***Upupayāma is the musical persona of Alessio Ferrari, an Italian multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who lives in a small mountain village above the city of Parma. Upupayāma’s music is rooted strongly in Easternand Western folk traditions, an approach that Ferrari blends with his own modern sensibilities and style. In addition to playing guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums on the album, Ferrari himself also incorporates a number of other instruments into his sound, including sitar, erhu, transverse and wooden flutes, and avariety of percussion instruments. He is also responsible for all of the recording that went into the project. Ferrari is currently in the process of putting together a group of musicians that will help deliver his vision of Upupayāma to a live setting. Informed by the wonders of nature that surround him high in the Northern Apennine mountains, Ferrari’s songwriting possesses a mystical quality, one that reflects the fantastical and surreal, yet simple, elements of the natural world. His use of imagery is strong and is communicated vividly through his music. This isespecially clear in “The Blue Magician’s Fantasy” and “Hello Green Man, I am a Tiger,” both of which aresongs in which he sings with his own invented language. True to the sense of magical realism his songsevoke, Ferrari is quick to point out that even the concept of Upupayāma, which means mountain hoopoe, “is surreal because the hoopoe is not a mountain bird.” As he puts it, “I like the fact that a mountain hoopoe and an invented language...
LP $23.50
12/02/2022
***Upupayāma is the musical persona of Alessio Ferrari, an Italian multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who lives in a small mountain village above the city of Parma. Upupayāma’s music is rooted strongly in Eastern and Western folk traditions, an approach that Ferrari blends with his own modern sensibilities and style. In addition to playing guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums, Ferrari himself also incorporates a number of other instruments into his sound, including sitar, erhu, flute, and a variety of percussion instruments. For Ferrari, Upupayāma's 2020 debut was all about the journey. The album served a series of musical vignettes that visited and weaved its way through a succession magical settings. The Golden Pond, conversely, is all about location. Inspired by his frequent visits to a small lake near his mountain home, Ferrari intentionally focused on the details of the place he inhabited, a practice he decided would translate well with his approach to writing music. This is something Ferrari feels is best exemplified with the album's opening companion pieces, "Cuckoos from the House of Golden Tin" and "Entering the Time of Wilderness." The Golden Pond also continues Ferrari's practice of using "invented language" in his lyrics. Ferrari wants his voice to be heard as if it were an additional instrument, a tool that does not convey specific messages. His goal is to allow the listener to assign personal meaning to the music. He says, "I want my incorporating invented language is a way of breaking down the barriers that are sometimes created...
LP $23.50
12/02/2022