Zafáran Album Release Show
When:
Friday, Apr 25, 2025 7:00p -
9:00p
Friday, Apr 25, 2025 7:00p -
9:00p
Where:
The Burren
247 Elm St
Somerville, MA 02144
Admission:
$20
Hosted by:
Categories:
Drinks, Food, Music, Nightlife
Event website:
https://tickets.24hourmusic.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=1564
Zafarán’s Debut Album Release Celebrates Mediterranean Traditions and a Borderless Musical Vision
Born of the philosophy that music knows no borders, Zafarán emerges as a vibrant force in the world music scene with the release of their self-titled debut album Zafarán (to be released 6/27/25). The international ensemble—formed in 2020 by musicians hailing from Italy, Sweden, and the USA—invites listeners on a sweeping journey through time and across cultures, celebrating the shared humanity found in Mediterranean musical traditions.
With driving rhythms, virtuosic improvisation, and masterful arrangements, Zafarán brings a contemporary sensibility to age-old folk stylings. The album weaves together Southern Italian chants, Sephardic love songs, Romani laments, and Turkish and Greek folk melodies into an intricate, emotionally rich tapestry.
At the heart of it all is the commanding and soulful voice of Carmen Marsico, the award-winning Italian vocalist from Basilicata, whose performances anchor the ensemble's boundary-breaking sound. Marsico is joined by longtime collaborator Björn Wennås—musical director of their previous band Newpoli—on classical guitar, mandola, and the 10-stringed chitarra battente. Rounding out the ensemble are Dan Meyers, contributing flutes, duduk, ocarina, ciaramella, and vocals, and Davide Roberto delivering dynamic and colorful percussion.
The group’s name, Zafarán, is steeped in symbolism. Derived from Arabic via old Persian, “zafarán” refers to saffron—the most precious of spices in the ancient world. In Carmen’s native Lucania (Basilicata), the word evolved to describe the prized sweet red peppers of the town of Senise. Just as the farmers of Lucania adapted an ancient word to describe a New World crop, Zafarán the band embraces and reinterprets traditional forms, crafting something uniquely global and timeless.
“When we started writing our own music and also doing arrangements of field recordings we got very interested in how songs traveled,” says Marsico. “We wanted to trace how different cultures influence the music as it moved from one society to another over time. When one group moves into another country, they will definitely start influencing the folk music of that country. And you end up with this musical amalgam of two cultures. This was really interesting to us and something we really wanted to explore on the album.”
Recorded in the historically multi-cultural hub of Rome during the summer of 2022, Zafarán is a celebration of the musical connections that bind us across geography and history. With each track, the ensemble puts a unique stamp in your passport to a borderless world, where sound and spirit transcend division.
This ethos is perhaps best illustrated by the album’s eighth track “Üsküdar/Mi Scuordu/Apo Xeno Topo,” a traditional song recorded in three parts, showing its evolution from its origins in Turkey and migrating through Sicily and Greece.
Reflects recorder player Dan Myers, “ ‘Üsküdar’ is one of the most popular folk songs in Turkey; everybody knows it. It originally came out of the Ottoman Empire from about the 18th century, and it's a really popular melody to the point where we have collected that melody set with texts in over 20 different languages from different countries around the Mediterranean. It's such a popular song around that area that other people adopted it. ‘Apo Xeno Topo’ is the Greek version of it, and the words are not the same at all, but the tune is the same. We wanted to put those together to show here's this Turkish piece and there were also Greek musicians who've been singing it for a very long time, albeit with different lyrics, but that tune really got around.”
Zafarán definitely view their own interpretations and arrangements of these songs as a continuation of that cross-cultural interplay across place and time. For example, “Naci en Alamo” is a popular Spanish song traditionally played in the flamenco style:
“I am a classical guitarist, however, I'm not a flamenco player so I'm not going to embarrass myself trying to record something flamenco,” jokes Björn Wennås. “We really started thinking ‘how can we make this our own?’ Because we don't want to copy something, we're not going to play it in a flamenco way. So I was like, ‘well, I'm going to take an instrument that is not my primary, the mandola, and just try to create something new, something original that doesn't have any kind of influence from anywhere.’ That gave us the framework of approaching this song in a completely different way because, all of a sudden, we were void of tradition and we had a blank slate. I feel like this is kind of how we approach a lot of the songs on this record.”
If you’re in the Boston area, you can join Zafarán for their official album release concert and experience firsthand the passionate voice, rhythmic fire, and cultural richness that defines their singular sound. ZAFARÁN will perform at The Burren on Friday, April 25, 2025 at 7:00pm. The Burren is located at 247 Elm St., Somerville, MA 02144. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 at door. ALL AGES. For advance tickets and information please visit www.burren.com or call (617) 776-6896.
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