Nov 29/08
An appeal to Italy
A few weeks ago in Rome I had an amazing meal with a colleague that spanned several hours, several courses and many bottles. Then I spent most of last weekend eating good mozzarella in Milan.
The food, the wine, the women, the football, the hearty Catholicism.. Italy has a lot going for it.
So what’s with the music?
Italians are a generally patriotic bunch so I’m hoping that a few of them will have a go at me for saying this: Italian music is horrible.
Ok, ok, that’s a bit harsh. Admittedly I haven’t listened to all that much. And Paolo Conte is alright.. Giusy Ferreri is worth a listen. There are maybe a handful of others, but I’ve never heard anything spectacular.
So I appeal to all Italians, lovers of Italians and lovers of Italian music: please prove me wrong.
In the meantime I thought we’d listen to a perfect example of bad amazing Italian music. These guys (and I stress “guys” - that’s a man singing) are pure gold.
I Cugini di Campagna - Anima mia
Tags: italy
November 29th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
And they look like the Italian version of Journey!
But there is great Italian music, and I say this as a person with nary a drop of Italian blood (though I confess a love of various combinations of semolina, tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil).
Check out:
Enzo Avitabile (on his Save The World CD, there’s a song with Khaled and drummers on wine barrels), Fiamma Fumana, Rosapaeda, Faraualla, Daniele Sepe, Gianmaria Testa, and definitely Alessandra Belloni. No tight leather pants and rock-afros to be found among that group!
November 29th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Cugini di Campagna are of course awesome for their camp appeal, something that started out quite naive but with time and during their revival in the 90s became quite deliberate. The music is of course as you say gnarly.
Unfortunately the musical panorama over here is nothing great. Many determinations of this sorry state of affairs which I have been grappling with for quite some time now. I think the Pope on one side and Gramsci on the other have something to do with it (I understand that the issue is much to complicated to be dismissed with a snide comment like this). There are some good things that have come out of Italian music in the past 40 odd years, of course. The pop singers from the 60s and some of the 70s first among them Mina in her golden years and Lucio Battisti and of course all the soundtrack composers to all those great genre films from that period as well. Too long a list, actually. Today I think, especially for Benn Loxo du Taccu tastes a group like Ardecore (a play on the idea of Hardcore (as in punk) and arde core (which is Roman dialect for ‘the heart burns’) a bunch of free noiseniks (members of ZU among them) playing covers of old Roman street songs, those composed and sung in the early part of the century by and/or for whores, thieves and pimps. Sounds like a cross between Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. They give a semi-star like Vinicio Capossella a run for his money.
Great blog.
Peter
November 29th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
What you find really depends on what you are looking for.
Good mozzarella in Milan is kind of an oxymoron and if you were Italian you would know and the same applies to music.
Italy exported tons of dance music and that, like it or not, is very popular all over the world. When “I Cugini di Campagna” were selling “Anima Mia” othher bands were riding the wave of what now is known as “progressive” with excellent results, from the very successful “Celebration” by PFM to the amazing music of “Area” and Demetrio Stratos (just try “Luglio, Agosto, Settembre Nero” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLtSnB-srU, o “La Mela di Odessa”)
From the same period the “Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXMPryOrMhs).
Mina, already mentioned, and the film scores of Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone.
Napoli Centrale (for example “Campagna” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZegpd7rbS0).
We had excellent things in the first half of last century.
Rodolfo De Angelis (Tinghe Tanghe), or maybe the good songs that you must be able to see beyond the style and other filters, such as Gigolo (yes, it is italian http://italiasempre.com/verita/gigolo1.htm ).
If you could get the lyrics then you would appreciate single songs such as “Malarazza” (here one version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhGqTGYs5WY&feature=related).
November 30th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Well, I’m italian and I really hate Cugini di Campagna, if you wanna listen to great italian music: Creuza de Ma by Fabrizio De Andre (1984), this is one of the favourite records ever of David Byrne…
PS You’re blog is great, thanks a lot for your work.
Andrea
November 30th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
When I was in Italy, the band touted by the Italians as the only good rock group was Uzeda: http://www.myspace.com/uzedatheband. They do indeed kick ass, Jesus Lizard style, but more angular. I like some of the Italian library-funk stuff from the 70’s as well, but thin pickings indeed.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:26 am
Hi! I’m not Italian but find very good taste in Italian Jazz.. Works from labels like Schema records, Caroselo,Irma Records.. Look for Nicola Conte, Quintetto lo Grecco, Schema Sextet, The Invisible Session, Gerardo Frisina, Luciano Cantone, Quintetto Basso-Valdambrini, Fez Combo, Paolo Fedreghini & Marco Bianchi, Fabrizio Bosso or Stefano Di Battista. Also, Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks..
Also, essential compilation not to be missed! “Metti Una Bossa A Cena” and “Bossa Galore - Lounge At Cinevox”!
Happy Digging
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Bollocks - just clicked submit and your spam protection sent me back because the answer was wrong (it wasn’t, I just took too long to write my message) and the message I typed was gone
I can’t be bothered to write it again now, but:
Italians have the same taste in music as the Chinese you seemed to like so much - soppy, unchallenging melodic music. We just don’t do rhythm very well, no surprise our ancestors invented opera. Lyrics can be more important than the music - Paolo Conte is not ‘alright’, he’s brilliant!, if only you could understand his Tom Waitesque poetry (but much better than Tom Waits)
Having said that, there is and has been good stuff, jazz for example, but not in the mainstream, and not tons of it.
@PS: not sure what the Vatican and some political theorist from the 1930’s have to do with people’s taste in music
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Forgot to say - if you want really bad stuff, you should try the Neapolitans, they regularly burst out crying in the middle of songs. Just type ‘Mario Merola’ into youtube, and get some tissue handy to wipe the tears off
December 5th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Dont sleep on Italian library records. Here’s a good selection from a soulstrut regular:
http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=1199100&an=0&page=2#Post1199100
Peace,
Dress
December 6th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
le luci della centrale elettrica! GRANDE VASCO!
December 7th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Pieranunzi, Magris… and those are just jazz pianists!
December 8th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
No, no, no, NOT Vasco Rossi, a washed up Lou Reed copycat.
Uno scoppiatione che fa cagare.
December 12th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I am sure there is some good Italian region folk music to explore surely?
If we can include Sardinia there is the Tenores music that has some amazing harmonies. Tenores di Bitti being just one example. There is some bagpipe music in the north I think. Italy was only unified in the nineteenth century, so its has a very diverse regional culture.
Bet you can dig out some gems!
December 13th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Matt, check out the Dining Rooms… http://www.thediningrooms.org/
They produce really good organic, jazzy lo-fi, house and nu-jazz type stuff and have collab’ed with Cinematic Orchestra. I think of them as Italy’s answer to St-Germain.
I also once bought a really good compilation called Beretta 70 (http://www.amazon.com/Beretta-70-Roaring-Thrilling-Italian/dp/B00000BIK5) which is a compilation featuring lotsa funky tunes from Italian police movies of the 70s.
Other than that I probably agree with your sentiments on Italian music… but hey, no country is perfect and I think we’ll just have to accept that Italy’s flaw seems to be it’s music…