More than ten years have passed since “Chrysalide”, the most recent studio album to date from the Milan-based band RosaRubea. During this time, Daniela Bedeski—the project’s founder and vocalist, who is also active as a teacher and astrologer—has transformed the group into an open, experimental collective that blends sound, language, and spiritual quest in a unique way. Now, RosaRubea returns with “Biancanæve”—an album that translates mythology, collective grief, and the quest for renewal into musical imagery, enriched by new instruments such as the oud, saxophone, and accordion. Our recent interview covers this release, as well as numerous other past and present collaborations and much more.
U. You’ve rarely been interviewed in German-speaking countries until now: would you like to tell us how your journey into music, and specifically into singing, began? Was there a particular moment or phase in your life when you realized that music was more than just an interest for you?
D. Music has always been part of my life: as a little child I remember my world was made of sounds; through the sounds I entered into a relationship with everything around me, sounds that were music, words, syllables, tones. From the record player or the cassette player came out the voices of some Italian singers, Adriano Celentano, Nada, Patti Pravo, Ornella Vanoni, Milva, Dalidà, Caterina Caselli, Mia Martini: their voices bewitched me; I wouldn’t miss an episode of “Canzonissima”, Italian singing contest of the time. Through the sounds the world would change and so would I: it made sense. I started to perform very soon, overcoming my shyness: at the age of six, in a summer colony, I was put on the microphone on stage, in front of one thousand children. When I was a child, I used to record everything, songs I would sing, dialogues I would recite, playing various roles, sound of nature. At school I would set up performances with dance, songs, choreographies. As an adolescent I had other flashes of inspiration: Patti Smith got into my blood. Music has always called me: let’s call it DAIMON.
Q. You also teach languages. How does your relationship with languages influence your work as a singer-songwriter?
D. I have always been fascinated by foreign languages as well as by music: when I was a child I would also learn languages very easily; it was just normal for me to speak either English or Italian, I would simply repeat what I heard; the sound of foreign languages has always captured me. A language is a world, the bridge between one world to another; when I compose, generally words and music are created together, as a whole, so, according to what I feel I want to communicate, a song is created in a language – English, Italian, French, sometimes German – that to me resonates with its music. Sometimes I decide to do a cover in its original language, and in this case it might also be a song whose lyrics are in a language I do not know well but that I can pronounce anyway.
U. How did your main musical project, RosaRubea, come about, and what was the artistic idea behind it?
D. RosaRubea started out in its initial nucleus as a duo, with Pino Carafa, electronic music composer, and myself, in around 2008 when, in the month of September of a sabbatical year, I went to the seaside in Liguria with some music by Pino, to which I started adding melody and lyrics, in French first of all; other lyrics, in English, were taken from poems by beloved authors like TS Eliot, whom we owe the title of our debut album, “The Fire and the Rose”, taken from a verse of one of his poems (“Little Gidding”); still other lyrics are poems of mine in Italian, set to music. That was a time in my life when, already active for long years as a singer with Camerata Mediolanense and other ensembles, I felt a deep creative urge, certainly also due to painful losses in my life, therefore RosaRubea project was born very spontaneously. It was a matter of the will to give shape and voice to a desire of communion with the world reaching the very heart of the transformative process of birth-death-rebirth of being.
U. The name RosaRubea clearly alludes to alchemical symbolism. What does it mean to you? These themes also played a significant role in some songs on your debut album, “De L’Amor Sospeso E De L’Amor Rubeo.”
