Tag Archives: The Metalliferous Hills Jug Band

Politecnico di Milano, May 30, 2019: From Sound Engineering to Engineering with Sound + DICA goes to Maremma

Announcements,

Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Aula Citrini, 4PM-7PM (the actual time within this range will be confirmed ASAP).

Thursday, May 30, Politecnico di Milano will host a very peculiar event. This will be a lecture where a talk about sustainability on inner rural areas of Southern Tuscany will be mixed with live music performed by a rock-blues band based in the same region, and with the authors of the studies playing with the band.

The event has also been inserted in the official program of the third edition of the Sustainability Festival (running at the national level with numerous events from May 21 to June 6, 2019).

Confirmation of participation should be sent to info@pibinko.org or +39 3317539228 by May 29, 2019.

From Sound Engineering to Engineering with Sound + DICA goes to Maremma

Andrea Giacomelli, Dario Canal, Wolfgang Scheibe, Simone Sandrucci, Alessandro Ceppi, Giuseppe Milleo

When we speak of sound and engineering we tend to think about audio experts, mixers, decibel, wattage etc. In this lecture we would like to speak about engineering made together with sound, and namely with music…how can music be, in addition to a cool background, an element integrated with the life cycle of projects and studies in the fields of land protection, promotion, and environmental sustainability.

1-11-18, the JBCM in Sassofortino, Southern Tuscany

Namely, we will be presenting the case of the Jug Band dalle Colline Metallifere (JBCM, i.e. Metalliferous HIlls Jug Band). This is an inter-generational and international musical collective based in Southern Tuscany, founded in March 20017. The JBCM is active in the production of events where live music, monitoring, and outreach on environment and territory are intertwined so as to create a (typically acoustic) pleasing, entertaining, and instructive experience, which the group called “geomusic“.

The collective was given this name in September 2018, after about a year of experiments involving two young professional rockers (with three albums and hundreds of live concerts in their roster), and two professionals with a different core expertise (but a musical track record adequate to make them not feel shy on stage). One of the senior professionals is actually an environmental engineer and a PhD with 25 years of experience on geographic information systems applied to multiple international projects; the other professional has almost fifty years of experience in biodynamic agriculture, working as a consultant in Germany, Italy, and Maghreb.

The combination of music and technical expertise, especially on environment and agriculture, is the peculiarity of the JBCM project, combining melody, rhythm, cultural and environmental outreach in one situation (which can be related to Sustainable Development Goals 4, 11, and 12, for those of you into this topic).

In the same performance you can dance with a rock ‘n’ roll song, make light pollution measurements within international citizen science projects, join the chorus yelling “ahi ahi ahi….il vino neerooooo” , and eventually learning that half of the songs to which your were shaking your feet were, in fact, speaking of issues of your grandfathers in their rural settings, or of your friend who recently graduated, and had to leave his country to find a job.

A portion of the Farma Valley, half way between Siena and Grosseto, in Southern Tuscany

The lecture will also be the opportunity to present a summary of a mission that a team from DICA (the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano) will be having on May 10-11-12 in Southern Tuscany. They will be installing a weather station in the Farma Valley, as the consolidation of a set of mapping and monitoring activities undertaken by valley residents and visitors since 2007. Such activities have been developing in the years, through a combination of research, citizen science and territorial marketing projects (which have been presented at various stages in Politecnico di Milano in 2011, 2015, 2017, and 2018). Interestingly, the Jug Band Colline Metallifere represents one of the communication avenues for these projects, and these initiatives share some of the people creating and managing these activities (and the same people will be giving the lecture).

Last but not least, this will be yet another opportunity to learn about the PORGEP2019 program, and how you may collaborate with projects which will be showcased.

The poster for the JBCM geomusical tour in Germany, via Politecnico.

On this occasion we will have the full Jug Band Colline Metallifere, since they will be in transit by Milano for a tour in Germany, with four gigs in the Stuttgart area. The lecture will thus be an opportunity to learn about a diverse range of activities, and to attend a very, very peculiar event.

