Emanuele Triglia - Musical synergies among the cliffs of the South

Emanuele Triglia, bassist and producer, already honored with a David di Donatello for Best Original Song, releases his latest work, “Moon Kin”, on Rivamare Records. The album, written on a cliff in the South of Italy and produced in Rome, the result of a collective synergy among the musicians, shows how musical language has the power to unite people in a non-verbal, universal dialogue, giving new breath to contemporary music.

The sounds of the album project the listener into a visual and emotional universe – can you tell us where it was born and how that shaped the atmosphere you feel while listening?

It came about quite by chance. Last summer I spent some time in Calabria, the land where I was born but haven't lived in for years, and I had the chance to write. Once back in Rome, I got together with the band I've played with for years – Davide Savarese, Francesco Fratini and the others – and we decided to meet up in a friend's recording studio. The idea was to spend time playing together and see what would happen, in complete freedom. Starting from the ideas I had, almost improvising, we began playing and a huge number of songs came out of it, and we selected the ones that made the album from among them. The most important concept for me is definitely synchronicity, because whenever we play together, it's always happened that we land on the same phrase, rhythmically or harmonically, without ever discussing it. I'm convinced it's not chance, and this idea has even been theorized in the concept of Jungian synchronicity: people who are far apart, who don't even know each other, making the same choices and feeling the same things, as if there were some secret connection – and that's always fascinated me.

And that's where the album's title comes from…

“Moon Kin” means lunar kinsfolk. Since the Moon exerts a tangible influence on the sea, and we're made of water, I imagined that when something like that happens, maybe we too are influenced by a particular lunar phase.

The chemistry between the musicians is tangible listening to the tracks, to the point that they almost feel like improvised pieces — was that a deliberate choice?

It was. The idea was: "I've written this music, let's see what it can become," with no rules or conventions. On an album like this, I wanted to move away from the conventions of the classic song format and traditional production. The album started out as a live project, like a journey where we talk and communicate from beginning to end, without pauses. Besides, we don't see each other often, but when we do, these things happen. It's been happening for years, and now I finally wanted to put it into a coherent form, bringing in not just the longtime band but other musicians too. Since we had no deadline, we had a lot of freedom to work with friends who'd drop by, contribute, and record, and that's how a kind of musicians' collective came together. It's a scene that's actually existed for years, but only now have we managed to merge it into a single project.

It seems to me there's more attention on this genre right now — what do you think about that?

Actually, this has always existed, especially in Italy, in various forms for a very long time. In America it's already become a genre that's fashionable, tied to fashion itself (see Anderson Paak and those producers), and now, as with everything, it's arriving in Italy 10 years later. When I got to Rome 10 years ago, it was already full of musicians playing this kind of music. Now there's definitely more attention on this type of instrumental music, and I hope it stays that way, because it's not a passing phenomenon — it's always existed. It's a genre that's always belonged to us and that over time we lost for various reasons.

You've also worked producing music for film — do you think that experience influenced the production of this record? The imagery it evokes is of windswept coastal landscapes...

I'm really glad to hear that, because those were the landscapes in front of me when I wrote this music. Lately I've noticed, both in myself and in the other musicians in the band, a return to essentials. Whereas before I looked more abroad, now I'm trying to blend where I come from with what I've become over the years, including through the use of Mediterranean melodies mixed with modern jazz. Everything I do certainly makes me grow and shapes what I become. There was a lot of experimentation and exploration in the work with Joan Thiele, which probably influenced the production.

Going back to the album, the track "Pacì" was born on the cliffs. Where does the lyric come from?

The track is deeply tied to the sea and was written in Pacì, a cliff overlooking the sea in Calabria. I thought of calling in Davide Ambrogio, a multi-instrumentalist with a unique talent who explores ancient stories of lost traditions and legends. Since he's also Calabrian, he wanted to write something connected to the sea — we wanted to express what it means to us. The lines that say ⟦Q1⟧ he developed from an old text of Calabrian fishermen. We wanted to recreate and evoke the sounds of the piece; even the shouts at the end are there to recreate the calls fishermen use to communicate and connect with the sea.

The track "Pantera", on the other hand, has a completely different character...

It came about on the last day in the studio, with... another drummer, a close friend of mine — we were in the room for the last session, about to pack up, and we decided to let off some steam after a summer of touring and madness, just to see what would come out, with no plan and no rehearsal. What came out of it really struck us.

Your instrument is the bass, but on this album the flute stands out — a distinctive instrument that now has a new resonance. What do you think that's due to?

I'm originally a bassist. During the pandemic, when we all had a lot of free time, I found myself thrown off by the sheer abundance of time. I started watching videos by Shabaka Hutchings, the English saxophonist who began posting these videos of raw bamboo flutes, ancestral instruments. It pointed to sounds I like, that feel close to me. So I started looking into it, but I couldn't find anything, because these instruments aren't easy to come by, until I got in touch with a Portuguese craftsman who made them and started studying it. Over the years I got more and more into it, and I started building them myself. I think the trend really exploded when Andre 3000 released an album made entirely of flutes. It was an unexpected and very cool move on his part. A bold choice, but a beautiful one, even if I think it still counts as a trend. Mine was more of a coincidence, and after years of studying the flute I decided to throw it into the record: in the end, some really beautiful sounds came out of it. It was a great change, and I'm happy about it.

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