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The tent given by the Mani Tese Association swung every 10 minutes. In May 2012, the replicas of Emilia earthquakes in northern Italy rocked the ground. But inside this precarious structure, dozens of people played music together as if nothing could stop them.
Oil buckets transformed into drums, pots hanging on metal nets, plastic bins resounded like timpani. What could have seemed an improvised concert is in fact the birth of something revolutionary.
“It was really an unforgettable moment for all of us,” said Federico Alberghini, the chief and founder of Banda Rulli Frulli. “We realized that we had something enormous in our hands, a project with such vision and such energy that saying now moves me.”
Founded in 2010, Banda Rulli Frulli is an inclusive and accessible musical project which brings together young people of all capacities to build instruments from recycled materials and create music as a collective. Born as an educational experience, it has become a community movement combining creativity, crafts and social inclusion.
In this tent, among the young people who had lost their homes and their families uprooted in their lives, an experience was born which now has 2,400 participants in 12 groups divided into Italy, with the first international expansion planned for New York in the fall of 2025.
Hear the rhythm of another drum
The story of Rulli Frulli begins well before the earthquake. Alberghini was only 11 years old when, accompanying his father to a vintage automobile show in the Modena region in the early 1990s, he noticed a door with the inscription, “Quale Percussione?” Or, “What percussion?” Beyond this expected threshold expected Luciano Bosi, a collector of percussion instruments and pioneer of construction workshops using recycled materials.
“He was sitting on the ground,” said Alberghini. “He played a solo for me with two sticks using four volumes of (the telephone directory), without even greeting me first. When I saw all this, I told myself that it was what I wanted to do when I grew up.”
Bosi is now one of the staff of Rulli Frulli and donated all his collection of instruments to the project. His philosophy is simple: any object, even the most banal, can be an instrument of music. In the 1970s, he was the first to bring workshops for the construction of instruments, materials recycled to Italian schools.
This meeting planted a seed which sprouted years later. Alberghini, after continuing a drummer career in various groups, became a music teacher at the Funduzione Scuola di Musica Carlo e Guglielmo Andreoli. It was then that he began to experiment in his grandmother’s garage with a small group of young people from the region.
“In 2009, I had to climb on the fence of the Emilia final landfill because I found no one to give me a bucket to play,” said Alberghini. “Today, we receive containers of buckets and bins to provide the more than 2,400 girls and boys who are among the Rulli Frulli bands dispersed across Italy.”
Among these groups, there is that of the final of the municipality of Emilia. Rulli Frulli now has dozens of concerts in his name and has released six albums in collaboration with some of the biggest names on the Italian independent music scene.
A generative inclusion method
What makes the Rulli Fruulli unique project is not only the use of recycled materials, but its natural approach to inclusion for disabled people. “Any potential handicap is never” announced “, said Alberghini.
The result attracted the attention of the Catholic University of Milan, which in 2022 conducted and published a scientific study on the so-called “generative method” of the group. Research revealed, among other things, how the group’s solid environment – dozens of people playing percussion instruments self -built at a very high volume – can have unexpected therapeutic effects.
An autistic child who cries at the noise of a vacuum at home can, in the context of the group, finding comfort in deafening sounds just as noisy which could otherwise be overwhelming – sounds which become less disturbing when they are created in a group.
“When you look at the Banda Rulli Frulli on stage today, you see 80 people engaged in a performance so solid, so impactful that it does not even cross you to seek a handicap,” said Alberghini. “You do not notice it because you are overwhelmed by the impact of those who play.”
From tent to national spotlights
The turning point occurred in 2016, when the group was selected to participate in a May concert in Rome. The scene that presented itself to the engineer of the historic sound of the event became legendary: from a two -story bus that arrived at Piazza San Giovanni, dozens of people spilled, all dressed in blue and white striped shirts and invaded each space in the knife area.
“The sound engineer arrives, looks at me, consults a file and says:” So you are guitar, bass and drums, right? “” Said Alberghini, reconstructing these moments. “” No “, I replied,” we are there “, pointing to the sea of people in striped uniforms.”
After this concert, the social media exploded, the group became known throughout Italy and received an invitation to appear in the national television program of prospecting hours of pop star Mika. “When I looked at the episode again, I saw 60 people move as if there were 10: perfect, organized, like real professionals,” said Alberghini.
Since 2018, the project has spread throughout Italy according to a structured process of three years: the first year, the educators of the Emilia final go to the group’s headquarters which are formed once a week; During the second year, they leave every two weeks; in the third once a month. From the fourth year, the new group is autonomous, but remains connected to the network thanks to a collaboration contract which establishes common practices, including ethical policies on sponsorships.
“We receive requests from people, associations, local institutions, cooperatives,” said Alberghini. Among the most important projects, there is “Marinai” (Saiors), a band made up of 25 boys from Côte d’Ivoire in search of asylum in Reggio Emilia. “I remember the first rehearsal with them: we went there, we unloaded buckets, sticks, trash cans, etc. I turned around for a moment and, without my doing anything, a beautiful samba started. ”
Ruins in the Renaissance
In May 2022, Italian President Sergio Mattarella inaugurated the Stazione Rulli Frulli, a multifunctional center created from the old bus station in the Emilia final. The renovation cost more than 1 million euros. Today, the structure is home to a rehearsal room, a radio station, a completely soundproofed construction laboratory, the Astronave laboratory (a social carpentry workshop for young people with disabilities) and a restaurant open every day.
“Each week, our spaces are frequented by 700 to 800 young people and employ 25 people,” said Alberghini. “Our goal is not to do activities only with young people with disabilities, but to mix everything together: the station must be a beautiful and welcoming place for anyone.”
The success is tangible: reservations in the restaurant, where young people with disabilities are also used for tables, are so numerous that there is no space for months. “A parent did not stop telling me to forget it, because he was afraid that our idea was frightening the rest of the community,” said Alberghini. “Well, he was wrong.”
What was born in a small town in Emilia after a huge disaster turns into a world model. Rulli Frulli will soon become a foundation, and there are plans for the first group on the territory foreign to the Scuola of Italia Guglielmo Marconi in New York.
“The objective is to export as much as possible the Rulli Frulli model outside Italy,” said Alberghini. “Because it is a big and new project, that we want to develop as much as possible in Europe and in the world.”
The message from the Emilia final is as simple as it is powerful: when a community is confronted with difficulties together, transforming waste into opportunities and differences into wealth, it can build something that goes far beyond the sum of its parts. In an increasingly divided world, the sound of the buckets and plastic pots could be exactly the symphony we need.
Questions to consider
1. How can a collective tragedy turn into an opportunity to create more inclusive and resilient communities?
2. How does the “natural” approach to Rulli Frulli’s inclusion differs from traditional methods of social integration?
3. What kind of music could you do things you find at home?
