Fabrizio Cammarata

Fabrizio Cammarata grew artistically opening shows for Ben Harper, Patti Smith, Hindi Zahra, Iron & Wine, Villagers, Paper Kites, and over the years he has performed onstage with Damien Rice, Daniel Johnston, as well as Tamikrest.

He has toured Europe and North America since 2007 with his songs of love, longing, lights and shadows, inspired by the voices of Chavela Vargas, Leonard Cohen, Fabrizio De André, along with Federico García Lorca’s poetry and Wim Wenders's road movies. He shifts through multiple languages, staying true to his Mediterranean descent, evolving with the musical curiosity of a tireless traveller.

Since 2007 he’s released two albums with the band The Second Grace (“The Second Grace” and “Rooms”) and a soul album in collaboration with Paolo Fuschi (“Skint And Golden”). He started his solo career in 2016, with the EP “In Your Hands” and two critically acclaimed albums: “Of Shadows” (2017) and “Lights” (2019).

In 2017, together with singer-songwriter Dimartino, he released “Un Mondo Raro”, an album dedicated to the Mexican late singer Chavela Vargas. Since 2017 he’s been collaborating with producer Dani Castelar (Paolo Nutini). His brother Roberto Cammarata joined the artistic production team in 2023.

New single “Stripped To The Bone” out now

“My direction? To become an indie-folk Rosalía.” When Fabrizio Cammarata traces his artistic ambitions, the comparison may sound risky. And yet, when he speaks about how he’s been influenced by the most famous Catalan singer in the world, he does so by referring to Rosalía's ease in passing from one idiom to another, from tradition to modernity, from flamenco to James Blake.

Hints of flamenco already arrive in the first seconds of "Stripped To The Bone", the new single by Cammarata, out on April 21 on Kartel Music Group, which makes it clear that the "palmas" (complex patterns of hand claps typical of Andalusian music) will act as the supporting rhythmic structure from the beginning to the very end of the song.

Fabrizio produced "Stripped To The Bone" along with his brother Roberto Cammarata, producer and musician who in recent years has distinguished himself for his work with Italian band La Rappresentante di Lista. "Strangely, we had never worked together, although if I grew up with a guitar in my hand, I owe it to him in the first place”, says Fabrizio.

“Stripped To The Bone” is also Cammarata's first time without his favorite instrument: the sound that accompanies the whole song is that of a bouzouki (“I chose to pluck it in this nervous way, in line with the text, I wanted it to sound more like a North African oud").

However, it’s still the Mediterranean world, the only identity that Fabrizio recognizes as his own: “I feel no flag as mine; perhaps I even feel no language as completely mine, the only thing I feel I belong to is this huge salt lake full of history, love and pain.”

And like the pirates of the Mediterranean, those mysterious "Peoples of the Sea" from the Bronze Age, Cammarata boldly takes possession of the languages with which he grew up: “English is the language of my childhood, that of the music I was first exposed to. Italian is the language of when I discovered poetry. Spanish is - simply - the language of "La Llorona", the song that feels most personal to me, even if I didn't write it. No one knows who wrote it, its author is lost in the mists of time, like the discoverer of fire, but "La Llorona" is about me, it's 100% mine."

When we talk about "La Llorona" our thoughts go to Mexican late singer Chavela Vargas, who made it famous and to whom Cammarata, together with his friend Dimartino dedicated the album "Un Mondo Raro" in 2017. “During COVID, it was Chavela who saved me again. It was her, together with my psychotherapist… I discovered that, deep down, their job is the same.”

 

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