Malutempu

Malutempu is a musical project born from the vision of multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and producer Antonio Olivo, who—after more than twenty years of international career—feels the urge to return to his Calabrian roots. From this deep call to memory and homeland emerges a sonic language that blends tradition and contemporaneity, intertwining folk instruments, Mediterranean atmospheres, and modern sensibilities in an evocative and accessible musical narrative. On May 25, 2024, the debut album Mala Tempora Currunt is released, produced by Franco Eco and distributed by Skené Cultura. The record receives significant national acclaim, gaining the attention of Italy’s major music magazines and establishing itself as one of the most original works in the contemporary world-music scene. In December, Mala Tempora Currunt is listed by Il Manifesto among the five best albums of the year and is nominated for the Premio Loano, consecrating Malutempu as one of the most noteworthy emerging acts on the Italian scene. To bring the essence of the project to the stage, Olivo gathers some of the most talented Calabrian musicians: Antonio Olivo (guitars), Domenico Ierardi (accordion), Antonio Petitto (electric and double bass), Giovanni Squillacioti (percussion), and Francesco Denaro (Calabrian and Cretan lyre). Together, Malutempu delivers a live experience that is intense and deeply immersive, where each concert becomes an emotional ritual, a passage, a journey. After the album’s release, the band embarks on a dense schedule of concerts in prestigious venues and festivals: from the Archaeological Museum of Capocolonna (KR) to the finals of the Ethnos Festival in San Giorgio a Cremano (NA), from Mesoraca in Festival to the Festival della Colonna Sonora in Sutri, where the group presents several unreleased reinterpretations of Ennio Morricone. On February 23, 2025, Malutempu performs abroad for the first time, presenting the entire album at the “Bruxelles terre d’asile” festival, marking the beginning of their international journey. In 2025, the group begins a new creative phase with Farchinoria, the EP released on November 17, 2025 by Skené Cultura and once again produced by Franco Eco. The project delves into the most archaic roots of Calabria, exploring myths, ritual figures, pastoral legends, and magical-religious traditions. Inspired by a rare ethnographic text by Giovanni De Giacomo (La Farchinoria: eros e magia in Calabria, 1914), the EP investigates an imaginary populated by werewolves, magare (sorceresses), nocturnal rites, and ancestral formulas, restoring to the voice its primordial value of invocation and magic. Alongside the original ensemble, Farchinoria features two exceptional interpreters: Sasà Megna, one of the most authoritative voices of traditional Calabrian singing, and Marzia Ruggieri, a singer and actress capable of embodying the archetypal figure of the magàra. The EP thus takes on a ritual and narrative dimension, where the languages and dialects of Papanice, Cutro, and Crotone become performative tools capable of evoking, protecting, narrating. The artwork, created by visual artist Francesco Giordano, visually expands the symbolic universe of the record: a textured, dense painting that dialogues with myth, the land, and the inner landscapes of archaic Calabria. With a sound that embraces roots and innovation, memory and modernity, Malutempu portrays Calabria as a living land—made of voices, stories, and ancient mysteries that continue to pulse in the present. The group’s music is not merely something to listen to: it is ritual, journey, passage. It is the attempt to give new form to what remains and what returns.