Salvatore Meccio

Voice, “battente” guitars and classical guitar, drums and “tammorre”

 

Born in 1968 in Catania, in a migrant family from the province of Palermo in search of work. He spent part of his childhood in Germany and aspired since a very young age to be part of the world of creative arts. Back in Sicily, he completed his artistic studies specialising in painting and later in conservation and restoration of paintings on canvas and board at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence (current profession along with music).

Since the 80s, in Palermo, he immersed himself in a musical environment (the band Agricantus, the singer Rosa Balistreri, the storyteller C. Busacca, the poet I. Buttitta, … just to mention a few) from which he assimilated the basics of instrumental and vocal techniques so typical of the popular culture. In 1991, he began his career as a musician with a repertoire of popular songs and giving, for the cooperative Agricantus,  concert-lectures in schools on the history of southern Italy. This experience led to the creation of the band TAMMORRA with which he began a long-term production of his own songs. With the band Tammorra, he performed until 2007 at major world music festivals and realised two CDs: “Ballu Tunnu” and “ Sali”.

He played with “Antonio Infantino e i Tarantolati di Tricarico” (1994), with the music-theatre company “I Giullari dell’Allegra Brigata” for the show “Di Terre in Terre - i Canti dell’Anima” (2004 and 2005) for which he was the co-author of the music; he was a guest of the Banda Improvvisa in Loro Ciuffenna directed by Maestro Orio Odori. Together with guitarist Enzo Sutera, in the project “Non solo Folk” (2009), he pursued his work as a writer of music and lyrics in Sicilian dialect, the way he did it with the band Ballaro’ (2005). He has composed, along with other authors, music for the TV show “Sereno Variabile” and other programme for the RAI TV (2006 and 2007).

For the theatre, he participated as a musician-actor in the shows “Il Brigante Musolino” (2009 and 2010) and “I Vespri siciliani” (2010) with the Company Teatro-Arte Cuticchio, and in the show recently procuced “Le Labyrinthe du Bouc” with Nefissa Beninouche and Nadia Maklhouf, for the production of the festival  “La Cour des Contes” – Geneva (2011).

He collaborated with the brothers Giampiero and Arlo Bigazzi of the independent record label “Materiali Sonori” and produced two CDs: “A passu nicu –Live” (2007) and

“ Una rosa per Natale” (2006).

He lives now in Switzerland where he teaches courses in “tammorre” and tambourines at the “Ateliers d’Ethnomusicologie” in Geneva and gives concert-conferences on the instruments of southern Italy, in primary and secondary schools in the French part of Switzerland.

For years, he has successfully presented, in Italy and abroad, shows “Tra un Battiri e un Livari” with the band BandaKaleido, “Una Rosa per Natale” and  “Parlami d’amore – Sicilian songs about love” with the Ensemble Siculafolkexpress, and the show “Mirror Drums” in duet with Massimo Laguardia.

The lyrics of his songs express the irony and the poetry of the Sicilian language. They form, together with the musical instruments and the voice, the elements that develop Salvatore Meccio’s compositions in the different projects.