Roots Revival (project)
| Roots Revival | |
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| Background information | |
| Genres | Music and Cultural Project |
| Years active | Since 2013 |
| Website | http://roots-revival.com/ |
Roots Revival is an international cultural project which reunites professional musicians from different countries in an effort to connect the musical styles, traditions and instruments that are specific to each geographical area they come from, thus creating a bridge between cultures using authentic music. The concept founded by Mehdi Aminian.
The concept started in 2013 at the initiative of Mehdi Aminian, a traditional music researcher who spent most of his adolescence travelling to different continents and studying numerous traditional cultures such as Persian, Balkan, South East Asian, Middle Eastern, Indian and Romanian.
His first contact with Romania was during his performances in various festivals and soon after his first trip to Maramures, he found Romania very inspiring to put all his traveling and research experience into a concept later developed as Roots Revival. After intensive research collecting information about performing artists all around the world, he invited seven professional musicians from seven different countries, in order to put together a performance in seven days. With a close collaboration with Peter Hurley a traditional culture researcher known as Irish man from Romania, the musicians explored the surroundings of Maramures and spent time with local artists getting to know the Romanian rural environment way of life, customs and beliefs. They transposed this experience into music and seven days later they shared their local inspired music with the North-Romanian people in a concert held at the Merry Cemetery in Săpânța. Later on, they brought the project to Bucharest, performing the Maramures experience in Radio Hall gaining popularity in the Romanian cultural scene. The recording of the concert lead to the release of their first live album called Chapter One: Maramures. The focus on this album was on traditional instruments such as ney, oud, duduk, kaval, bodhran, darbouka, and tulnic. The album was highly appreciated by critics especially in the Romanian cultural scene.
The second project called Colors of Maria was inspired by Maria Tanase and it is said to “reignite her spirit in new colors, a fusion of old and new, artistic emotion and virtuosity”. This was an occasion for new collaborations, thus, new names appear on this project’s line up. This chapter was the start of collaboration with Walid Abboud, a prominent business man and a music admirer. His supports and assigning his company as the official sponsor of Roots Revival was the start of series of events. Colors of Maria debuted in February 2014 with a concert held in the Romanian Athenaeum. Similar to the previous album, the second album, Chapter Two: Maria Tanase, was recorded live in the concert held in Radio Hall on March 1, 2014, and gain even more popularity, having critics describing it as “a unique melange of cultures, interpretations and original compositions”.
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