“In my opinion, the Blues is immortal, because it is the true melting pot of the culture of the north and south of the world. Its simple and basic harmonic structures are stainless. Blues is the axiom on which Western music of the last two centuries was built. I believe the Blues can transform but never become extinct.”

Mora & Bronski: Underdogs Blues

Seven years after their last album, Mora & Bronski return to the scene with “Underdogs Vol.1” (2025, Busker/AZ Press) their fourth album. The new project includes a collection of ten tracks taken from the repertoire of well-known and lesser-known authors of the American blues, country and folk scene. The Emilian duo, composed of Fabio Mora (vocals) and Fabio “Bronski” Ferraboschi (guitar), has released three albums: Naif (2014), 2 (2016), both released on Busker, and 50/50 (2018), released on Merlone/AZ Press. Before embarking on this parallel artistic path, the two musicians played for twenty-two years in the Italian pop-rock band I Rio, as vocals and bass respectively. Since 2014, Mora & Bronski have been pursuing their own musical exploration, combining the allure of American classics with original songs, moving effortlessly between blues, folk, and singer-songwriter genres . Their sound, initially built on a foundation of acoustic instruments, handclaps, and stomps, began to evolve on their album 50/50, which showcased the first electronic influences of breakbeats and sampling.                                           (Photo: Fabio Mora & Fabio “Bronski” Ferraboschi)

With Underdogs Vol.1, the two artists push this experimentation even further, presenting a collection of covers only – from Hank Williams to Freddie King – that does not limit itself to paying homage to the American and African-American tradition. The songs, while respecting their original structures, are reinterpreted with an innovative sound and rhythmic approach. The rustling of old vinyl records intertwines with guitars and voices immersed in an analogue distortion that recalls the classics of Chess or Vee-Jay Records, but with the addition of post-modern rhythmic elements: from 90s break-beats to contemporary Afro-house. The result is a sonic melting pot that does not overturn tradition, but renews it, opening it up to new expressive possibilities. The title Underdogs refers to those forgotten or little-known songs, but full of potential, which thanks to these new versions could live a second life.

Interview by Michael Limnios                   Special Thanks: Lorenz Zadro / A-Z Press

How has the music influenced your views of the world? What moment changed your music life the most?

I have always been involved in the musical world directly, as long as I can remember. I had my first band at 11, where I played bass. For me, music has always been a reason for living. The moment that completely changed my life was when I founded my first recording studio at the age of twenty. It was called “Esagono Recording Studio” throughout the nineties it became an absolute reference for Italian pop and underground music.

I learned there everything. As a sound engineer, a producer, I refined techniques for writing music, and above all I met a person who introduced me to the blues: his name was Enrico Micheletti. With him, I recorded and composed several songs. He was an amazing guitarist and singer. Now it has not been there for a few years. I miss him a lot.

How do you describe MORA & BRONSKI sound and songbook? What are you doing to keep your music relevant today, to develop it and present it to the new generation?

As I told you before, music has always been for me a reason for living. Blues is an expressive form that I feel inside and therefore both when I play and when I produce records of this genre, I feel that it is my musical language. With Fabio Mora, the singer of this duo with whom I have been sharing stages in Italy and around the world for more than fifteen years now, we have the same emotional matrix coming from African-American music.

In our projects we have tried to bring some new things, proposing in addition to the classic repertoire of American songs, also some traditional Italian songs and composing ourselves some songs that we love to call “Blues-Autorato”, a sort of contamination between Italian songwriting and the blues. With the last album we also tried above all to contaminate the sound of traditional blues with samples, rhythmic elements of Break-Beat and Afro-house. Blues was born as music with extreme contamination of styles and genres, we continue to experiment when we work on our records.

“Nonetheless, we, like millions of others in the world, choose to continue listening, playing and at the same time regenerating Blues/Rock with new sounds and languages. It's a question of style and musical tastes as the Latins said - De Gustibus Non Disputandum Est. Probably even today's teenagers, once the drunkenness of these Techno or Trap genres is over, will choose to listen to the old classics of Chess Records in the future.” (Photo: Fabio Mora and Fabio “Bronski” Ferraboschi)

Currently you’ve one release titled “Underdogs Vol.1”. How did that idea come about? What touched from Hank Williams, Charley Patton, JJ Cale, John Lee Hooker and Freddie King songs?

Yes, we have just released an album of African-American covers entitled “Underdogs Vol.1” (2025). We hadn't released anything in eight years and we had almost stopped our live activity. Last year we got back together for a handful of concerts around Italy and decided it was time to get back to work. We decided, despite having written several of our own songs, to release a record of already published songs. This was to put back at the center the genre that had united us and that had taken us around playing for many years.

The choice of these songs was made by me in a visceral and instinctive way. They are songs that I usually listen to in my playlists, and which have kept me company in these years in which new recordings didn't give me any emotion. I don't believe in the “Big Next Thing” that doesn't take into account what has been done in the past, even just as a reference paradigm. No one in the world ever invents anything. Therefore we went to dust off these musical “underdogs”, now unknown to the general public, giving them a look that maintained their distorted and croaking flavor but brought them back to the surface in a panorama of current even if post-modern sounds. These are always very complicated operations to do. Often risky. We liked the songs too much and we took this risk.

