After the release of two tracks, “Saias de Cinza” and “Um Dia no Deserto” respectively, the RAIA project releases, on September 26, the new album Uádi: a river-album that crosses the banks of the Iberian Border, made of encounters and contaminations, where the viola campaniça allows itself to be touched by other geographies, other languages, other hands.
Uádi is born in a territory populated by what philosopher Timothy Morton calls hyperobjects—realities so vast they escape our full comprehension—such as the climate, the oceans, and deep time. They are always around us, shaping our lives, but we can never fully see them. The viola campaniça gives voice to an underground river, invisible on the surface but ever-present. The music evokes advancing deserts, retreating rains, cycles of abundance and scarcity that transcend any human border. Like a hyperobject, Uádi is simultaneously local and global: it speaks of the Alentejo border and, simultaneously, of a planet in flux.
In Uádi, there is no “pure” or “romantic” landscape. There is a lived territory, traversed by drying rivers, changing climates, cultural memories, and contemporary voices. The viola campaniça ceases to be merely a symbol of untouched tradition and transforms into a living vehicle, permeating electronics, collaborations, and hybrid sounds.
Uádi shows that “nature” is not outside of us: we are part of the same flow—of sound, of the earth, of the climate, of the technologies that shape the present. Uádi is a song of belonging to something greater, immense, and mysterious, resonating within and beyond us.
A third single, titled O Golpe, featuring Fio Manta, is coming soon.
RAIA is the synthesis project of Alentejo musician António Bexiga, which explores the sounds of the viola campaniça across its acoustic and electric, analogue and digital, traditional and experimental, rehearsed and instantaneous boundaries, often in dialogue with other art forms, whether visual or performance.
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