Roses and Basil is an intimate collection of stories that offers a fresh interpretation of a culture’s most precious verses.
This new album from Amanda Pascali, produced by singer-songwriter Robert Ellis, reintroduces traditional Sicilian folk songs interwoven with Pascali’s own original compositions.
The half-hour recording invites listeners into the homes and cobblestone streets of the Mediterranean island, whose cultural traditions reflect thousands of years of history shaped by Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Germanic, and Byzantine influences.
“Wake Up, Baby! (E Vui Durmiti Ancora),” a reinterpretation of the traditional Sicilian serenata once sung by male suitors, serves as the album’s thesis. The song captures the fusion of past and present, weaving folk tradition into a modern pop framework. Pascali leads the way, moving seamlessly between Sicilian dialect and English, echoing the Italian folk revival of the 1960s while reshaping its legacy.
The piece begins with a gentle arpeggiated guitar beneath Pascali’s clear soprano before a full band enters, complete with orchestral strings reminiscent of Roy Orbison and echoes of Motown’s timeless sound.
“I reclaim this tradition from a female perspective, flipping the gender dynamic and reinterpreting the serenata as a ballad of longing,” Pascali explains in the description of her music video. The song bridges past and present, likening the experience of waiting beneath a window to the modern frustration of being, in her words, “left on read.”
The album’s opener, “Amuri,” stands as an original composition, apart from a stanza of ancient prose that has been reimagined by artists for generations. The story tells of someone so consumed by love they lose their faith. Pascali’s interpretation, set to a Latin groove, considers what it means to lose belief in a truth once thought unshakable.
Beyond her work as a performer, Pascali is a Harrington Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she researches ethnomusicology and Italian Studies. She has also served as a Fulbright Fellow, supported by the U.S. State Department and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the scholarship, she spearheaded efforts to translate and revitalize Sicilian folk songs.
Sicily’s multicultural identity mirrors Pascali’s own heritage. Born in New York to an Egyptian mother and an Italian father who fled Communist Romania, she grew up in Texas navigating multiple cultural identities as the child of immigrants.
“I sing these songs for anyone who has ever felt like they didn’t fit in,” Pascali told Ditty TV.
Another centerpiece of the album, “Amara Terra Mia,” reinterprets a regional spiritual that captures the immigrant experience and its tragic undertones of displacement.
The performance recalls the intimacy of Leonard Cohen, as a simple ensemble of guitar, mandolin, and voice carries the tune. Its stripped-down delivery underscores a painful truth: human struggles transcend generations.
Pascali’s new album arrives at a time of growing isolationist sentiment in the United States and an increased hostility toward newcomers
“I really want to believe that this is a place that symbolizes my family: a place where people from different continents, from different religions, could fall in love like my parents did,” Pascali told a songwriter-focused outlet. “It feels like there’s been this kind of global shift that has played a part in my music. But I think, at the end of the day, what I aim to do with my music is to tell the truth—because now more than ever, the most revolutionary thing one can do with art is tell the truth.”
