From the Archives #32

Franco Battiato: all the records and all the songs [Interview with Fabio Zuffanti]

This interview with Fabio Zuffanti, featuring translated selections from his book on Franco Battiato, was first published on 11 May 2021, one week before the death the Italian maestro. It’s been a little over five years since then, and since that was before I began this newsletter I thought I’d share it here. Happy Listening! (Joseph)

Franco Battiato: all the records and all the songs [Interview with Fabio Zuffanti]

In recent years, audiences in the United States have finally been discovering the Italian artist Franco Battiato. Battiato’s reputation has grown in part due to Superior Viaduct re-releasing four of his classic albums from the early 1970s on vinyl there for the first time. But in Italy, Battiato is a massive star beyond comparison. Aspects of his career parallel those of figures like Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, Caetano Veloso, and even Prince. Battiato is a figure who has moved freely from rock to avant-garde to pop superstardom and back, demonstrating that these needn’t be opposing poles.

No one in Italian popular music (other than the singer Mina) has had such a lasting career with so many distinct phases. Italian popular music has tended to privilege the singer-songwriter, the cantautore, with a heavy emphasis on lyrics. Thus Italian artists have had limited success outside of Italy as they sing mainly in Italian. It’s probably for this reason that Battiato’s more experimental records of the 1970s, which tend to be instrumental or otherwise de-emphasize the importance of lyrical content, are best known to foreign audiences.

Battiato’s earliest attempts as a songwriter date to the mid-1960s, but he came into his own with a quirky style of progressive rock a few years later, accentuated by his early use of a VCS3 synthesizer. But Battiato’s style never remained still for long, experimenting with musique concrete, electronic music, and an exceptionally austere minimalism, before reinventing himself yet again with 1979’s L’Era del cinghiale bianco. His music of this period is exquisitely arranged postmodern pop, drawing on a variety of styles, and distinguished by Battiato’s esoteric, clever, and often very funny lyrics. His 1981 masterpiece, La voce del padrone, made him a massive star, launching a string of hits throughout the 1980s and ’90s. He also produced and wrote for other artists, such as Alice, with whom he sang the hit “Treni di Tozeur” for the 1984 Eurovision competition. In the mid-1990s, he would partner with the philosopher Manlio Sgalambro, adding to his reputation for complex and mysterious subject matter.

But again, I suspect that most readers of this site will find the most of interest in Battiato’s experimental period from the 1970s. Besides his solo records, the 1975 supergroup Telaio Magnetico is also of interest. That group included Juri Camisasca, Roberto Mazza, Lino Capra Vaccina (of Aktuala), and Terra Di Benedetto and Giacomo Di Martino (of Albergo Integalattico Spaziale), who gathered to perform several shows in Sicily, Calabria, and Rome in support of the Radical Party’s initiative to legalize cannabis. Much freer sounding than Battiato’s prog records of the early 70s, the additional musicians bring Battiato closer to the experimentation with voice and drone happening on the outer edges of Italian music at that time. The group’s sole release, Live 75, featuring improvisations culled from two live performances, has been re-issued by Black Sweat in 2017, with an expanded edition in 2020.

The records Battiato produced for other artists in the latter part of that decade are also of note, especially three largely forgotten classics of Italian minimalism, all from 1979: Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina’s Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo, Michele Fedrigotti and Danilo Lorenzini‘s I Fiori Del Sole, and Giusto Pio‘s Motore Immobile. Each was produced by Battiato at the culmination of his experimentation with the avant-garde and minimalism, having spent the prior five years working under the influence of mysticism, Stockhausen, and the political unrest of the 1970s. Battiato was closely associated with all of these artists, especially Messina and Pio. Listening to these three helps provide a key to unlocking Battiato’s own records from that period (M.elle Le “Gladiator”, Franco Battiato (aka Zâ), and L’Egitto Prima Delle Sabbie), which have also been recently re-issued on vinyl by SONY Music.

Did the “Reflux” begin with the trial of Toni Negri or the release of L’Era del cinghiale bianco? It isn’t hard to read the story of the Italian people into Battiato’s personal journey. From a derivative wanna-be of the late 60s, he swept in on the “Vento Caldo” of 1968. His prominent use of a lead synthesizer and talk of science-fiction themes and mysticism was perfectly suited to the political climate, shaking up the received notions of what was allowed. His more noodling compositions, like a Baroque Terry Riley, defined the era of open air music festivals that proliferated in Italy, especially after Italian audiences were able to see video of Woodstock via the 1970 documentary. His retreat into minimalism and subsequent re-imagining as a pop star probably can relate more about the social climate of the late 1970s than any summary of political events I could bore you with.

