Mediterraneo Blues

Mike Cooper currently lives in Valencia Spain and has been an international traveler and musical explorer for the past 60 years, pushing the boundaries and frontiers of his music and art. He is also a film and video creator, visual and installation artist; he composes and performs live music for classic and contemporary silent films. He recently wrote and recorded the soundtrack for the film Cane Fire directed by Anthony Banau – Simon. To date, he has released 70 solo records, 37 primary collaborations and appears in 26 other releases. “Cooper’s music, in all its forms, seems to get drunk on the mixture of popular traditions, looking for a point among all that makes the strange familiar and vice versa. He is an improviser musician, one who generates his music in sheets, loops and layers, and he seems to accumulate these albums of found sounds like a spider weaves silk, or a vine grows pumpkins. The fruits of its memories, travels and idiosyncrasies simply appear, fattened and ripe. ” – Pitchfork Review. www.cooparia.com mike cooper.bandcamp.com

Iain Chambers lives in Naples where he taught for many years Cultural and Postcolonial Studies of the Mediterranean at the University l’Orientale. Among his most recent publications: Mediterraneo Blues, Tamu Edizioni, Napoli, 2020; La questione mediterranea (with Marta Cariello), Mondadori, Milan, 2019; Postcolonial interruptions, unauthorised modernities, Rowman and Littlefield International, London, 2017;  Mediterranean Crossings. The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2008 (Le molte voci del Mediterraneo, Raffaello Cortina, Milano, 2007). He also curated Esercizi di Potere. Gramsci, Said e il postcoloniale, Meltemi, Rome, 2006, and The Post-colonial question. Common skies, divided horizons, (con Lidia Curti), Routledge, London & New York 1996 (La Questione postcoloniale, Liguori, Naples, 1997).