Antoine Michel, a musician whose Sharabià was the theme song for Claudio Baglioni’s festival in Lampedusa and Alle falde del Kilimanjaro, has died.
Antoine Michel
The Tunisian-French musician Antoine Michel has died in Lampedusa, whose song Sharabià had become the opening of the ten editions of the ‘O Scià festival that Claudio Baglioni held in Lampedusa. And the Sicilian island was chosen by the singer as the place to move and live, also due to the family ties that tied him to that land. Michel, in fact, was born in Tunisia when it was still a French colony, to parents from Lampedusa who left for North Africa in search of their America as we read in his official biography where we read that he spent his adolescence in the South of France where he gets closer to music, until he decides to move permanently to the island.
In Lampedusa Michel was called “the Frenchman” and in recent years he had also opened a restaurant and had been ill for a while. The decision to move to Lampedusa, as well as for emotional reasons, also depends on the fact that “Its geographical position has also allowed it, over the centuries, to come into contact with many different cultures. The effect of these experiences has imbued this land with a unique energy of its kind: a magic that is constantly released and that envelops anyone who finds themselves experiencing the island in all its nature” as we always read in his bio.
And multiculturalism will mark him for lifein 2006 he released his first album Ratatouille, a classic work which brings together the songs written up until then. Four years pass, it is 2010, and it is published Yesss!!! in which there are the songs from the first album rearranged, with the addition of the unreleased Maquè. Sharabià – which is the way of expressing in a single term that mixture of distant sounds for which this genre of music is the spokesperson – had already been chosen as the theme song for ‘O Scià and over time it would also become the theme song for Licia’s television program Colò “At the foot of Kilimanjaro”. The EP was released in 2011 Once upon a time there was the moon in Lampedusawhile in 2015, together with Bottari della Cantica Popolare, the album “Universion” was released with Michel’s voice alternating with that of Stany Roggiero and in 2016 Sharabià, remixed, also ended up in the compilation Buddha Bar: The Ultimate Experience.
