Italian Cultural Institute Hosts Preview of Launching Russo's Album 

The Italian Cultural Institute in Cairo, headed by Dr. Davide Scalmani, will host today, Wednesday 20th July 2022 , the preview of the launch of the album "La Sposa del Gufo" by Italian artist Luisa Russo "Elle R". The band "Estabena" will perform at the opening of the ceremony. Luisa Russo is an Italian singer and songwriter; she has been living in Egypt for more than five years; she started participating in Egyptian underground music since 2017, where she collaborated with different bands.

Her main project is “Estabena” band, a music project that aims to revive the musical heritage of all Mediterranean countries. In 2020, after the Covid pandemic, she decided to focus on recording her original songs that she had been writing for years.

Elle R's songs in her first album talked about her journey as a foreign woman living in Egypt, and also about love and her own life journey. The songs were in Arabic and Italian.

Mini album “La Sposa del Gufo” which means “The Bride of the Owl”, with the main song “Barqus”, which was filmed in Dahab, will be released on December 25th 2022.

which includes 6 other songs, talking about her life, love stories and travels, The new album contains songs in all the languages she speaks like Italian, Arabic, English, Spanish and French.

Recently, with the live performances being stopped, Luisa moved to Dahab in the Red Sea, and there she missed singing and music a lot and had a lot of free time so she decided to start recording her own original songs.

The songs of” La Sposa del Gufo” show Luisa's journey in realizing femininity, the relationship with the female body, and the blurred boundaries in a reality that is often hostile or at least characterized by different standards.

This is shown through her songs, which discuss in a more profound way specifically some of the things that are overlooked like dancing or smiling for the pure pleasure of doing so, without sexual meanings or seductive second goals.

The journey begins with romance, with the invitations of the “Thousand and One Nights”, to Shahrazad's lyrical stories of her lover who will kill her once he returns to his past. The last song, which ended the journey, was “La Sposa del Gufo”: this song represents Luisa’s current state.

Luisa enjoys the independence, flexibility and richness of the experiences she has lived so far, which leads her to lose herself and sometimes lose what she loves until she discovers and gets the best, in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.

She affirmed her love for walking daily, especially in the streets of Cairo, with her daily drawings and unique details. She said: “walking has added to me an endless source of inspiration that is reflected in images, languages and approaches, even in my other travels, which are for fun or music. Luisa added that residing in Egypt for 7 years now and being exposed to such perse musical traditions, shaped my style and made it distinct and different in my music”.

And she continued: “You can definitely feel the atmosphere of the Mediterranean, and also a touch of desert and spirituality, in fact one of my friends, Silvia de Gennaro, the video artist who worked on the video for the new version of the song “La Sposa del Gufo”- which was shown today - once told me that even when I sing in Italian, I sound like I sing in Arabic and I'm so proud of this mixed identity”.