D. Transformation is a leitmotif in my life; indeed it is a constant in everybody’s life, only most of the people do not really notice it, they do not think about it or live their existence in a more stagnant and superficial way or are contented with letting themselves be passed through without really inhabiting it, if not at intervals. RosaRubea is the alchemical Rubedo, that is the phase preceding the transformation of base metal into gold: therefore it refers to a fundamental moment in the matter transformation process which, in alchemy, goes with the spiritual transformation process – as matter and spirit are by no means disjoint – towards a living, pulsating core; in fact reaching alchemic Gold at the end of a delicate, skillful transformation process for the alchemist means getting the elixir of life, which is perhaps the awareness of being one with the cosmos, in transformation, towards higher spheres. “De l’Amor suspend e de l’Amor rubeo”, though, is not RosaRubea’s debut album but a collection of poems by myself set to music in collaboration with Cropcircle and illustrated by the late painter Massimo Bertocchi and the digital artist Valentina Mangieri; of course here also the theme of metamorphosis with its process of birth-death-rebirth is of fundamental importance.
U. You’re currently working on a new album called “Biancanæve,” which will be released later this year, eleven years after your album “Chrysalide.” How will the new work differ from your previous one, and how does it relate to elements you’re familiar with? Has your artistic perspective changed significantly since then?
D. I do not think that the artistic perspective has changed, basically, the expressive urge is the same, with the desire to communicate and share and the underlying idea that making art transforms both the artist and the user. It is true, though, that some time has passed since “Chrysalide”, and so I have, we all have made both individual and collective experiences that have left their mark on us, and I believe this will be evident in our new album. “Biancanæve” has tasted the poisoned apple, in this more than ever sick time; the witch is a headless hydra that reaps blood, the body cries everywhere, the veil protects, just like the Chrysalis cocoon, and announces a rebirth. Compared to our previous work, in this one lyrics and music are in search of themselves, in fact singing and spoken word here often blend or alternate since, as I sing in one of our tracks, “The reason fails, I think that music cannot tell the hell we’re going through”. New languages appear in “Biancanæve”, in search of an encounter with a new music. Here the collective dimension has widened: from the “Chrysalide” the butterfly has given birth to itself and is looking for a larger, deeper, higher perspective.
U. You mentioned the role of new instruments like the oud, saxophone, and accordion, and you also mentioned new vocal registers. How have these elements changed RosaRubea’s sound?
D. In “Biancanæve” in general there is a more significant presence of electronics – by the excellent Yann Turrini – than in “Chrysalide”, which the instruments you mention are integrated with or alternate as if in counterpoint, like calls to an arcane backdrop to be woven anew, a mosaic to be reassembled, made up of different cultural and stylistic identities that do not stand in opposition to each other but become part of a collective choral composition, marked at times by moments of more intimate lyricism; in this case, for example, the piano plays an important role: for a couple of years now I have resumed my piano studies, so I have often accompanied myself on the piano and some songs, that in the present album I have chosen to play myself, were just born from some poems of mine which I would later set to music. Compared to “Chrysalide”, here there is more sound research I would say, sometimes towards an unprecedented dryness, some others towards the instrumental and vocal intertwining.
U. What personal and collective themes will we encounter in the album?
D. I’d rather not reveal too much about the themes of the forthcoming album, surely I can say that a circular path emerged naturally, from the individual to the collective then again to the individual; they are both strongly linked, though, as I think it will be perceived. Voices from the ancient and the more recent past weave through the album. I dare say that “Biancanæve” is a timeless album born of our times.
U. Your music on “Chrysalide” spanned a wide range of genres, somewhere between chamber music, psychedelia, and chanson. Was this stylistic openness intentional from the beginning, or did it develop more organically? I suspect some of it can still be heard today, perhaps even more so.
D. When you create you do not intentionally follow a path, you are simply called to spin a web that mysteriously generates as you generate yourself together with it: openness is the signature style of RosaRubea and this will probably be even more evident in our forthcoming album.
Q. Would you describe RosaRubea as a stable band with a defined lineup, or more of an open-ended project with changing collaborators? Which musicians are involved in the recordings this time around?
