Kascignana Festival 2025

Returning once again this year is the festival organized by Arci Lecce social cooperative and the Municipality of Castrignano de’ Greci. From August 6 to 9, four nights with as many truly explosive events. For each of the events, national and international artists will perform for free.

Four truly explosive days for the Kascignana festival. From August 6 to 9, in Castrignano de’ Greci, there will be high-quality cultural events with internationally renowned artists to celebrate the local area through encounters with foreign territories. Conveying a message of peace and brotherhood through music, with stops in theater and the rediscovery of local craftsmanship. The 2025 edition, as always organized and promoted by the Arci Lecce social cooperative in collaboration with the Municipality of Castrignano de’ Greci and Borgo del contemporaneo (with the sponsorship and support, among others, of the European Union, the Ministry of Culture, the Union of Municipalities of Grecia Salentina) focuses on "manual skills," understood as the redemption of local artisans as well as migrants arriving in our country. Work has always been a form of freedom and creative opportunity.

As shown in previous editions of the festival where guests from the Sai network, managed by Arci Solidarietà, were involved alongside the local community in workshops useful not only from a training perspective, with potential job opportunities but especially for the inclusive outcome: many opportunities were born from “doing.” Manipulating raw materials. For foreigners, learning ancient recipes and old traditions. For the residents of Salento, a “journey” to distant lands from which to draw ideas, design, and creativity.

The intersection of near and far, between past and future, will be the theme of the Kascignana Festival 2025. Not by chance, during each evening in Castrignano de’ Greci, a unique artisanal market is planned where the creations of the great masters of the Tacco will be showcased. About twenty exhibitors of ceramics, wicker baskets, jewelry, Lecce stone artifacts, wooden products, metal lamps, small lights, and artistic posters will be present. There will also be stands with organic food products.

On the evening of August 6, the festival kicks off with a live performance by Lorenzo Kruger, a solo journey that sees him returning to the piano after two years of concerts with Nobraino, a group with which he has over a thousand concerts, seven albums, and appearances on all major Italian stages. Many remember Lorenzo Kruger for shaving his head on stage on May 1st during a pacifist piece. In this performance he will bring to Castrignano de’ Greci, the focus is solely on the songs, stripped of any arrangement and stage posture. Just words, spoken or sung, performed or reasoned. The setlist includes songs from the entire discography of the artist, from the best-known songs written for Nobraino to his works outside the band, and even unreleased tracks brought in their raw form, "for testing" as he says.

It’s not just music at Kascignana; on the following day, August 7, the stage will host the play “Via case sparse,” written by Giorgia Salicandro, featuring Fabrizio Saccomanno and Marco Schiavone. A space for reflection on the unnamed streets of each of our cities, those where faces, stories, nostalgias echo. The symbolic place around which the stories told intertwine: “scattered” stories, geographically and emotionally disseminated, balancing between here and elsewhere that was abandoned, destroyed, still dreamed of, or perhaps forgotten. The theatrical reading stems from the encounter between the CSV Brindisi Lecce voluntary service in Salento and volunteers from involved third-sector bodies who aimed to highlight the testimonies of those who, thanks to them, found support and asylum in our land. Collecting these stories, journalist and author Giorgia Salicandro, engaged for years on the topic of migration, met men and women carrying these “other” stories who arrived in Italy fleeing wars or pursuing a calling.

The theme of “far yet near” continues in the third event on August 8, when the new show by Radiodervish is scheduled. The musical journey titled “Cuore meridiano” (Meridian Heart) will talk about sounds and humanity through the Mediterranean. With proximity and a new poetic approach to narrate closeness to the people of Gaza, victims of unprecedented aggression by the Israeli government. A concert, free like all others at the festival, intertwines new and reinterpreted songs from their new album with the most famous songs of the band’s repertoire, to give voice to a narrative that traverses time and cultures. In a time marked by conflict and injustice, music becomes a tool of resistance and memory. "Cuore Meridiano" is a tribute to the masters who inspired the artistic journey of Radiodervish: from Area with their political denunciation in "Luglio, agosto, settembre (nero)," to the refined lyricism of Georges Moustaki, from the philosophical depth of Franco Battiato to the evocative power of Idir and the Berber tradition. Each revisited and reinterpreted song becomes a mirror of our present, with new arrangements capable of enhancing the poetic and musical energy of these great works. Alongside these tributes, the show also presents "Giorni senza memoria," an unreleased track addressing the theme of forgotten genocides, blending the ballad's breath with rock's strength. Nabil Salameh’s voice and the group’s sounds build a bridge between past and present, evoking the necessity of maintaining memory as an act of justice and awareness. The concert thus becomes an immersive experience, a meeting between musical horizons and human stories, where the Mediterranean not only reveals itself as a geographical place but as a cultural dimension, a crossroads of identities and resistances. "Cuore Meridiano" is an invitation to reconnect to the deep roots of a sea that unites instead of divides, that welcomes rather than excludes, that tells instead of erasing. On stage, Nabil Salameh, Michele Lobaccaro, Alessandro Pipino, and Pippo D’Ambrosio will accompany us on a sonic journey, between new melodies and unforgettable classics, to celebrate the beauty and strength of music in resisting injustices and giving voice to those who do not wish to be forgotten.

Finally, on the night of August 9, at Park Alan Kurdi, the grand finale of the Kascignana. The main guest will be Vinicio Capossela with the show “Sirene. Richiami, emergenze e affioramenti” (Sirens. Calls, Emergencies and Emergence). The symbolism of the mythological creature as a call to the duplicity and ambiguity of nature. For those who know how to listen, in these ominous times, danger signals have multiplied. Between wars, rearmaments, oppression, and social injustices, the West seems almost to have lost its course and is on the brink of sinking with a rapid acceleration towards its destiny of decline, of disappearing below the horizon line. Sirens intend, therefore, to listen to these calls, decode them, look them straight in the eyes, thus navigating a perimeter in the abysses of current emergencies, necessary to emerge again to the light, to find breath and light. A path driven by the firm hope that immersion is followed by emergence, and the conviction that in a participatory moment like a concert, beauty and justice, reunited in song, can be a guide to return and see the stars again.

“This year again we are pleased to organize the Kascignana Festival, connecting to that red thread that began with the reception policies of which the Municipality of Castrignano de’ Greci is a bearer through the Sai project, which thus gave rise to us. That red thread includes culture, solidarity, territory, and today, especially, the quest for peace. The Kascignana Festival unfolds into many activities ranging from theater, contemporary music, and local popular music to the discovery and rediscovery of local artisans and local products,” says Anna Caputo, head of Arci Lecce Solidarietà which, together with the Grico municipality and Borgo del contemporaneo, coordinates the festival. “A festival that doesn’t want to be just another musical proposal, but which carries within it a value system that intends to spread thanks to the unity of purpose that unites these realities, which work every day in the territory to ensure specific cultural and ethical political choices,” she concludes.

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