"A spontaneous party open to all" - Interview with Diego Calasso

The group Sondilá studies, mixes and disseminates musical cultures from different parts of the world, keeping the popular culture of Brazil at the center of its activities. Sondilá will be one of the protagonists of the LongLake Buskers Festival, which this year has samba as its theme. We talk about it with Diego Calasso, percussion and capoeira teacher who founded the group.

How did the group come about? What does the term "Sondilá" mean?
The group was born in Lugano at the time of the pandemic. At the time, I was part of a Latin music group; when our singer left for South America, I began teaching Brazilian rhythms to the other percussionists in the lineup. Over time, a repertoire of our own was formed, based on Brazilian culture and at the same time animated by the idea of doing world popular culture with percussion and voice. The name "Sondilá" is a play on words: sound from there, from another place, precisely to indicate our intention to mix more musical traditions.

The group's goal is to promote the culture of Brazil, especially music and dance. What kind of music will you bring to Buskers?
We will bring Brazilian street music, the kind that enlivens Brazil's many carnivals: music for dancing and partying. The genres are samba, maracatu, frevo, several other Brazilian rhythms; the songs we will bring mix things that already existed with my own compositions.

During Buskers you will also bring the Brazilian folk parade, the batucada, an experience full of energy. What will take place? What are the characteristics?
Brazil's is a cheerful, festive people. Our festivals happen in the street, they start spontaneously with those who are on the spot; slowly more people join in, lots of people - just think that in Brazil some batucada(bloco) groups have 1,000 players, and get to involve 10,000 people dancing and singing. Batucada also defines a way of learning to play percussion: a non-theoretical way, but only by ear. Batucada is open to everyone; everyone can participate and share. In a nutshell, it is our way of life, and thanks to Buskers we will bring it to the streets of Lugano.

Two workshops in which it will be possible to participate. What will you learn?
Considering that the theme of this year's Buskers is samba, we will offer workshops on how to play instruments and how to dance to this kind of music; also, there will be a workshop on capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, the only martial art with music. Samba and capoeira are two "sister" arts, both of Afro-Brazilian origin, because they originated during the time when many people were brought to Brazil as slaves from Africa-specifically, from Angola. Through the workshops we will therefore give a taste to those who are not familiar with these activities.

Apart from the Brazilian one, what are the other musical cultures being explored by the group?
Undoubtedly the African culture, but the Afro-Colombian one as well. Then, at this time, we are also playing songs from Italian popular culture; for example, we play "La bella la va al fosso", a song from the Lombard folk tradition, in a Brazilian style. We like not only to explore, but especially to mix popular cultures from all over the world.

The Sondilá group will perform at the LongLake Buskers Festival on 13, 16, 17.07 at the lakefront.

More information: longlake.ch and luganobuskers.ch