WUM are Massimo D'Avanzo, multi-instrumentalist, author and producer, Carmen Famiglietti, dance and vocals and Francesco Paolo Manna, percussion.
The project was born from research on traditional Mediterranean dances and music, it develops as an original path nourished by traditional languages but increasingly aimed at free expression and direct communication. Songs in that Neapolitan/Italian learned from Pino Daniele that want to escape from the self-celebration of an easy and caricatural Neapolitanity to rediscover the depth, melancholy and rejection of banality that can accompany even the most pressing rhythms and the most captivating melodies. WUM's music uses traditional styles and instruments in a contemporary language, using electronic instruments, groove and sounds of the global musical language.
“Nun me chiamme Rosa” is a song inspired by the stylistic features of the traditional tammurriata from Campania and recalls, by reversing its meaning, the most famous verse used by traditional singers: “Bella figliola ca te chiamme Rosa”. A song of rebellion and rejection of the oppression of commonplaces and the subtle daily violence of an increasingly alienated and empty lifestyle.
In the video clip of “Nun me chiamme Rosa” a dark and baroque Naples is described, in which they want to tell a Neapolitanness that is not always the festive and cheerful one of the clichés. Under this colorful patina hides the subtle pain of living, a disintegrated identity incapable of representing itself if not through embittered masks. The WUM, like pale ghosts, wander among the symbols of this culture now reduced to souvenirs on tourist stalls as if on a meaningless carousel.
Ossidiana is the name of the new work by WUM, coming out soon and of which “Nun me chiamme Rosa” is a preview. This new collection of unreleased songs is born from this “chaotic disposition”, a metaphor both of Vesuvius and of our times in general. It is a new stage of the WUM project. It is an invitation to the journey of the mind and emotions through an eclectic repertoire that combines acoustic and electronic sounds, Neapolitan song and ethnic music, meditative moments and explosions of energy.
