Yasmine: Mediterranean and Balkan Music at Sala Rossa
On 21 August 2020, after months of pandemic silence, the trio Yasmine — Igor Niego, Özgür Yalçın, and Barbara Zanoni — returned to the stage at Sala Rossa in Massa Lombarda with Mediterranean and Balkan music.
After a long spring and summer of silence — concerts cancelled, venues closed, musicians waiting — August 21 brought us back to a stage. Not at Tapadum this time, but at Sala Rossa in Massa Lombarda, a small venue that had the courage to open its doors while many others were still hesitating.
Ten people came. The seats were limited and reservations were required. Every seat was taken.
Yasmine: Three Musicians, One Sound
The project we brought to Sala Rossa that evening was built around a simple idea: three musicians from different backgrounds, each carrying a different piece of the Mediterranean and Balkan world, finding a common language on stage.
The lineup:
- Igor Niego — percussion, kaval, clarinet
- Özgür Yalçın — santur, guitar, percussion, vocals
- Barbara Zanoni — voice, percussion
Igor Niego moves between percussion and wind instruments with the ease of someone who has spent years in both worlds. The kaval — the end-blown flute of the Balkan and Anatolian pastoral tradition — has a sound that carries distance in it, the feeling of open hills and long evenings. His clarinet brought a warmer, more urban quality to the same musical space.
Barbara Zanoni’s voice anchored the Mediterranean side of the program. She sang with the directness that the best folk-rooted singing requires — no affectation, no distance between the words and the sound. Her percussion playing gave the rhythm sections a second pulse alongside Igor’s frame work.
The santur, guitar, and percussion from my side completed the picture: the shimmer of the Iranian hammered dulcimer, the rhythmic grounding of the guitar, and the conversations between the three of us that made each evening different from the last.
Returning to the Stage
The spring of 2020 had been a difficult one for everyone working in live music. Concerts that had been planned and announced were cancelled one after another. The Tapadum series, which had run consistently from October 2019 through February 2020, went quiet like everything else.
Sala Rossa gave us a way back. The venue in Massa Lombarda had built a reputation for careful, intimate programming — exactly the kind of space where music like this works best. Reservations were required, numbers were limited, and the audience that came had chosen to be there deliberately.
That makes a difference. Music played to a room full of people who genuinely want to hear it sounds different from music played to a general crowd. The attention is different. The silence between notes is different. On August 21, the silence was very good.
Yasmine
The name of the project — Yasmine — carries the scent of the Mediterranean in it. A flower that grows across the region from the Balkans to the Levant, familiar in different forms to different cultures. That is the spirit of the music: recognisable from multiple directions, rooted nowhere exclusively, belonging to a shared space that no single tradition owns.
We would return to the same project with new concerts in the months that followed. The music was still finding its shape, and the stage time was useful.
Tapadum hosts and participates in concerts across the Romagna region. Explore our handcrafted instrument collection or follow our upcoming events.
Özgür Yalçın is the founder of Tapadum and the founding member of Karagüneş. He has performed ethnic and world music across Europe for over twenty-five years and builds custom instruments from Tapadum’s workshop in Brisighella, Italy.