Shamal is a blowing wind. Like a blowing wind Shamal mingles the humors and combines the sounds of lands far apart. Like a blowing wind Shamal sows the seeds of world music throughout the earth.

 

...Enzo Rao and SHAMAL, are trying to collect evidence of contacts between various stylistic expressions and forms of the atavic and traditional heritage of the Mediterranean basin. Their field of vision could not be better oriented, focused as it is on Sicily which, throughout its laborious history suffered so many invasions, dominations and cultural impositions, since it is at the cross-roads of so many influences, confluences, trade and exchanges of all sorts and the object of so many barters. Touched by so many influences, Arab-Islamic and African, Spanish and French, Middle Eastern and Balkan, Enzo Rao spent a number of years trying to absorb and assimilate the typical music of all these different cultures, introducing in his own compositions a magic element of mystery and bewitching strong sounds. Oasis and nomads, minstrels and story tellers, musicians and griots, shamans and magicians, poets and healers, ethnic and fusion come to the mind of the listener charmed by the variety of melodic tonalities and moods recreated by subtle acoustical intertwining and the electronic manipulations of Enzo Rao-Shamal. ...Shamal does not emulate sic et simpliciter other sounds, picking up, sampling and putting together tonalities, tunes riff here and there well absorbed. Rather, he tends to coin and fuse in a polyhedral and polymorphous language the different emotional, composing and structural elements of the "Global Sound Village" into an original project of "Popular Music" with a Mediterranean taste, salty and sweet at the same time.
Patrizio Visco ("World Music" March-April '92)

 

 

About Shamal:

The musical pieces by Shamal are like large sunny terraces projecting over the blue sea, where coming forward is a must, if the strenght which pushes in towards the heart of Europe is as the love for the emotive and cultural roots. (A.De Palma - New Age)

A well done product for a very interesting projet. (A.Santirocco - Fare Musica )

The Shamal group: the italian expression of the world music. (Guido festinese - Il Lavoro di Genova)

RAO's violin playng is a significant new voice on a scene that has been dominated by tepid fusion. (John Baxter- Option Magazine Los Angeles)

Shamal has focussed the point where the popular music of Sicily meets togheter with the arabic and funk one, and Enzo Rao's violin doesn't seem to have any orientation problems to procede at the some time in these lands. (Marco Boccitto -Music)

Acqua di mare (2¡ CD of the group) is on the same level if not superior of the main world productions in this field. (Tonino Merolli - Velvet)

Shamal music is a refined melange of jazz and folk, able to draw off with pleasure and intelligence from the various mediterranean cultures. A delicious alternation of bucolic emotions and funky rithm of refined lightness. (Gigi Razete- L'Ora di Palermo)
The show based on the original compositions by Enzo Rao is inspired by the music cultures of the mediterranean countries and in particular of Sicily. The musicians employing several ethnic instruments, mix them to the sounds of the contemporary music culture instruments and express their creativity "painting" particulary suggestive and attractive sound landscapes.