Registrations for Alberto Cesa Prize opens on September 9 to participate in the 2025 edition of the Alberto Cesa Prize, the annual event conceived by Folkest to enhance musical projects that know how to give voice to one or more cultural roots from anywhere in the world. Twenty editions consumed, this year the twenty-first, with more than 100 artistic proposals discovered and promoted, more than 500 artists brought to the stage to tell a repertoire of a thousand colors, of great impact on the public, otherwise little valued. The Alberto Cesa Prize, dedicated to the great Turinese musician among the leading interpreters of folk revival, is certainly unique in the panorama of National Competitions dedicated to music. Its formula is original, involving a triple passage: a first selection entrusted to a jury made up of industry professionals, journalists and musicians, which is followed by six live selections scattered along the Boot. Confirmed this year are Arezzo, Loano, Cervasca, Udine, Rome and Verona. The six groups that emerged from the territorial semifinals will land in July 2025 on the Folkest stage in San Daniele for the finals.
Very important: this year, as last year, the finalist groups will be asked to set to music, sing and arrange a text in the Friulian language by the poet Federico Tavan from Andreis (PN), an artistically outstanding figure, the highest voice of Friulian literature in the second half of the 20th century after Pier Paolo Pasolini. This phase of the Prize will be held in close collaboration with Morganti Editori, the publishing house that manages the rights to this great poet. The first runners-up will receive the Nuovo Imaie Prize and will be invited to perform at Folkest 2026 and Ethnos 2026. While the first runners-up will be invited to two of Folkest’s evenings on the territory 2026.
Alberto Cesa (1947-2010), singer, guitarist, guirondist and founder in 1974 of the Cantovivo label, was among the leading interpreters of folk revival. He sang for more than 30 years about the inconsistencies and difficulties of factory life using the language of folk music: his ability to bring together music from different backgrounds, from ballads to southern rhythms, made him a figure of reference for the entire national scene.
More recently he had devoted his output to the collection and setting to music of the Fogli Volanti, political writings and poems passed around clandestinely for decades: memorable the CD-book published in 2001 for the Manifesto.