D. Over time RosaRubea has revealed itself what I like to call an “experimental electro-acoustic music collective”, so certainly an open project, whose core, though, for years now has been made by a few permanent musicians: besides me, of course, the founder of the ensemble, Yann Turrini, with an important role as an arranger, at the electronics, Ermanno Fabbri, talented and really sensitive guitarist playing also the oud in the forthcoming album, and Zeno Gabaglio, the magician of the acoustic and electric cello, with whom we have always been resonating for a similar attitude towards experimentation. Besides, in “Biancanæve” we have hosted the extraordinary drummer and percussionist Fabrizio Carriero, the immense accordionist Nadio Marenco, the versatile saxophonist Azzurra Buccoliero in art Nebüla, also backing vocals in one track, the imaginative musician and songwriter Pier Adduce, here playing the slide guitar and the harmonica; in the album, then, alternating with me at the piano, played the collaborative and caring Federico Martinoni, who joined the ensemble one year ago. One major musician may join us in the collaboration, but we still cannot say for sure.
I also want to mention the graphic designers, artists and photographers collaborating or that have collaborated with us, since RosaRubea is a multimedia project: The cover and the watercolors in “The Fire and the Rose” are by the late painter Massimo Bertocchi, the extraordinary pictures in “Chrysalide” are by Luca Baldi while the whole graphic design for “Biancanæve” is by the excellent Anna Taschini.
U. In addition to RosaRubea, you also run a project with accordionist Nadio Marenco, focusing on European folk music, especially from the early 20th century. Is this project still active? And what attracts you to these reinterpretations?
D. Yes, the project is still active, we are also thinking of releasing an album together, with the collaboration of other talented musicians. Nadio and I met for the first time while sharing the stage a couple of times during a show with Moni Ovadia on David Maria Turoldo when, besides joining the Ensemble Vocale In… Canto as a chorister, I sang “Lili Marleen” as a soloist with Nadio Marenco and Maurizio Dehò (late violinist); we interpreted it without even rehearsing it: I realized at once there was an extraordinary connection, thanks also to Nadio Marenco’s formidable musical sensitivity and incredible talent. I could finally foresee the possibility of proposing him to set up the long time cherished repertoire that I defined of Berliner Kabarett, since it mainly draws from the compositions by Friedrich Hollænder, Kurt Weill, Hans Eisler of the First Post-War period first of all and then until the Second World War and even a little further; thus we added a few songs by Italian and Russian composers. We were basically interested in proposing again the taste of a time, that of the Weimar Republik, marked by an incredible artistic fertility and political and social liveliness, with its irreverent playful irony and its scathing satire but also its tragic and subtly melancholy vein; I am thinking here of “Der Blaue Engel” masterfully interpreted by Marlene Dietrich in her role as the sensual and ruthless Lola Lola. Times have changed, the beggars of “The Beggar’s Opera” are no longer the same, but basically the modes of behavior haven’t changed and modern humanity, in the era of globalisation, is living a thorough collective horror, under constant dictatorial menace; therefore I find Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Hans Eisler very relevant.
U. In this project you also perform the song “O Gorizia tu sei maledetta,” which conveys a very touching and desolate perspective on war and the fate of ordinary soldiers. Can you tell us something about the story behind this piece and what it means to you personally? The theme, from what I understand, seems timely again, and when has it not been?
D. “Gorizia” is a touching anonymous song of the First World War. It was born spontaneously among the Italian troops during the bloody Sixth Battle of the Isonzo for the taking of Gorizia where, in August 1916, tens of thousands of Italian and Austrian soldiers died; it tells the harsh reality of the front, in contrast with the regime rhetoric of the time. Its lyrics fiercely attack the military commanders and the conformist bourgeoisie that supported the conflict, defining war a useless bloodshed (here in Italian “sold meat”). It is said that those who were found guilty of singing it during the war were accused of defeatism and could be instantly killed. “Gorizia” has been censored for long for its subversive and pacifist nature. Over time it has been proposed again and recorded by famous Italian singers of Italian folk music, among whom Giovanna Marini, Lucilla Galeazzi and Rosa Balistreri.