For more information: info@pibinko.org

May 4, 2019: the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band live @ Caffe’ Ricasoli, Grosseto, Tuscany

Announcements,

Between 7PM and 10PM at Caffè Ricasoli, in Grosseto, Southern Tuscany. Featuring Peter Crivelli, an extraordinary character with an extraordinary story (and a very good country blues, and ballads repertoire).

See also http://jugbandcm.it for more details on the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band and their upcoming mission to Germany, via Politecnico di Milano.

The layout of the pibinko.org stand at the DITOs final event (Brussels, Apr. 3, 2019)

Photos,

The pibinko.org network had an interesting appearance in the final day of the European project “Do-it-together Science”. Below you see the stand (or the travelling micro-museum) before the start of the “marketplace” session. In this there were about fifteen companies from all over Europe, including other Italians, but with the pibinko.org network as the only subject with a project from Italy. We don’t have a photo of the stand at the end of the session (since the layout changed gradually, as people were stopping by and interacting with the different features), but we will do our best to cover this aspect with our report on the overall trip.

The flagship initiative for pibinko.org during this day was the announcement of the upcoming geomusical mission of the Jug Band from the Metalliferous Hills to Germany, with a stop a Politecnico di Milano, from May 30 to June 3.

For those of you in Milano, please note the meetup on Friday, April 5, @ Soul Food, via Gola 3, from 6.30PM to around 8PM. Here you can get a live summary of the Brussels experience, and more hints on the pibinko.org Summer campaign. For more information: info@pibinko.org

Here are some items from the pibinko.org stuff-o-theque

Mar. 16, 2019 / Amish from Jack White & Friends @ Dribbling Bar Grosseto, Tuscany

Announcements

Also featuring Jack O’Malley and Wolfgang Scheibe from the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band

Da sinistra a destra: Simone Bravi, Alessio Ricci, Dario Canal (foto di Romina Zago)

Gli Amish from Jack White sono un progetto nato un paio di anni fa dall’incrocio fra Dario Canal, frontman degli Etruschi from Lakota, e Alessio Ricci, chitarrista dei Crimson Thunder di Piombino. Galeotto fu il teatro, e dopo la collaborazione nella preparazione di uno spettacolo, partì lo spin off di musica dal vivo fatta in duo, con periodiche visite di ospiti, collaboratori e altri elementi creativi.

Gli AFJW propongono una combinazione di brani tendenzialmente rock, in parte ispirati a Jack White e alle nuove generazioni di bluesmen del terzo millennio (cfr. Fantastic Negrito), senza dimenticare i padri fondatori (Bowie, The Who, Led Zeppelin), cose italiane (es. Jannacci), e alcuni brani originali.

Il prossimo appuntamento è per sabato 16 marzo, dopo cena al Dribbling Bar (via Ximenes 57, Grosseto), assieme a Simone Bravi (già batterista dei Kutso).

Per l’occasione si ripresenteranno anche alcuni ospiti, con cui è venuta fuori un serata al fulmicotone venerdì scorso al Pub dei Fantasmi di Massa Marittima. Sono quindi attesi Wolfgang Scheibe e Jack O’Malley (ovvero la sezione ritmica a geometria variabile della Jug Band dalle Colline Metallifere con il loro progetto geomusicale, cfr. In aria del 5-3 scorso e La Nazione ed. Valdera-Val di Cecina di qualche settimana fa). Ultimo, ma non ultimo, Samba Governatore con le sue acrobazie reggae, in potente equilibrio fra l’intramontabile (Bob Marley) e l’energia di un freestyler vero.

Per informazioni: ilcasinobooking@gmail.com

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March 5, 2019 – Jack O’Malley speaks about Geomusic for “In Aria” (Radio Rogna)

In the media, national

From 7’38” for three minutes you can listen to Jack O’Malley explaining (in Italian) how the idea of “geomusic” was born and how he is working on this with the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band. Jack then introduces a song on the subject of dreams. Kudos to Linda for the invitation!

Here is a transcript:

Hi this is Jack O’Malley, drummer and scientific director for the Metalliferous Hills Jug Band. What we are developing as a project is something we called “geomusic”, and I would like to explain to you what this is about, in two or three points.
I am an engineer, a PhD, a sort of a scientist. In 25 years I have been to some 1000 conferences and scientific events. At the same time, I like music a lot, so in 25 -let’s make it 40- years, I have been to 1000 concerts.

