Silvio Talamo – Biography

Beginnings

Silvio Talamo is a musician, writer, singer-songwriter, and producer from Naples who moves between acoustic instruments and digital machines, between singing and performance, oral tradition, literature, and urban electronics. His music inhabits a fluid zone: Mediterranean Folk Beat, improvisation, and songwriting. A world where the voice is not just a carrier of meaning, but a vibrant material, a body that generates.
His artistic journey began in Naples, where he studied Philosophy in a city full of contradictions, artistic ferment, and political tension. There, he came into contact with percussion through African musicians he met in working-class neighborhoods. But alongside rhythm, he was immediately drawn to the world of voice — spoken word, ancient oral traditions, grammelot, and theatrical avant-gardes. He began reading poetry in public, creating hybrid performances where sound precedes meaning and the voice becomes an instrument.

Performer and Musician

He performed in readings and shows throughout the Neapolitan underground scene — social centers, festivals, theaters, and public squares. He won Arezzo Wave as a percussionist with “La Sezione Ritmica,” trained on stage, and began studying singing. Voice became his main creative tool. He experimented with live composition using a loop station: thus were born the Canzoni fatte a giro (Songs Made in Circles) — tracks built by layering vocal lines, beats, harmonies, and grooves in real time. He brought this project to theaters and clubs, armed with an old drum machine and his voice. An original language emerged, halfway between singing and live set.

During those years, he also collaborated as a performer and musician with various companies and projects. He worked in theater (including Filastrocche in cielo e in terra, directed by Michele Monetta) and with musical groups such as Capone & BungtBangt, touring Italy in theaters, squares, national tours, and TV/radio broadcasts (RAI, Fininvest, Costanzo Show, Uno Mattina, Radio Rai Stereo Tre, Giffoni Film Festival, Teatro India, Mercadante, Galleria Toledo, and more).
He explored hybrid formations, playing rock, prog, reggae, world music, fusion, funk, and traditional folk with bands like Mandragora, Orchestrada, Zirrezzarre, Mi manda Picone Band, Perlalia, Gecko’s Tear. These experiences gave him a solid foundation as both a performer and instrumentalist.
Two of his songs were included in Virus Vitale, a compilation produced by Willy David, historical producer of Pino Daniele.

Europe and Berlin

After a period in Spain, he moved to Berlin. There, he started from scratch, self-producing and recording four tracks later released as Quattro canzoni per ricominciare (Four Songs to Begin Again). Berlin became a space of constant experimentation: he played in bars, clubs, markets, radio and small TV stations (Radio Funkhaus Europa, Ruhm4U, Multicult.fm), on the streets, and in social centers. He pursued an intense performance activity blending songwriting and loop set: voice, guitar, synth, and groove box come together in a dynamic and powerful live set. Digital machines are interwoven with the organic presence of voice and acoustic instruments.
He works as a writer and vocalist for television and musical productions in both Germany and Italy (RAI, ZDF, ARD) and continues to perform live, developing an original musical identity suspended between Mediterranean warmth and the rawness of urban electronics.
In 2024, he releases Loops and Roots, a record that synthesizes his artistic journey — between song and poetry, body and technology, sound and meaning.

Poetry

Alongside music, Silvio has carried out a ten-year poetic exploration, moving between orality and writing, between concreteness and thought. He writes texts meant to be read first — and then spoken, performed, heard. His poems have been translated into German and published by Promosaik. In 2024, he presented his book Poesie – Gedichte at the Pankow Museum in Berlin.
His work has appeared in Nazione Indiana, La Bottega della Poesia (Repubblica), Sud, Codici Immaginari, Neutopia, Mosse di Seppia, L’Altrove, and a number of now-defunct underground publications.

In 2023, he founded EXIT in Berlin, a magazine dedicated to contemporary Italian poetry and to Italophones living abroad — with the idea of creating a space for plural exchange and confrontation. A place where, on a single night, urban artists, pop performers, and Dante scholars might meet — close but not confused.
Even in his readings, the word meets music: vocal loops, original texts, and improvisation merge into hybrid performances where sound travels together with meaning.