Biography

Yuman, stage name of Yuri Santos Tavares Carloia, was born in Rome in 1995 to an Italian mother and a Cape Verdean father. His musical identity comes from the meeting of different cultures, listening habits and experiences, which over time converge into a personal language built around the centrality of the voice and a strong soul sensibility.

From the very beginning his path has been marked by the desire to measure himself against international settings, through experiences and periods spent abroad that broadened his musical and cultural references.

Along the way he met Alberto Quartana, artistic director of Leave Music, who recognised in the young artist an identity and a potential worth developing. It was Alberto who brought in producer and musician Francesco Cataldo (Nemesynth), beginning a collaboration that would become central to his musical path.

In 2018 came Twelve, the first single of the Yuman project, produced by Francesco Cataldo and mixed by Chris Lord-Alge. The track entered rotation on the main Italian radio stations and reached significant international playlists.

In 2019 came Run, which extended attention to the German market as well, followed by the debut album Naked Thoughts. That same year Yuman was selected for South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, one of the leading international showcases for emerging music. His work was also singled out by MTV, which named him Artist of the Month, and by YouTube, which listed him among the ten most promising artists of 2019.

After an initial phase recorded mainly in English, Yuman gradually introduced Italian into his writing, while keeping the soul, R&B and pop influences that define his style.

In 2021 he released I Am and, in December of the same year, won Sanremo Giovani with Mille Notti, earning a place at the 2022 Sanremo Festival. On the Ariston stage he performed Ora e Qui, written with Francesco Cataldo and Tommaso Di Giulio.

Sanremo opened a new phase. In 2022 he released Qui, a project developing the relationship between his international soul roots and writing in Italian, through a sound in which groove, acoustic instruments and voice take centre stage.

In the years that followed Yuman continued to work on his artistic identity, arriving at a new record project produced by Leave Music, in which his musical research opens onto a new phase, once again alongside Francesco Cataldo.

The new work is built around the idea of an inner journey: a path through memory, identity, change and the future. The songs recount different moments of the same emotional movement, building a kind of personal map in which each song is a stage.

This new chapter opens with "Space", a song that starts from a simple yet deeply contemporary question: how much space do we leave for ourselves while trying to fit what the world asks us to be?

The song is about the need to step back from outside noise in order to hear one's own voice again. The space Yuman speaks of is physical, mental and emotional at once: a place you need in order to stop, shift perspective and work out what to carry with you and what to let go.

Musically, Space develops the elements that belong to Yuman's identity — the centrality of the voice, a soul sensibility and strongly emotional writing — opening them to a wider language in which folk-rock, soul, pop and R&B live together within an organic, contemporary production by Francesco Cataldo.

The new project is not a break with the past but an evolution. Yuman starts from what he has already told about himself to ask what he wants to become, turning a personal path into a story that listeners can recognise themselves in.

With Space, the first single from the new EP, Yuman opens a new chapter in his artistic story: an invitation to make space, stop, listen and start again from oneself.