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SANDA NECOLE BLUES
Lyrics and music by F. Piepoli
Vocals, saz baglama, synthesizers, sampler, percussions: F. Piepoli
Mixing: F. Piepoli
Mastering: Lorenzo “Moka” Tommasini

Year 2025   Label Zeronovenove

“Sanda Necole Blues” is the manifesto of a sound for which I coined the term “Tarabtella”, a contemporary electronic fusion of the soul-stirring Arabic musical tradition of tarab and the driving rhythm of Puglia’s tarantella, combining the microtonal melody of the electric saz and the melismatic style of singing, which aims to induce the ecstasy of “tarab”, the state of ecstatic emotion traditionally associated with Arabic music. 

A sound that is a hymn to the meeting of East and West, tradition and modernity, underscored by lyrics sung in the raw Bari dialect and, in moments, Arabic. 

The track opens with an invocation to the Saint, like a morning prayer from the top of a minaret overlooking the sea. It is a song of departure by a young migrant, filled with hope but also with pain and nostalgia for what he is forced to leave behind.  

The primordial “blues” with its driving beat, influenced by the Arab urban musical style, supports the melodic, microtonal, and pentatonic patterns, of the Turkish baglama saz, which is electrified and filtered through effects. The voice moves between the guttural and “percussive” sounds of the local dialect and the melismatic style, with references to the great voices of the Arabic tradition as well as to more contemporary Arab-pop singers.  

A suspended and dramatic scene opens up at the center of the track, where the arpeggios of the synthesizer create patterns that echo the waves of the sea, within which a desperate song emerges, unwilling to drown. The return of the beat in the final part, with the voice growing increasingly obstinate and raw, reinforces the protagonist’s will to live, the persistent hope that refuses to succumb to the fate of death.  

Despite the dramatic subject matter of the lyrics—“the hopeful journey of a young migrant”—throughout the track, the beat seems to irresistibly call for dance, the celebration of life, creative energy, and the pride of those who, though painfully far from their roots, feel the desire and the need to inhabit a new land, one that can embrace them and build a common future together.