Kavisha Mazzella

This year’s National Film and Sound Archive National Folk Recording Award has been won by Kavisha Mazzella for her new CD, Love and Sorrow.

The result was announced at the National Folk Festival held recently in Canberra.

Kavisha Mazzella was born in London, England, to an Italian father and Anglo-Burmese mother before migrating to Australia in the early ’60s. In the late 1980s she was part of the Fremantle band Rich N Famous, before moving to Melbourne to embark on her solo career.

Kavisha creatively explores her rich musical heritage in Italian Folk Roots music and is one of Australia’s finest exponents of the Italian folk song tradition.

She also sings from time to time with her brother Giri Antonio Mazzella in the Commedia Academy of Australia’s The Black Nonnas music theatre and with i Viaggiatori (the Travellers) Italian folk band. She also leads the Melbourne Italian women’s choir La Voce Della Luna

This is the eleventh year the National Folk Recording Award has been presented. The award is designed to encourage continued high-quality recording of Australia’s sound heritage. Entrants were selected from recordings submitted by performers at the 2011 National Folk Festival. The award was judged by a panel of representatives from the National Folk Festival and the NFSA.

The award carries a cash prize plus inclusion of the winning CD in the NFSA’s recorded sound collection.

Listen to an extract from the winning CD below.