Morenica + Diámelo

Morenica

To mark the release of their new album, Morenica are reworking traditional tunes in French and Occitan, transforming them into what they call ‘Oc’ Psyché’. The polyphonic vocals of this magical four-headed beast blend the oral tradition of popular culture with psychedelic textures. It whisks us away to surreal realms to tell stories of everyday life that are greater than they appear. Cathar legends, women who work and dream, anti-militarist love stories, hidden treasures, allegories…

Here we hear the organic warmth of the Moog synthesiser, the texture of cosmic melodies and guitar chords, and a vibrant clarinet whose cries echo as if from a metal abyss. Morenica awakens the spirit of its ancestors to deliver hypnotic and festive music.

Diámelo

Diámelo (‘Tell me’ in Vivarois Occitan) is a vocal quintet accompanied by percussion that draws on the repertoire of the Occitan oral tradition to reinvent it through raw yet sensitive polyphonic arrangements. Their compositions and arrangements are based on melodies and texts gathered from across the Occitan cultural sphere and draw inspiration from the music of the Mediterranean basin.

But this repertoire is merely a starting point, a gateway to exploring, interpreting and developing, within inventive musical structures, a form of music that engages the body above all else. For music from the oral tradition is rooted in the need to ritualise everyday life, to accompany the body in motion and social events. It consists of constantly evolving narratives – reimagined and reinvented – from marginalised cultures, bearing witness to our multiple identities.