borders is today one of the noblest forms of insubordination available to a human being. And the highest act of rebellion is doing so in order to export and import the culture that pulses from below. This is why the album with which Sergio revisits songs, stories, characters, and legends that have never reached the spotlight of official—let alone academic—stages sounds like a manifesto of striking relevance, like a wager on the future: the exact opposite of the calligraphic ritual that fuels the commonly accepted idea of a folk revival. In the musicians, the street performers, the characters suspended between circus and swindle, in the colorful and combative galaxy intercepted and put back into circulation by his invaluable research, it is impossible not to glimpse the silhouettes of those who today—and even more so tomorrow, an easy prophecy—are working and will work to earn their daily bread with heads held high, without lowering their gaze. Crossing borders, whether of state, class, creed, or language. Exegetical, surgical research multiplied by the urgency of a living present, looking ahead with the past powering its engine: Viola, in a word.” (Paolo Ferrari)
Sergio Berardo, long-standing and multifaceted leader of the group Lou Dalfin—which he founded in 1982 and which remains highly active (an impressive number of collaborations, over 1,300 concerts in festivals, clubs, and squares all over Europe, 13 albums released, the latest at the end of 2023)—is the most representative contemporary figure of the Occitan musical culture on our side of the Alps. From the very beginning, Berardo has been a serious and passionate scholar of the heritage of the small mountain communities of Piedmont with Occitan linguistic minorities, whose hurdy-gurdy repertoire he has painstakingly reconstructed with great intellectual effort. A seasoned and kaleidoscopic artist with extraordinary talent as a multi-instrumentalist and an exuberant storyteller, a magnetic “stage showman,” Sergio Berardo (voice and hurdy-gurdy) returns to our stage four years after his stunning duo concert “Cavaliers, Gigants e La Beata” to present his brand-new album "Viola, sus la rota encara", accompanied by a rich ensemble of experienced Occitan musicians: two hurdy-gurdies (Alessio Carletto and Gioele Bernardi), as well as Roby Avena on accordion, Riccardo Serra on percussion, and the voice of Cristina Saltetto.
