Rock Rising in Bari: Young Art Festival Brings Local Power to Capurso

Four of southern Italy’s most electrifying young bands will take the stage in Capurso this September, carrying Bari’s growing rock and metal scene into the spotlight.

The southern Italian city of Bari may be small in size, but it is loud in spirit. Over the past decade, it has nurtured a thriving community of musicians, producers, and artists experimenting across alt-metal, grunge, post-punk, hip-hop, and beyond. That energy will take center stage on September 5th at the Young Art Festival in Capurso, a historic town just outside Bari with roots tracing back to the 11th century. Known for its rich folk and religious music traditions, Capurso will host a night dedicated to the next generation of rock.

The concert begins at 18:00 in Piazza Gramsci, where four rising bands will showcase the cutting edge of Bari’s alternative sound.

A BIT ABOUT THE BANDS

THE RED FLAGS

The Red Flags are an agglomerate of 5 radically different musical minds that fuse experimental rock, post-punk, progressive metal & jazz into a colorful tapestry of sound that turns their shows into a multi-faceted sound exploration that fluidly switches between synthesizer infused shoegaze requiems and unholy matrimonies of heavy metal & jazz that work shockingly well.

Their track “Ex Machina” is a hair-raising post-rock electronica coded manifesto dealing with technological paranoia.

TRAPOVARO

Trapovaro is one of the rawest and loudest grunge/alt-metal bands active in Bari. With their hearts worn on their sleeves and guitars snarling like angry dogs, these 6 young talents bring their dedicated cultlike fanbase to an electrifying Guernica of grunge & punishing tones bound to shake your senses even more than your eardrums.

Their track “Graffiti”, an alternative grunge requiem dedicated to a close friend, recently released everywhere and their next single “Just Another Bird” drops on September 5th.

SMOLDER

Proudly and unapologetically bearing their dirty Seattle sound like trophies of war, Smolder pack a heavy punch when it comes to delivering an authentic grunge smorgasbord of powerful melancholy. Their two vocalists are much like two creatures in an unbreakable musical symbiosis and perfectly match the fury of two guitars, an inhuman drummer and a beast of a bassist.

INNERVEO

Lastly, Innerveo are an upcoming band also hailing from Bari with a unique brand of forlorn and chorus-drenched post-punk.

They masterfully grace the stage with a great chemistry and an almost psychedelic take on the genre, bringing out all the minutia of it’s more laid-back facets while remaining true to its unforgettable punk origins deeply rooted in the works of legends like the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys.

A BIT ABOUT CAPURSO'S MUSIC SCENE

Capurso is a small town just outside of Bari quite an interesting musical heritage: like many towns in Puglia, it has a strong tradition of “bande da giro”, large town bands that perform during religious festivals or public celebrations. Their repertoire ranges from classical composers to popular marches that date back to medieval times, and they’re an important key part to capturing the town’s musical identity.

The most famous event in Capurso is the Sagra Della Madonna del Pozzo (held around late August), drawing in pilgrims from across all of southern Italy and serving as an important gathering point for many beloved musicians. Music is central to the celebration, and it features: brass bands, choirs, folk bands (like the legendary group “Folkabbestia”), marching bands and more.

The city also has an active and tightly knit community of church choirs and folk ensembles that preserve many of the rich southern Italian musical traditions dating back hundreds of years.

These traditions include dances like the “pizzica”, a variant of the well-known “tarantella”, or religious folk chants invoking saints for protection and blessings. These chants and dances are incredibly important cultural pillars that bring together the often-fragmented southern Italian community into a place of peace and brotherhood.

Due to it’s proximity to Bari, often musicians from Capurso come to the capital of the Apulian region to walk the stages of important theatres like the Teatro Petruzzelli or gritty underground venues like the Nevermind Club.

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