2020 saw the release of Franco Battiato: Tutti i dischi e tutte le canzoni, dal 1965 al 2019, in which Fabio Zuffanti reflects upon every Battiato recording. Zuffanti is a musician himself, with a life-long love affair with Battiato’s music. Since it is unlikely that this book will be translated into English, I reached out to him for an interview, and have included translations of entries from ten songs that are representative of Battiato’s work from the 1970s. (Joseph Sannicandro)

Interview with Fabio Zuffanti

To begin with, can you introduce yourself, your music and other works to our readers?

I am a writer and musician who started his work in 1994. I have made almost 50 albums including solo records and with various bands like Maschera di Cera [Wax Mask], Finisterre, Hostsonaten … my musical genre is prog rock. I have played in various parts of the world and over time I have become a prominent figure in my country among those involved in this genre of music. Since 2012, I am also a writer; I have written short stories, novels, poetry, essays, including two books on Franco Battiato which have achieved excellent success. I am also a journalist and I write about music for various newspapers, including Rolling Stone Italia.

So now you have written two books on Battiato. Can you explain your particular interest in the maestro?

It dates back to when I was a kid. I discovered it thanks to the 1981 album La voce del padrone [The Master’s Voice], which was an extraordinary success in Italy, it was the first record in history to exceed one million copies in sales. From there I began to love Battiato’s work, which also inspired me as a musician.

More specifically, why did you decide to write this most recent book, All the Records and All the Songs, from 1965 to 2019?

Battiato’s songs are very rich with references to cultures of other places, philosophy, mysticism, pop music, prog, electronic, contemporary, operas, classical music and much more. I wanted people to understand that these are not just songs but little treasures. So I got to work and analyzed every single song published by Battiato from 1965 to 2019, trying to be as thorough and precise as possible.

Can we talk about some songs from the 70s only? This period is probably the best known to the non-Italian public. In my opinion, the history of Battiato in the seventies is also the history of Italy in these years. (I think you agree, given the topic of your other book on Battiato …)

In the 70s, Italy was a place full of problems: terrorism, strikes, political struggles … But it was also a place where young people loved to listen to good music, where prog and avant-garde records even ended up in the charts. Pop music was banned. Battiato’s music is affected by this climate, it is in constant research, movement, never commercial, always ready to provide stimuli to the public.

I’ve chosen ten songs from the 1970s. Can you share something about each song, maybe drawing on your book?

For each song, I’ll present an excerpt from my book:

1. “La Convenzione” (1971)

The track placed on the A side of a single in 1972 serves as a prelude to a new concept in preparation, Pollution, and tells of strange signals received from space that humans work to identify and translate. This is part of the plot of a book published in 1968 by the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, the book is called The Master’s Voice. The convention also tells of the migration of part of the human race towards the stars due to the too high rate of pollution reached by the Earth. Another part of the population will choose instead to remain on their native planet and seek refuge under the surface of the seas, a theme that will be developed in the forthcoming album. In future songs such as “No time, no space” and “Via Lattea,” Battiato will take up the theme of humankind’s flight to other planets to save itself from the catastrophes they themselves have generated. The start of the song sees siren sounds and other electronic effects on stage generated by the VCS3 coupled to the EMS Synthi AKS. The entry of the drums then catapults into the heart of the piece, with Della Stella totally at ease in providing a base of psychedelic guitars, and Franco’s screaming voice in some ways close to certain punk to come.

2. “Il Silenzio Del Rumore,” Pollution (1972)

It belongs to an excerpt from the Storielle del Bosco Viennese waltz, op. 325 by Johann Strauss, the child of the dances opening Pollution. In the background of the famous motif you can hear the clinking of glasses and excited chatter, as in a Vienna drawing room of the late 19th century. In reality that chatter represents opulent Western society in the midst of a pre-end worldly blissful ecstasy. At 0:37 Franco’s voice enters the scene with the tone of a seasoned TV barker and a series of maxims that, combined with the waltz and the shouting, instantly fall into the unreal atmosphere of the record, with the famous “Have you ever wondered what function you have?” that photographs in full a Battiato who is increasingly asking questions of himself and his listeners. At the end of this incipit, an explosion gives way to electric guitars, the organ and the bellicose drums that introduce the distressing climate of the disc.

