Music

Sense of Place: Italian singer-songwriter Ariete has her sights set on stardom

WSHU | By Raina Douris,

Published July 9, 2025 at 6:39 AM EDT

Italian singer-songwriter Ariete has always known that music was what she wanted to do — and nothing was going to get in her way.

For example, when her appearance on the Italian version of The X Factor as a teenager didn't boost her career as much as she hoped, she decided to write to 100 record reps to get someone to notice her:

"I was typing down always this same message to every label, and every manager of A&R at the label. Almost no one texted back. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to do it on my own," she says.

In this dispatch from our Sense of Place: Rome series, Ariete explains how she did it on her own, how she turned herself into a star, and why music is so vital for her as a way to express emotion.

Set List

"Pillole"
"OSSA ROTTE"
"IRIDE"
"MARE DI GUAI"
"Amianto"

Production Credits:

Sound recorded by Studio 33 and Bomba Dischi
Video recorded by Underdogs Production

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.

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Music World Cafe

Raina Douris

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.

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Kimberly Junod

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).

See stories by Kimberly Junod