ROBERTA GULISANO

As a teenager, she took her first steps in folk music as a singer and dancer, joining a group of friends passionate about popular traditions, which would later become her first band, Compagnia Triskele.
From the repertoire of Balistreri to folk music festivals, and through various collaborations with small theater companies, she accumulated significant experiences, including opening for Carmen Consoli and I Lautari in Cinisi (PA) in 2008, on the anniversary of Peppino Impastato’s death.
While performing in public squares, she delved into the works of Italian singer-songwriters from the ’70s and ’80s. The need to learn and explore new genres led her to attend a jazz music and composition degree course at the “V. Bellini” Conservatory in Palermo. In this brief but intense period, her focus shifted to harmony and composition, and she began writing her first songs.
In 2010, she competed in the Premio Bianca D’Aponte, winning the award for Best Lyrics with the song “Troppo Profondo per le 23.” At the end of 2010, she, along with Compagnia Triskele, won the Premio Andrea Parodi – a World Music contest – with the song “Fimmini.”
In 2011, she reached the semifinals of the XXII edition of Musicultura. In 2012, she was a finalist in the third edition of Musica da Bere and the seventh edition of the Botteghe d’Autore festival, reaffirming her status as Best Author at the VIII Premio D’Aponte. In July of the same year, she signed the soundtrack for the short film “Liberi tutti,” by young director Ben Pace, one of the eight films selected for the final of the Giffoni Film Festival 2011.
Her first single “Troppo Profondo per le 23,” released in 2011, marked the beginning of a period of intense activity that led to the production of her first album, “Destini Coatti.” In this album, Gulisano navigates through various musical genres with a sharp and cynical pen, imbued with a noir sensibility. The concept, inspired by a book by sicilian writer Goliarda Sapienza, tells stories of women and their often dramatic endings. Well-received by both the public and music critics, “Destini Coatti” was selected in the Opera Prima section at the Premio Tenco 2012.
Her second album, “Piena di(s)grazia,” was released in 2016. Passion, anger, and faith are interpreted in a theater of hypnotic riffs and sumptuous arrangements, guiding Roberta toward a new musical path. The album was produced by Cesare Basile, with whom she would later collaborate as a backing vocalist and percussionist on the album “U fujutu su nesci cchi ffa?” (Urtovox, 2017).
Since 2017, engaged in the experience of emigration, she has gathered material for restless souls and embroidered silence.
“A ccu apparteni?” (Mhodí Music Company, 2024), her latest EP in Sicilian dialect, is a brief and intense work on self-recognition, on the blood that flows from the past to the future, which—like music—changes form without changing substance: brief, intense, raw and gritty, stitching together elements of tradition with contemporary sounds, original lyrics with ancient noises, in a never coincidental intertwining of sounds and stories.