Agricantus

Agricantus's name is Latin, meaning "song of the wheat fields," and the band hails from Palermo, Sicily, where you can still hear the Arab influence in the local music. For more than a decade the group has been making adventurous sounds, mixing traditional and traditionally influenced music with classical and more contemporary styles and various cultures. Yet curiously, Agricantus remains largely under the radar of most world music fans.

Ever since the band's first album, Gnanzú (1993), Agricantus has explored wide landscapes. There's always been a filmic sensibility to its music, and Agricantus has worked on the soundtracks to a few movies, including the award-winning Hamam. Mario Rivera, Tonj Acquaviva and Mario Crispi came together to record Gnanzú, merging their combined interests in Mediterranean folk with trance and ambient music. They refined that original idea on Viaggari before heading off in a completely different direction with Tuareg, which took them to Africa. Named for the nomadic people who inhabit the Western Sahara in Mali, it was recorded on location, featuring local musicians alongside the band; it garnered Agricantus the Tenco award in 1996. Hale Bopp Souvenir followed, a mini-album that continued the group's journey into Tuareg culture, featuring local spokesman Fadimata Wallet Oumar.

Things moved to even stranger places with 1998's Kaleidos. Instead of world music, the album featured samples of classical music by composers such as Grieg, Paganini, Albinoni and Brahms as part of original compositions, and its centrepiece was a score by Luciano Berio that Agricantus embellished. The CD caused a sensation in Italy, but that was essentially the only country where the band was known.

That would change a little a year later with the worldwide release of The Best of Agricantus. With strong reviews, it made the band into a known quantity, though it never quite jolted Agricantus's career onto the international stage. Not that the band was discouraged. At home it released a live album, Fadidi, then followed that in 2000 with the Tibetan-influenced Ethnosphere. Agricantus has continued to issue discs, most recently Habibi, a collection of older material, mostly performed live. —Chris Nickson