Music is the only form of art that has no form. You can’t touch it, it doesn’t take up space, and yet it remains able to lift the listener above everything else. The beauty of rhythm and tone goes far beyond language, beyond origin. The world needs harmony much more than before, and music is harmony, both for the multitude and for the individual. It is exactly what happens in Badawï, only that here harmony literally collides with stone.
The first weekend, on July 18, opened the season with CamelPhat and Mind Against, followed on July 25 by WhoMadeWho hybrid set along with DJ Tennis. On 31 July, Badawï hosted a special date, No Art, with Adam Port b2b ANOTR, Benja and Megatronic in the historical setting of the Archaeological Park of Egnazia. The program continues on August 8 with Marco Carola and Ale De Tuglie, to close on August 14 with a heavy cast, Dixon b2b Jimi and an extended set at the dawn of Luciano, along with Dyzen and Joëlla Jackson, before the last appointment of August 22 with Adriatique and Vomee.
Unlike a club enclosed in four walls, Badawï exploits the natural acoustics of the quarry: the limestone walls amplify the sound and return it as an echo that propagates throughout the space.
The name comes from the Arabic and means “inhabitants of the desert”, a direct call to the Bedouin nomads, to the free travellers who follow their instinct without a fixed destination. It is a purely symbolic image: the frame is a former stone quarry in the Itria Valley, near Fasano, among the secular olive trees and the walls of limestone that make up the Apulian landscape.
2026 marks Season V, five years of activity for a format that has not changed its basic identity: let the space define the sound. The steep walls of the quarry act as a natural amphitheatre, amplifying each set and transforming the rock itself into a scenic element, enhanced with light games designed to enhance the rough surface of the stone. This year’s calendar has six appointments, from 18 July to 22 August, each built around the formula from sunset to dawn.
Access to Badawï is not meant to be simple: tickets are sold only online, in limited capacity, and dates run out in a few hours. That exclusivity, combined with the aesthetics of the public, which on social media openly recalls the imagination from Coachella, straw hats, boots, dresses studied, has contributed to build around Badawï the fame of being a kind of Apulian Coachella: not so much for the size of the event, as for the way in which music, landscape and style have merged into a unique recognizable experience.
L’articolo Badawï, five years of electronic music in a quarry in Puglia proviene da IlNewyorkese.