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Sense of Place: Black Snake Moan is inspired by his ancient Italian home

Black Snake Moan
Courtesy of the artist
Black Snake Moan

Before the Romans, there were the Etruscans, a mysterious but sophisticated civilization that deeply influenced the ones that succeeded it.

Tarquinia, on the west coast of Italy, was an ancient Etruscan city, and it's where Marco Contestabile grew up, surrounded by history, myths and even an Etruscan necropolis.

As part of our Sense of Place: Rome series, Contestabile performs as his one-man blues project, Black Snake Moan. In this session recorded live at Rome's Studio 33, he'll talk about how his hometown influences his mystical, psychedelic music, and he'll get into the parallels between Tarquinia and the American Southwest, a place that he's long been drawn to.

Set List

  • "Dirty Ground"
  • "Light the Incense"
  • "West Coast Song"
  • "Sunrise"
  • "Put Your Flowers"

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She is also involved with Canada's highest music honors: Since 2017, she has hosted the Polaris Music Prize Gala, for which she is also a jury member, and she has also been a jury member for the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).