3. “Fenomenologia,” Fetus (1972)

Phenomenology is the study and classification of phenomena. The acoustic guitars introduce the song with the fetus lost among all the mysteries that lie inside and outside oneself. After a bridge between the earth and the cosmic darkness, the drums takes over, this while Franco slips into delirium singing: “L’esotomia / I’IBM-azione / de-cloro-de-fenilchetone / essedi-etilizzazione / han dato vita alla programmazione” [“The esotomy / the IBM-action / de-chlorine-de-phenylketone / sed-ethylation / they gave birth to programming”] (actually Battiato pronounces” biogramming “). IBM is a computer company, ethylation is gasoline with the addition of lead, and diphenylketone is an organic compound. Then comes the enunciation of the formulas “x1 = A * sin (ωt), x2 = A * sin (ωt + γ)”, which represent DNA. Eventually Alberto Mompelio’s organ and a series of sound effects (extrapolated from another David Vorhaus piece: Thing for two VCS3s) fade out as the guitar arpeggio with lowered voice, already heard in Fetus, makes its way.

4. “Sequenze e Frequenze,” Sulle Corde di Aires (1973)

A long suite that with its 16:22 minutes occupies the entire first side of Sulle Corde di Aries. The piece is opened by the winds of the Milan Conservatory and by the voices of Jutta Neunhaus and Rossella Conz who create a dissonant sound texture, almost a primordial soup from which the main theme comes to light. At 2:20 Franco’s voice makes its way over a carpet of synthesizers and a drone of filtered electric guitar. The text of “Sequences and frequencies” is destined to leave its mark on the sensations and memories it evokes, memories that in 2003 Franco will visualize in some scenes of his first film, Perduto Amor. In this short text there are the sensations of childhood, Sicily, the thoughts of a child discovering the world, who with his marked sensitivity glimpses reality in a profound and transfigured way. At the end of the sung section a very long instrumental coda begins, with a synthesizer arpeggio, percussion and sparse mandola chords to create the humus in which a new filtered guitar theme can come to light. The theme is soon supplanted by the mandola which at this point becomes the protagonist with increasingly open chords followed by solo phrases. At 5:05 the prepared plan emerges, sped up by the tape. The general atmosphere is similar to that of Terry Riley’s masterpiece A Rainbow in Curved Air, but the climate brings back the warm Sicilian sun, the scents of citrus groves and the sea. At 6:24 the tabla by Gianfranco D’Adda enters, while the prepared piano, the mandola and the synthesizer continue their dialogue. A first breath pause comes at 6:38. The synthesizer finishes its arpeggio and leaves room for the vibraphone, the drone of filtered electric guitar and a new theme for VCS3, with a second keyboard to act as a counterpoint. At 7:00 another vibraphone joins and talks with the first. More and more the two instruments are the masters merging into a percussive whole that refers to the seminal Drumming by Steve Reich. In the background the synthesizer continues to weave its themes while the drone serves as the foundation on which everything else rests. Long solo guitar notes also emerge from the magma. At 11:33 there is a new stop in which only the drone and the second synth theme remain protagonists, which soon launches into new digressions. Slowly the other keyboard, the guitar and the vibraphones return to give body to the piece which proceeds free from here to the end. The finale includes the progressive emptying of all the instruments and a vibraphone that remains alone to strike the air.

5. “Ethika for Ethica,” “Clic” (1974)

The signal of the interval of Radio Bucharest opens the song, noises follow while the voices of people arguing in the Apulian dialect are superimposed on the sound of a shanai (Indian wind instrument). The harmony then moves on Bulgarian choirs and on a Tibetan psalm to which is added the heartfelt voice of a melodic singer (a competitor of the TV show La corrida) who is measured with a fragment of Scrivimi (1937) by Nino Fontana (“When you left / you gave me a rose “). Other changes of tune and you find yourself in the middle of a radio drama (“I really love you, with all my heart, but you always leave me alone” he says with an English accent. “Come and get ready to eat” is her surreal answer, to which he replies, sighing, “I’m coming”), followed by a piece of song over a slowed down voice and then a dense discussion between various people (Franco’s voice can be recognized conversing, letting the words “geometry” and “existential” transpire every now and then. He will remember it years later in “Gli uccelli” [“The Birds”]). The speeches are abruptly interrupted by the scream of the shanai and the stentorian voice of Benito Mussolini (“Will you be worthy of it?”). The next section is an excerpt from “A cartulina ‘e Napule” by Gilda Mignonette (1927) which is flanked by “Faccetta nera” and Scrivimi once again, merged with the triumphal march of Giuseppe Verdi’s AIDA. Above the music you can hear the audience shouting while the voice of Queen Elena of Savoy appears in a speech of 1935 extolling the donation of wedding rings to contribute to the war effort in Ethiopia (“In ascending the Vittoriano shrine to lay on the altar the wedding ring of the unknown hero, as a pure offering of dedication to the homeland”). The sound spectrum is then crossed by synthesizer beams followed by a piano accompanying an opera song, speeches from the French radio and, finally, Battiato who, acting as a radio announcer, pronounces “Signore e Signori buonanotte” followed by the hymn by Mameli who decreed the end of radio broadcasts torn by a piercing note of synthesizer (which Battiato will resume in a sequence of his film, Nothing As It Seems, in 2007).

