Under the patronage of Ente Friuli Nel Mondo, Società Filologica Friulana, Il Diari,Smayra Publishing and DownBridge Publishing present: “Gnos furlanis, il Timp dal Sium” (Friulian nights, the Dreamtime) What connects the poems of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Dreamtime of Australian aborigines, the arcane Friulian healers called Benandanti and ethno-progressive music? You may discover this and much more in Reverie ensemble's new cd “Gnos furlanis, il Timp dal Sium”, candidate as “best dialect album” for the prestigious Italian award Targhe Tenco in 2016. Ancient and modern sounds dress the poems of great authors from a region in the heart of Europe. “Friuli is a small compendium of the universe” - Ippolito Nievo An emotion to share, a journey not to be lost, for each to discover his roots. Notes about the project "Gnos furlanis, Il Timp dal Sium” (Friulian nights, The Dreamtime) For a long time I was thinking about a way to tell with music the different ways in which Man perceives himself in time and space, starting from what Australian aborigines call "the Dreamtime", i.e. an inner dimension made of images and symbols inherited from our ancestors and absorbed by our unconscious. This dimension can be reached by dreaming, and by interpreting such images and symbols it is possible to understand the meaning of one's existence. To find again one's roots to understand the path to follow, a really up-to-date concept! But where, and how, would I have found my own Dreamtime? My mind went naturally to Friuli, in first instance because it is the land of my ancestors, in second instance because Friulians struggle with keeping their own identity and traditions in a world getting more and more globalised and standardised. So I have found the compass that would have led me in this journey: Friulian, the language I always heard being spoken at home along with Italian and whose sounds make arise from my memory faces, stories, places and tastes that I did not thought to know. Hence, I set to music poems of certain Friulian authors who, more than others, seemed to describe this evolution of the relation between Man and time and would have led the listeners during this journey. And so the circle opens, after a prologue dedicated to the river Tagliamento, symbol of Friuli and a presence both majestic and wild, quiet and disruptive. In the first part (The ego in nature - The circular time), Man, in the beginning of his history, watches nature and sees himself. Music and lyrics describe his being inside the circular time of seasons: the wonder of watching a white butterfly, the majesty of awakening springtime, the mood of summer nights in the Friulian countryside, rites and fairy presences, more or less friendly, living along Friulian people. In the second part (The ego and the other - The suspended time), the circle breaks: Man sees nature and feels it as detached from himself. So, the songs talk about this feeling of incompleteness and the essay to recreate the original oneness through the relation with the others, love in its display and love in its memory. In the third part (The ego in history - The linear time) the circle closes again. Poems and music talk about Friuli as borderland and place of exchange, but also as land of invasions, about soldiers coming back home, fathers who want to teach to remember, forgotten roads to abandoned towns. By watching back his own history, Man realises that it is no more than a long sequence of mistakes, horrors, wars. He realises that maybe it is still possible to find again the memory of circular time, when he and nature were one. The journey ends with an epilogue: the found again "Dreamtime", the inner dimension including past, present and future, subjectivity and "nirvana". As a conclusion, I like to think that, starting from the impressions of a relatively small reality such as the Friulian, one can talk about a universal topic, and I hope that even who does not speak or understand Friulian may appreciate the musicality and the beauty of its several local variants. In this regard, I thank all authors who agreed to let me set to music their poems. And, as for me, this "journey" confirmed the Ippolito Nievo's sentence: "Friuli is a small compendium of the universe"! Valerio Vado – Rêverie ensemble