I am particularly fond of this song, as of other antiwar and protest songs in general: I used to listen to them for the first time thanks to my father, a free spirit with a passion for history, and they immediately touched me for their pathos. Both my father and my mother’s family suffered heavy losses during the Second World War.
U. You were the lead singer of the Camerata Mediolanense for many years. How did that experience shape you as an artist? And has your approach to music changed since you’ve more determinedly pursued your artistic vision with RosaRubea?
D. Camerata Mediolanense has played an important part in my life, my collaboration with them lasted nearly twenty years; it has certainly been a thorough experience, that involved us both as artists and friends sharing moments of great creative intensity, funny or tragic episodes of our youth; with some of them we had known each other since we were university students, we shared the same tastes, interests, elective affinities, journeys to London, all the “gothic” and underground universe, percussive and singing experimenting: the path followed together has marked a long period of my life, also of our life in Milan, our native town, a Milan that has decidedly changed its face nowadays. As an artist all this has passed through me; during the years with them I think I have very spontaneously interpreted vocally, physically, scenically the power and the intensity of their music. Elena is a very talented and sensitive composer; interpreting her music, either singing Petrarca’s or Dante’s or Torquato Tasso’s verses, has always challenged me, I put myself on the line vocally as a soprano but also as a contralto, I found my voice, I played with it, getting into those notes, those words. I became familiar with the stage, that was not unfamiliar to me, though, but where with the Camerata, touring Europe, especially Germany, I found each time my multiple voices, as the audience gave me back its energy, its appreciation.
With RosaRubea, which is my own project, for fifteen years now, though with the long break since our last record, “Chrysalide”, of 2015, I have also compared with the compositional aspect, besides the vocal aspect and the scenic appearance: that has meant going deeply into my soul, into the experiences that have marked my life, sometimes trying to find a pacification to grieves or losses that would thus find a wider symbolic representation and, at the same time, delving deeply into the expression of the search for a meaning that, as I was saying, today is becoming wider, collective. Compared with Camerata Mediolanense, I think RosaRubea is more oriented towards an innovative versatility and experimentation, which constitutes a natural challenge to look around and question ourselves, also in music.
U. You’ve studied astrology very intensively and systematically in recent years and now officially work as an astrologer. What prompted you to transition from a personal interest to professional practice? And what fascinates you most about astrological consultations?
D. The passion for astrology has accompanied me since adolescence; more recent is its systematic study to further deepen its knowledge with the consequent decision of attending the Italian accredited school CIDA (Italian Center Of Astrology), where I got my Diploma in Astrology, thus also a professional qualification.
I have always felt a connection with the “whole”, that astrology, a very ancient knowledge, well expresses in its multiple facets and links with other forms of knowledge, deeply connecting human beings and cosmos: I think astrological analysis is a precious means of knowledge of the self, respecting life as a whole. A profession, to be aligned with one’s own aspirations, sensitivity and way of thinking, has to make sense; to me, astrology, in its professional dimension, is especially helpful since, thanks to its symbolic language, it opens new paths to the understanding of the self in the relationship with the other, which is what fascinates me of astrological consultations: the rise of possible new geometries of existence, thanks to the analysis of time, space, the quality of the energy at play.
U. You are a musician, poet, and astrologer at the same time: are these separate forms of expression for you or parts of a shared artistic-spiritual process?
D. They are forms of expression each with its own specific features and yet sharing the desire of giving a new shape to being, creating connections: through music, poetry and also astrology, we no longer exist only as single individuals but rather live in synergy not only with other human beings but also with other forms of existence; music is number, it is numerical relationship translated into sound perceived by our sensitivity, in astrology the space-time relationship, here also essentially numerical, is fundamental, the poetical word has much in common with music and with astrology it shares the use of symbol. All these arts, these forms of expression, to me are an opportunity for spiritual investigation, in a completely open sense.
Interview: U.S.
Photos: Anna Lucylle Taschini