6. “Goutez et comparez,” M.elle. le Gladiator (1975)

“Audio fidelity, the highest standard in stereophonic high fidelity” is the translation of what the initial Morse signal is communicating: a test for stereophonic systems. The signal is paired with “Riversong,” a song by the British duo Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, one of the pioneers of electronics with their seminal album ZERO TIME (1971). While “Riversong” unravels, Battiato gives a mysterious speech in Sicilian in a low voice:

Ma chi stai dicennu? C’u dicisti a su’ matri ch’č bestia ‘stu carusu! Propriu nan c’avi testa supra ‘i spaddi… Menu mali ca ci dugnu troppu corda. Ma vaffanculu va’… Si c’avissiru autri problemi!? E sě č ‘sta generazione…

Then abruptly interrupted by a battle cry and a chaos of assorted percussion. Luckily along comes a “ssssssh” to silence the noise and to introduce, at 0:48, a blurred sacred song, with Franco grappling with a distorted microphone test and the composer Paolo Castaldi performing the last seconds of his “Cardini, solfeggio parlato per voce sola.” At 1:12 two RAI [Italian state radio] radio speakers read the prices of the day per kilo of foodstuffs, then there is a shout of fans at the stadium and an organ carpet by Battiato himself who recites the Sicilian poem “La spigolatrice di Sapri” by Luigi Mercantini (who, in Italian, will be present years later also on Patriots). An Arab instrument is superimposed on the organ carpet and then a song from the same area. Battiato joins it with a chant supported by plucked piano strings. At 2:06 am the singing slowly fades to various overlapping noises and accelerated speeches (in one of these we hear “The – indistinguishable – is faster,” in another, “Well – indistinguishable – suffered today”). Suddenly silent, a female voice pronounces a languid “Reee”, then noise recorded from the TV, the tinkling of a bell and another song of various noises. This is followed by unknown phonemes, bells, radio frequencies, explosions, flute jingles, piano chords, singers grappling with motifs from the past, sound beams produced by VCS3, romantic sax interludes, high notes of a baritone and then of a soprano, frequencies whizzing fast, a violin arch, other voices (“Bello”), the organ of Monreale, someone calls “lady” several times, and finally a distant choir. All this takes place in just over a minute and leaves room for a drum cut with a falsetto scream and piano chord. At 4:06 the synthesizer resumes while Mario Del Monaco intones “Son tornate a fiorire le rose,” immediately mocked by an electronically reproduced raspberry which then changes into more acute noises superimposed on others that cross the sound field. This together with indistinguishable whispers interrupted by an accordion and the singing of the Alpine troops open the doors. Another romantic cut on the usual electronic beams introduces an opaque piece of the aria “Va, pensiero” from Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco, brutally interrupted by the noise of a broken vase, a trombone, a ship’s siren and a military trumpet. “Comm’e’ bella ‘a stagione,” a Neapolitan song from 1924, is combined with another song from the Neapolitan tradition, “Fenesta ca lucive,” written in 1842 by Guglielmo Cottrau. From 5:27 a shower of water, a window that opens wide, a speech by Pope Paul VI (“On the love that passes between Christ and humanity”) that dominates an alienating waltz and a female laugh, a rooster that sings, the neighing of a horse, more choirs and stadium screams, synthetic noises, a soprano, a fragment of the overture of Gioacchino Rossini’s La gazza ladra, with Franco’s voice humming the theme, and two drum beats. Another Neapolitan song and the soprano introduce a mysterious atmosphere with another soprano vocalizing while Battiato pronounces “Ahahah, what are you saying, silly?” with other cuts and noises filtered by the synthesizer. Next “Domenica, è sempre domenica” (Sunday, it’s always Sunday) by Garinei, Giovannini and Gorni Kramer, with various cuts and a loop of “si sveglia la città” (the city wakes up). At 6:27 a complete change of climate with the voice of Fiorella Gentile, a journalist from Ciao 2001 and DJ, who starts with a Dadaist presentation which at the end (with the accelerated background of “L’Internazionale”) involves Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in a vintage recording. A new radio cut gives way to Battiato’s voice who at 7:07 pronounces “From the most danceable record of the year,” immediately followed by Gentile who, on a romantic basis, replies to him “To the most commercial record of the year.” The base continues while Franco conspiratorially whispers “No one sees us here, come on!”, immediately silenced by Gentile with “Are you crazy?” and relative musical change that then returns, languid and nostalgic, while Franco yells a greeting to an elderly woman who pronounces her name several times, excited. Everything is concluded by Fiorella Gentile, who complains of a broken nail. The “Goûtez et comparez” collage ends here, but the piece is not finished. In fact, from 7:44, two crossed synthesizer arpeggios come to life, recorded during a concert, with percussion strokes by [Lino] “Capra” Vaccina and various tape manipulations. At 10:07 this part fades and gives way to the first segment of the organ performance in the cathedral of Monreale, with Franco’s overdubbed voice launching into Middle Eastern vocalizations.

