Imagine a village. Set it down between mountains and sea. Give it a
language, invent customs and traditions. Then tell its history, evoke legends, characters and memories through music and words.
This is the ideaat the core of Zenìa (pron.: Dzeh-NEE-ah) .
To pursue this vision, as musicians coming from the Italian folk/world music scene, we have untethered ourselves from the constraints of geography to present the original music of our imaginary village (whose name, Zenìa, incidentally echoes the Greek for "strange country, abroad").
The "traditional" songs of Zenìa are performed in their original (imaginary!) language, paired with a short narrative or evocative description offering a framework for the listener's free interpretation of each song's meaning.
What is gradually sketched out is an idea of community, suspended between fable and metaphor, translating into music that sounds familiar but escapes genre definition.
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Active since 2019, Zenìa has performed throughout Italy and been invited to various festivals including: Di voci e di suoni, Carsica Festival, Muntagninjazz, Kantun Winka, Stradarolo, Territori Musicali.
Zenìa's first cd-book “Suoni e storie di un paese immaginario ("Sounds and stories from an imaginary village”), released by Nota in December 2020, has been selected to run for the Città di Loano Award, was a finalist for the 2020's Mareaperto Award for creative folk music and was chosen as cover story of Ciro De Rosa's "Blogfoolk Magazine" n° 489 (February 2021).
Shu Vi
live at Carsica Festival
Laterza (Italy) 25/08/19
Livestream show
Release show for CD-book "Zenìa-Suoni e storie di un paese immaginario [Sounds and stories from an imaginary village]”
Abbey Rocchi Studios (Rome, Italy) 30/10/20
Technical rider
About us