Why do you think that Italian Blues / Rock scene continues to generate such a devoted following?

Actually, I also think that there is an audience as you say that is very devoted to the Blues/Rock scene. Very devoted, but at the same time I believe more and more niche and elderly. The spirit of the time (Zeitgeist) was in favor of a folk revival from the sixties to the 2000s, creating a rock scene derived from the blues and then transforming into a thousand different genres, it is currently fascinated by the scene “Dance Floor” and its protagonists (DJ). This is a global and indisputable phenomenon. Anyone who doesn't notice risks lying to themselves.

Nonetheless, we, like millions of others in the world, choose to continue listening, playing and at the same time regenerating Blues/Rock with new sounds and languages. It's a question of style and musical tastes as the Latins said - De Gustibus Non Disputandum Est. Probably even today's teenagers, once the drunkenness of these Techno or Trap genres is over, will choose to listen to the old classics of Chess Records in the future. Muddy Waters, like Giuseppe Verdi or Beethoven, are now part of world culture whose listening is just a clicaway for free on every mobile phone in every part of the globe. As they say” the ear hears what the mind knows”.

“First, that music is an art, whatever genre one goes to play or record. As such it deserves respect and dedication. There are those who manage by pure instinct to reach very high heights, those who after years of very hard work. In any case, the music must be played properly, with the right respect for what you do.” (Photo: Fabio Mora and Fabio “Bronski” Ferraboschi)

Are there any specific memories or highlights of your career that you would like to tell us about?!

As I said before, my mind is full of beautiful memories of amazing people with whom I have collaborated both as a musician and as a sound engineer, and as a producer or songwriter. In addition to the foundation of my first recording studio in 1990 “Esagono Recording Studio”, there is the foundation in 2000 of the studio where I currently work and host bands and artists who decide to collaborate with me, “Busker Recording Studio”.

Another epochal moment was the publication of a very experimental project which for the first time contaminated Delta Blues and electronic music, through very successful contaminations. At my side were the late Enrico Micheletti, his voice and his guitars, and Fabrizio Tavernelli, a very visionary Italian artist-producer. The band took the name Roots Connection. I also remember with pleasure when with one of my songs co-written with him, Cristiano De Andrè (a very famous Italian singer-songwriter) won the critics' award and the award for best lyrics in Sanremo in 2014. The song was titled “Invisibili” and the Sanremo festival for those who don't know is the most important festival of Italian song. It was an important recognition that I will always keep in my heart.

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of the past? What are your hopes and fears for the future of?

The thing that current music lacks more than in the past beyond fashions and genres is the lack of economic recognition for phonomechanical media. Every professional, that is, someone who has decided to make their art a profession, must be worried about it. As long as media such as cassettes, LPs, CDs, files on digital platforms were sold, the work of the artist, of the record company, of anyone who played a role in the world recording supply chain could be said to be protected by a market, which had its rules, but it was in fact a market. With the advent of peer to peer and liquid music, streaming and the various companies that promote it, no one can say they are safe anymore.

Neither record companies nor artists. Once listed on the stock exchange, these companies have no interest in music. They are only tasked with keeping the Hype of their own societies high. These subjects care absolutely nothing about music, musicians and music producers. The value they give to every single stream is infinitesimal. This is to the detriment of the quality of the music and does not allow musicians to fully earn everything they deserve. It's a highly dystopian vision of the discography which I hope will change radically in the near future.

“As I told you before, music has always been for me a reason for living. Blues is an expressive form that I feel inside and therefore both when I play and when I produce records of this genre, I feel that it is my musical language. With Fabio Mora, the singer of this duo with whom I have been sharing stages in Italy and around the world for more than fifteen years now, we have the same emotional matrix coming from African-American music.” (Photo: Mora & Bronski with Lorenz Zadro)

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in the music paths?

First, that music is an art, whatever genre one goes to play or record. As such it deserves respect and dedication. There are those who manage by pure instinct to reach very high heights, those who after years of very hard work. In any case, the music must be played properly, with the right respect for what you do.

Secondly, I have learned that instinct and talent are qualities that not everyone in the world has. Only those gifted with this pure inspiration are able to change something in the world of music. When they say that art is a corridor of universal communication towards the absolute, I believe it is an indisputable truth.

Why is it important to we preserve and spread the blues? What is the role of music in today’s society?

As I said before, the musical proposal is becoming barbaric compared to the past. More and more often it is people who have nothing to do with music who go on stage and propose their own “art”. However, those who stand as defenders of actual art as musicians or “great musicians” in reality often only propose obsolete and self-referential clichés that fail to capture the attention of those who instead want to find lightness and comfort in music. Blues has always been dance music, music that has generated other genres, that has inspired and entertained millions of people.

In my opinion, the Blues is immortal, because it is the true melting pot of the culture of the north and south of the world. Its simple and basic harmonic structures are stainless. Blues is the axiom on which Western music of the last two centuries was built. I believe the Blues can transform but never become extinct. The role of music in current society as in the past has always been a sophisticated pleasure for the purest of entertainment, for a few others. In any case something extremely pleasant. I think Blues is just that. Extremely pleasant music.

(Photo: Fabio Mora and Fabio “Bronski” Ferraboschi)