Out of these conferences, at least half are about the enviroment, about doing good for the Earth, remediating, cleaning the air. On the other hand, when you go to concerts, there is a fair share of songs by artists who are concerned about the environment.

Now: when you go to scientific conferences, at the end of the day you get the icebreaker cocktail, or the dinner, with a jazz quartet in the background. Then, when you go to a concert, the artist will sing a song which will give you some feeling about an environmental issue.

Going back to the scientific conference, you will find many scientists complaining about the fact that, after their strong commitment in a research, they have issues in conveying their findings to improve the environment. On the other side, artists, who may excel in arts, have a hard time to get through to their audience actual concepts and action items to take home.

Geomusic, in its own way, intends to act as liaison between these two positions.

So, we are working on producing music embedding actual explanations in environmental engineering topics and scientific outreach, in a way that people will be entertained, while learning things that they can apply at home. This story started at the end of 2016, after about a year that I was interacting with Etruschi from Lakota. At the time they were touring with their second album “Non ci resta che ridere”, which has a lot of songs about territorial issues.

I also joined forces with a mad German bass player, 70 years old back then, who relocated in Tatti, which is the hamlet where I am also based (and which was my grandfather’s place).

Having formed this team, we started partly to study, and mostly to experiment, with jam sessions and inviting each other, like myself inviting Dario Canal and Simone Sandrucci from EFL to give scientific presentations at national conferences, or EFL inviting me to play on stage, and there we set off with geomusic.
Clearly, geomusic is not developed in the void, in space or in academia, but is “on the road” a lot, and comes by listening to a lot of other music.
Thinking about dreams, I think that a good precursor to what we are doing, and to which I have listened one thousand times, comes from Smashing Pumpkins and the Siamese Dream album. As an example and an introduction you can listen to Cherub Rock


For more information you may visit the JBCM main page, or write to jugbandcm@pibinko.org.

Jan 23, 2019: The “Jug Band” sings geomusic: a new artistic genre is born (La Nazione, Pontedera edition)

In the media, local

Original article by Ilenia Pistolesi (see source). Translation by Andrea Giacomelli. Please also see the pibinko.org blog post with the full presentation which inspired the article, or write to jugbandcm@pibinko.org for more information.

Cecina Valley (Pisa), Jan. 23, 2019. Environment, land, and rural development. These are crucial topics, normally discussed in round tables by political think tanks, or as food for thought in conferences. Issues which make mayors suffer and environmental activists struggle. However, this time, we have music to blend high-level matters, with a thread of notes and melodies coming right from the heart of the Cecina Valley.
We are talking about the “Metalliferous Hills Jug Band”. This is a collective born in March 2017 and named in September 2018, with its base of operationi in the land of the Tuscan geysers.

The band originated from the collaboration of two young rock blues musicians, with three albums on their resume, an independent researcher with 25 years of international experience, musically active since 1986, and a German who relocated to Southern Tuscany.

On stage, the power of musical instruments alternates with talks and insights on the environment, thus joining in a single event live sounds and vocals to outreach and awareness raising on such paramount topics.
In a nutshell, they called this “Geomusic”: a brand new combination, an approach based on innovation, where two of the co-authors are original Cecina Valley musicians, i.e. Dario Canal and Simone Sandrucci.

This is a far from obvious approach to circulate ideas on “green” best practices.

In addition to the standard musical equipment by Etruschi from Lakota (Canal and Sandrucci’s main band), the collective brings on stage vintage instruments, found in their family attics, and actual scientific measurement instrumentation, such as a sky quality meter for light pollution monitoring, a lux meter, and various construction meters, occasionally used in the percussion section.

The collective, which has already performend on various stages, has also been presented to multiple research institutions, including the Italian National Research Council, the Politecnico di Milano and other Italian and foreign universities, raising a genuine interest for the rare and original combination of of art and the capacity of shedding a light on the environment from a very peculiar and unusual viewpoint.