IXXXI
To mark the launch of RednakS' latest album, IXXXI, in January 2024, I produced a video showcasing the Italian-Tunisian artist's studio recording session. The photo series is paired with a conversation centered around the creative and compositional processes that form the essence of his music.
Photo and video: Lorenzo Morandi
Conversation: Lorenzo Morandi, RednakS
LM: Your music is intimately tied to your life. How does it intertwine with your personal story?
R: My life is music, or more precisely, music is the muse of my life, the guiding beacon that imparts direction to everything. Music is linked to my life out of necessity. I've always felt the need to discover my language, my way of expressing myself, my place in the universe. Hailing from two nations so close yet simultaneously distant - Italy and Tunisia - I chose to make music the thread that unites my origins, especially culturally.
LM: Can you shed light on your creative and compositional process?
R: The creative process is highly personal. For me, it unfolds in two ways: instinctive composition and elaborate composition. In the first case, instinctive composition is entirely dictated by emotion, so intense that it flows like a river in full spate. I live intensely through the uprooting of an idea from the mind to music and to the instrument. During elaborate composition, the allure, the attraction to a concept, a theme, lead me to compose and study, to find the fitting notes that can reflect the concept itself. Despite being two different paths, they always remain spontaneous and pure. The compositional process is dictated by knowledge and experience, proportionate to the understanding and strength of one's idea. All of this, of course, is connected to a personal cultural and subjective vision of music itself.
LM: How do you strike a balance between tradition and experimentation, and how do these two impulses integrate? Do you feel one sometimes prevails over the other?
R: Tradition is a potent element for me, a root from which something can sprout. Experimentation expresses the desire to try and the curiosity to change. They travel in balance because they have two different roles. Tradition is a journey of personal knowledge, while experimentation is the desire and courage to explore.
LM: Your music is uncompromising. It doesn't adhere to commercial logic but solely to your innermost feelings. When you play, you feel yourself in the most sincere way. What is the relationship with your identity?
R: I feel like the guardian of this purity. The music itself bears witness to the concept of purity. Of course, it's a continuous conflict for me because I am a poor manager of emotions, which music allows me to channel. Being part of a modern society naturally entails constant contact with the superficial. I would like to be physically music and live in that compositional imaginary, but alas, I am a normal human being with my few virtues and many flaws.
LM: How would you describe your musical journey in relation to the everyday world?
R: I would describe my journey as transversal and interconnected. It required time of study and knowledge, culminating in my personality and, consequently, in my being an artist and in my creative imagination. I can honestly say that I feel more like an artist than a musician. I have a continuous need to fuel my thirst for research, simply for the need to describe my idea in a more profound way. I find the everyday world very distant from my artistic path. I admit to living in a continual internal conflict. I believe this contrast is the lifeblood that fuels the desire for harmony and beauty. If I didn't experience this state of mind, my desire probably wouldn't be as strong. The everyday is a present and fast terrain, unlike my musical world: ethereal and timeless.
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