Rodrigo D'Erasmo and his violin

The first edition of the "Open Sound Festival" was a real musical experiment, a unique mix of street-carnival, folk festival, rave, art performances and contemporary music, where very ancient instruments met electronic music and sound systems, cowbells, electric guitars, bagpipes, cupa-cupas, subwoofers, screams and polyphonic songs.
Through artistic residencies set up between 2018 and 2019 in Basilicata, the Israeli artist Yuval Avital, guest director of the Festival, accompanied by the Lucanian ethnomusicologist Nicola Scaldaferri, discovered the various sounds of the traditional local scene and sampled them creating a real music archive.
This project brought to life two souls of the Festival, namely #OSA, the international call for producers from all over the world, and #URLA (Yell), Avital's manifesto, a parade of Lucanian traditional masks and musicians that closed the festival.
From April 9 to June 26, 2019 it was possible to participate in O.S.A. (Open Sound Academy) by providing a free archive composed of sounds generated by self-made instruments, non-proprietary, choral, collective invited artists from around the world to recode an ancient musical heritage in electronic key, to create new sound visions, looking for a nu-Lucan sound yet to be invented. The two selected artists, Alèfe and Dadematto, were able to participate in meetings and workshops organized by O.S.A. (Open Sound Academy) in close contact with Italian and international producers and were able to perform on the main stage of the festival at Cava del Sole, where in the evenings of August 30 and 31 – international partners and local artists aroused the public, offering a never-before-seen show and demonstrating how music is a common good and has its roots in collective production.