From the Archives #22

La Cantata Rossa per Tall el Zaatar (1977)

The Italian label Black Sweat has announced a vinyl repressing of Gaetano Liguori / Giulio Stocchi / Demetrio Stratos’ La Cantata Rossa per Tall el Zaatar, an under-appreciated gem of politically engaged avant-Italian music recorded in 1976 and first released on vinyl in 1977, later released on CD in 2001. I reached out to the poet Giulio Stocchi for an interview while I was based in Italy, but his wife informed me he wasn’t well enough, but affirmed that La cantata rossa was particularly special to him. Given the ongoing genocide and dispossession of the Palestinian people, this work is sadly still as relevant today as it was nearly five decades ago. So here is an unpublished archival post, drawing on my 2023 doctoral dissertation. It’s just an excerpt from a larger work, but hopefully will be of some interest and provide additional context. Grab a vinyl copy while you can (and send me one if you’re feeling generous—cross-Atlantic shipping isn’t in my budget at the moment).

Many Italian bands post-1968 demonstrated an even stronger sense of social commitment and definite political militancy, reflecting the radicalism of Italy’s social movements of the time. Following the “Hot Autumn” of 1969, neofascist forces, working in collusion with elements of the Italian secret services and the Mafia, staged a failed coup, known as the Golpe Borghese, after its alleged organizer Junio Valerio Borghese, a hardline Fascist aristocrat who had been a commander in the Italian Navy under Mussolini. The events of 1973, including the coup in Chile, the Yom Kippur War, and the Oil Crisis, all continued to an increased sense of urgency amongst the militants of the left, and a growing sense of solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles in Cuba, Palestine, North Africa, and with the people of Greece and other countries still living under military dictatorships around the Mediterranean.

The political intensity of this period was registered in the music, which became increasingly explicit in its politics. Chris Anderton, one of the few academics to write seriously about progressive rock, notes that the rarity of many Italian records has contributed to their increased renown. A great many Italian bands of this era released only a single album, in part because Italy lacked the infrastructure that artists in countries like the UK made use of: an established network of professional concert venues, competent promoters, good quality record pressing facilities, welfare and unemployment benefits, etc. The high number of one-off bands added rarity value and mythology amongst record collectors, priming the scene for rediscovery decades later due to the capacity of the Internet for file-sharing. Italian Progressive Rock (rock progressivo italiano [RPI]) went out of fashion in Italy by mid-1970s, following the 1975 crisis point of unemployment, inflation, police repression, and the PCI success in local elections.¹ As Anderton argues, “the largely instrumental excursions of the progressive groups often lacked the kind of direct social commentary deemed necessary in this climate, and so came to be seen as increasingly irrelevant,” hence many artists switched to more jazz-rock style, or else more commercial pop.²

Other artists continued in a different vein after 1975. Some pushed further into the territory of free jazz and free improvisation, building upon the existing developments of Italian jazz and RPI, while others, such as Franco Battiato, laid the ground for Italy’s unique brand of Minimalism. The LP La cantata rossa per Tall el Zaatar, released by Edizioni di Cultura Popolare in 1977, features uncompromisingly avant-garde music with direct political commentary, released for the practical purposes of raising awareness and funds for the victims of the 1976 massacre of a Palestinian refugee camp in East Beirut carried out by the Lebanese Christian militia during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-77).

La cantata rossa brings together the avant-garde jazz pianist Gaetano Liguori and his jazz trio with the worker-poet and spoken word performer Giulio Stocchi and Demetrio Stratos, one of the most singular artists of the Italian ‘70s. Stratos (1945-1979) was born to Greek parents in Alexandria, Egypt, where he was raised until being sent to study in Cyprus, Greece, before moving to Milan to pursue a university education. It was there that he co-founded the group Area, pursuing a unique fusion of free jazz, funk, rock, and psychedelia. More than that, Area became the leading musical exemplar of the extra-parliamentary left, often performing at protests and rallies, and are depicted prominently in Guido Chiesa’s Lavorare con lentezza (in which they are portrayed by the Milanese indie rock band, Afterhours). Area released three blisteringly virtuosic, experimental, and singular recordings before disbanding after the death of Stratos in 1979.

Known for his work with the prog-rock/jazz fusion group Area, who released a string of records for Cramps throughout the mid 1970s, his 1978 solo record Cantare la voce established Stratos as far more than a pop singer. In addition to his work with Area and as a solo artist, Stratos was also a prolific collaborator; working with experimental composers (Walter Marchetti, Juan Hidalgo, John Cage), sophisticated pop songwriters (Mogol and Lucio Battisti), dancers (Merce Cunningham, Valeria Magli), pop artists (Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol), and many other cultural figures across disciplines. Stratos was also a sophisticated semiotician of the voice who conducted phonetic research in order to free the voice from the cage of language and melody.³ In describing his practice, he emphasizes that this performance “should not be taken as a listening to be passively endured, but as a ‘game in which you risk your life.’”⁴

Stratos’ collaboration with Liguori and Stocchi in response to the massacre at Tall el Zaatar refugee camp is perhaps the most explicit pairing of avant-garde aesthetics with political commentary. La cantata rossa begins and ends with 90 second songs titled “Fedayn,” (“Martyr”) in which a staccato piano melody develops against syncopated Arabic percussion and a rousing rendition of Stocchi’s dedicated to those who sacrifice themselves for freedom. “I 53 giorni” relates the story of the siege of the camp. The original vinyl version’s b-side begins with “Piccolo Fadh”, followed by “La Madre,” together telling the story of dead children and grieving mothers. Stocchi’s recitation is paired against that of Concetta Busacca, daughter of the great Sicilian storyteller Ciccio Busacca, in the role of the mother.

Five years later, Fabrizio De Andrè’s Creuza de mä (1982), produced by Mauro Pagani (of Premiata Forneria Marconi [PFM], Italy’s most famous prog group), would set the template for “Mediterranean” music, inspiring a newfound interest in folk traditions and predating the so-called “World Music” phenomenon. That album includes a song entitled “Sidún” which describes the destruction of the Lebanese city of Sidon in 1982 from the perspective of a mother comforting her dying newborn, an apparent direct call back to the more avant-garde rendering of a similar narrative on La cantata rossa.

1. “Orchestral Manoeuvres in the 1970s: L’Orchestra Co-Operative, 1974-1983,” Popular Music, Vol. 26, NO. 3, Special Issue on Italian Popular Music (Oct. 2007): 409-427.

2. Chris Anderton. ““Full-Grown From the Head of Jupiter”? Lay Discourses and Italian Progressive Rock.” In Decanonizing Music History. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009): 107.

3. He even taught a course on the semiotics of the voice at DAMS in Bologna in 1979. DAMS (discipline delle arti, della musica e dello spettacolo, or Drama Art and Music Studies) is notable for having Umberto Eco among its founders, and for offering the first degree in Semiotics.

4. Quoted in Gigliola Nocera, “Da Cantare la voce.” Alfabeta, n. 17. (Settembre 1980).