Biography
A restless woman of the South, Roberta Gulisano's musical world has deep roots in the heart of Sicily. As a teenager she takes her first steps in folk music as a singer and dancer, joining a group of friends passionate about popular traditions that would later become her first band, Compagnia Triskele.
From the repertoire of Rosa Balistreri to popular music festivals, through various collaborations with small theater companies, she accumulates significant experiences such as opening the concert of Carmen Consoli and I Lautari in Cinisi in 2008, on the anniversary of Peppino Impastato's death.
While performing in the squares, she deepens her knowledge of Italian songwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. The need to explore new languages leads her to attend a jazz music and composition course at the "Vincenzo Bellini" Conservatory in Palermo: during this short but intense period her attention focuses on harmony and composition, and she begins to write her first songs.
In 2010 at the Premio Bianca D'Aponte she receives the award for best lyric with "Troppo profondo per le 23". The same year she wins with Compagnia Triskele the Premio Andrea Parodi, a world music contest, with the song "Fimmini". In 2011 she reaches the semifinals of the 22nd edition of Musicultura. In 2012 she is a finalist at the third edition of Musica da Bere and the seventh of Botteghe d'Autore, and is reconfirmed best lyricist at the 8th Premio D'Aponte. The same year she writes the soundtrack for Ben Pace's short film "Liberi tutti", among the eight films selected for the final of the Giffoni Film Festival.
The first single "Troppo profondo per le 23" comes out in 2011 and opens a period of intense activity that in 2012 leads to her first album "Destini Coatti": a concept inspired by a book by Goliarda Sapienza, dedicated to female stories and their often dramatic endings, in which the writing moves between different genres with a sharp and cynical pen with a noir taste. The album is selected in the Opera Prima section at the Premio Tenco 2012. Her second production, "Piena di(s)grazia" (2016), produced by Cesare Basile, shifts Roberta into a theater of hypnotic riffs and lush arrangements: passion, anger and faith run through the whole record. She also collaborates with Cesare Basile as backing vocalist and percussionist on the album "U fujutu su nesci cchi ffa?" (2017).
Since 2017 she has lived the experience of emigration, from which she gathers material for restless souls and embroidered silences. In 2024 she releases the EP "A ccu apparteni?", a short and intense work in Sicilian dialect about recognizing oneself and about the blood that flows from past to future: it stitches together elements of tradition and contemporary sonorities, original lyrics and ancient sounds, in a never accidental weave of sounds and stories.
