theitaliandaily

[theitaliandaily]

Rumore by Raffaella Carrà, 1974.

This song was a hit years before I was even born.

However, I grew up watching this explosive woman - already aging, but doing it wonderfully - on TV and learning from my grandmother how she had shocked all Italy showing the navel for the first time on public television at the beginning of the 70s. 

She sang and danced some of the most famous Italian songs, between pure Pop and Disco music. She inspired thousands of women, and became a gay icon over the years.

If you don’t love her, you can start now.

#rumore #raffaellacarra #ombelico

[theitaliandaily]

One of my favorites in 2016.

“Italianity” is all about flavor, and Iosonouncane managed to recreate and evoke the flavors of the sea, of the sand, of sweaty salty skin under the sun, all inside an album which already from its title offers different interpretation keys: die as “day” in Latin or die as in “to die” in English. 

The album opens and closes with two choral songs (Tanca and Mandria) while songs 2 till 5 develop by discontinuous images the story of a woman standing on the shore, looking at the sea, while her man, adrift, struggles trying to swim back to her. It’s an album about love; and precisely about love as something that could also (or mainly) be fed by the fear of death. Love and death appear here as something deeply entangled in the natural elements, such as the water, the wind, the sun... The sun which dries out the water leaving only the salt in the woman’s hands is not a comforting sun, but a tragic and menacing one.

The beauty of the images sung by Iosonouncane resides exactly in the anguish of a seemingly ancient world, in which the existential concerns appear a bit more essential, a bit closer to the root of their nature, their ontology.

Die is one of those albums which surprise, if compared to the average production in the Italian musical landscape. It exceeds all traditional categories of Italian music, while using elements -such as the backing female choirs- that bring back to mind the golden era of Sanremo during its first decade of life. It brings back to mind also the best of the Italian “cantautorato” while discarding the term and the category as conservative and “fascist”, in a sense.

For all of this, for the very unique voice of Iosonouncane, and for the memories I personally tie to it, Die has become one of my all-time faves, and my humble guess is that it’s also gonna become an Italian classic, one day. Or even now.

Full album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn9cgGBmxR4 

Die has been published in 2015 by Trovarobato.

#iosonouncane #die #carne #trovarobato #italianclassic #italianity #cantautorato

[theitaliandaily]

Today I will publish a personal classic.

Bologna Violenta is a one-man-band project initiated by Nicola Manzan, trained as a classic violin player, and multi-instrumentalist.

Il Nuovissimo Mondo is one of those albums that stays with you forever. Or at least, for me that’s what happened. 

I remember listening, a bit less than 10 years ago, to some mp3 tracks by Bologna Violenta from a friend’s computer, and I became obsessed, until the day I managed to hold in my hands a copy of Il Nuovissimo Mondo, whose cover looks like one of those commemoration epigraphs/posters which, in Italy, are glued on the walls of a town every time a citizen dies. This, together with the story about Nicola formally asking the Catholic Church to be removed from its ecclesial family, made of him one of my favorites. Integrity, and good, crazy music. Also: Mike Patton was not alone anymore in my personal Olympus (at that time), and this addition came with a lot of pride and respect for a local genius.

What’s more: the album Il Nuovissimo Mondo is inspired by one of the cvlt mondo-movies, and specifically “Mondo Cane” by Cavara, Jacopetti, and Prosperi*. These documentaries display with cynicism rituals and cultural practices around the world, in order to shock Western audiences. The irony and awareness used by the musician in adapting this content into musical form is evident. The subtitle of the album is: “Dramma in XXIII atti sulla sorte del mondo e sul declino del genere umano”, “Tragedy in 23 acts about the destiny of the world and the decline of the human kind”.

The 23 acts last only 25 minutes so, have a listen if you dare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOjSS9s6MQQ

Il Nuovissimo Mondo has been published in 2010 by Bar La Muerte. The following albums by Bologna Violenta have been produced by the label Nicola founded, Dischi Bervisti (support! http://dischibervisti.com/) together with other cool Italian independent labels like Wallace and Woodworm.

*Needless to remind here that the CVLT documentary by Cavara is also present explicitly in one of Mike Patton’s project, precisely: Mondo Cane. Sung strictly in Italian and re-enacting music from the Italian tradition.

