Justin Adams & Mauro Durante

An intense, hypnotic meeting of southern Italian dance music and blues

Picture Salento, the heel of Italy’s boot, surrounded by the Mediterranean on three sides. Here, people have danced the pizzica for generations: a repetitive form of tarantella closely linked to tarantism, a possession ritual that survived well into the second half of the 20th century, in the heart of Catholic Europe. Music as medicine, dance as liberation. Mauro Durante grew up immersed in this music.

Then there is Justin Adams. He grew up in the Middle East, was shaped by punk and dub, produced Tinariwen and played with Robert Plant. While Mauro Durante carries Salento’s traditions in his body, Adams has immersed himself in the rhythms of North and West Africa and the raw blues recordings of the 1920s.

They met in 2011 at the La Notte della Taranta festival in Salento. Adams was a guest musician, Durante an assistant to Ludovico Einaudi. They played together before they had really spoken to each other. Ten years later, as the pandemic closed concert halls and grounded two travelling musicians in their respective hometowns, their collaboration became a duo. Their album Still Moving (2021) took its title from a song about migration, inspired by the Odyssey. At the same time, it meant something simpler: we are still alive, and we are still moving.

At first, Adams thought they would need to bring in a bassist or a drummer. Then they realised that two was enough. He thought of old Delta blues records and Greek recordings from the same era, where just one or two instruments could carry an entire world. It is not about playing as little as possible, but about making every sound count. As he puts it: “It doesn’t sound small. It doesn’t sound weak. It doesn’t sound impossible to dance to.”

Now they follow up with Sweet Release, recorded live, with room for improvisation and guests including Alessia Tondo, Yousra Mansour and CBGB legend Felice Rosser. Neither claims to have set out to build a bridge between pizzica, desert blues and punk. They play what they love and leave others to draw the connections. Adams, the older of the two, values the energy of a younger generation and warns against the idea that the past was a golden age. It is a trap his own generation can easily fall into, he believes. Their music takes shape in the moment, between musician and dancer, in a shared experience that lifts the spirits and gets bodies moving. As Adams sees it, this is precisely what music was originally for.

“Adams’ guitar burns like a torch in the night,” writes The Times. “Mauro’s voice channels the voices of his ancestors.”

Justin Adams & Mauro Durante perform at Cosmopolite on 9 April 2027. Expect something hypnotic and raw, made to move body and soul.