#bolognaviolenta #ilnuovissimomondo #elgrindo #barlamuerte #dischibervisti #mondocane #mondomovies #nicolamanzan

[theitaliandaily]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-EluJs1ZuY At the beginning of 2017 Antonio Dimartino & Fabrizio Cammarata, two singer-songwriters from Palermo, Sicily, dropped this enchanting album: Un Mondo Raro.

At the first listen I could already smell the sea and the sand, hear the waves, and see the ships weighing anchors from harbors where hundreds of yellow dim lights enlighten late-night bar customers who sing together songs of lost loves and long sailing journeys, while throwing their fish-bones to straw cats and holding their red wines, more faithful than the women of their lives. However, I could not make sense of the sound, which goes beyond our Italian shores, and I guessed the two musicians borrowed some Spanish traditional sounds but no...

They crossed the ocean and went as far as Mexico and I discovered the album is inspired by the Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas, a woman I unfortunately knew nothing about before encountering Un Mondo Raro. 

My favorite two picks from the album are Croce d’Addio (link above) and Verde Luna https://open.spotify.com/track/38vv0ztFOjJ6hQEEgtEm2u of which the originals by the amazing Chavela Vargas are the following: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-EluJs1ZuY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1HLw-XCA_A

I am grateful that two Italian talented musicians paid their homage to a personality such as Chavela Vargas, reinterpreting some of her most beautiful songs, and making the ocean shorter between our two different local music traditions, telling the stories of an, indeed, “mondo raro”, rare world.

The album is part of/accompanies a research, which is also a book, about the life of Chavela Vargas: the title is también “Un Mondo Raro”. More of the album, and some info in Italian about it, can be found here:

https://www.rockit.it/Dimartino-Cammarata/album/un-mondo-raro/37104

#dimartinocammarata #antoniodimartino #fabriziocammarata #unmondoraro #verdeluna #cruzdeolvido #crocedaddio #ranchera #cantautori #chavelavargas

[theitaliandaily]

I discovered Populous a few days ago, and listened to his last single, Azulejos, being announced together with an very colorful animated video by Emanuele Kabu. While checking his previous releases though I personally fell in love with this track, from Night Safari (2014, Bad Panda Records), for the repetitive vocals which makes of it a listening mantra worth being absorbed in.

#populous #deadsea #nightsafari #badpandarecords

[theitaliandaily]

And this is what happened on the date with Liberato on May 9th. 

I read this second single, especially the video, as a kind of prequel to the first one, Nove Maggio. Liberato’s music is one of the most sincere being made at the moment in Italy, despite the mystery which surrounds the musician’s identity.

Also: I have never been very fond of the Neapolitan dialect, but this, this changed everything.

I have only one comment: @liberato1926 I really hope you’re a woman. You would make many of us very very proud.

#liberato #tutescurdateme #secondsingle #napoli #music

[theitaliandaily]

Today’s picks are about Liberato, a musician from Naples of whom very little is known publicly.

What we know is that three months ago s/he dropped this single “Nove Maggio”, with a backdrop of imagery typical of her/his hometown (check her/his tumblr page: http://liberato1926.tumblr.com/ ). Her/his collection of sounds, dialects, images, icons, myths, and superstitions helps the everyday of emotions and feelings and experiences to escape the banality of the mundane through the filter of the scars and the stigmas of a city which is proud of its heritage. Liberato proves that this heritage doesn’t necessarily has to be always translated into typical - cheesy, tacky, uninspiring - neo-melodico songs or sloppy rap sung in dialect.

Her/his first single was an appointment. S/he asked us out for a date. And the following post is exactly what happened on Nove Maggio (May 9th): Liberato’s second single.

#liberato #novemaggio #napoli #music

[theitaliandaily]

I will start off with Cabeki, the instrumental project by Italian guitarist Andrea Faccioli.

The atmospheres created by this sensitive musician are beyond beauty and suspension, merging folk influences to experimental harmonies given by the instruments the musician builds by himself. Cabeki’s atmospheres belong to a place kept safe, porous and not entirely sealed, from the contemporary anxieties.

Find the entire album “Non ce la farai, sono feroci come bestie selvagge”, published by Brutture Moderne, 2016, in streaming here: 

https://www.rockit.it/cabeki/album/non-ce-la-farai-sono-feroci-come-bestie-selvagge/35758 

More of Cabeki here: 

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7cWMGleKoe2EH5lxxROHzn

#cabeki #guitarist #andreafaccioli #polistrumentista #noncelafaraisonoferocicomebestieselvagge