7. “Café-Table-Musik,” Franco Battiato (aka “Zâ”) (1976)

Based on theatrical and musical clips that had found space in “Baby Sitter,” the composition that fills the second side by Franco Battiato (whose title paraphrases the definition that Marcel Proust gave to some of his books: Coffee-table-books), it is equipped with a very specific scheme: a series of dialogues / sketches (musical and otherwise) interspersed with three piano sonatas. All the material is made in the studio, there are no random recordings or clips extrapolated from the radio, with Ballista, Salvetta and Battiato the only actors involved. The opening is for the soprano (“Hello, how are you?”) who weaves a dialogue with Antonio Ballista, who replies in French immediately taken up by Salvetta who sings “The traffic light takes away a bit of my freedom.” Following the ringing announcement of the passing of a train at a railroad crossing, Salvetta reads, “My house was attached to the railway …” At 0:32 the soprano song resumes: “How much glow in this sacristy”, and on the final vocalizations a large piano phrasing begins that immediately comes to life, with the voice pronouncing “Voulez-vous jouer avec moi, monsieur?” (Do you want to play with me, sir?), followed by two phrases in Sicilian spoken by Salvetta and Battiato in unison (“Guadda chi bedda iurnata” – “E tu nun ci riri nenti” [What a beautiful day” – “And you won’t laught at us”). Then silence, a new ringing and, to follow, a piano arpeggio topped by laughter and the recitation of the soprano quoting Giacomo Leopardi and Hermann Hesse (“O, solitary sparrow, wolf of the steppe”). The poem is interrupted by the suffering voice of Ballista (“Oh Diu, mi sentu mali!”) with Salvetta continuing her recitation that soon becomes song (“Senti che profumo d’incenso, no di rosi… li rosi… li rosi, ah che profumo di rosi, ma che delizia li rosi…”). The song is mottled by the excited announcement “arancini, sandwiches, beer”, a few knocks on a door, a moan and a whistle. There follows an agreement formed by the superimposed voices that then recite, staggered: “The cypresses in that country on April Sundays became railings of a courtyard at dusk.” At 2:35 the first piano moment begins, with its 5/4 rhythm and a simple and minimal arpeggio that creates a melody of great beauty. The arpeggio sometimes seems to stumble over itself, missing a few bars, but it always recovers and advances to the end. After the piano, Ballista and Salvetta are back on stage with an exchange of words: “Mater qui es in caelis – Metrò! – Mon dieu donne l’eau à la fontaine,” and a new sung part interrupted by the tolling of a Tibetan bell, other percussion, the sound of the piano tailpiece and the rubbing of a violin bow on a drum plate. The recitation of Salvetta and Ballista returns: “One, two, three. Well. Brava. Sir. Gentlemen. How are you? Do you know that I am your daughter, and your sister, and your mother, and your father?”, with this last sentence repeated simultaneously in French, only to slip into German (“Lass mir Ruhe” – “Leave me alone”) and you find yourself in the middle of a battle simulated by the piano, with the frightened screams of the woman and Ballista who belligerently yells “Forward swordsmen!” At 7:31 there is a second piano interlude, with the rhythm of the waltz and the tinkling of the high notes that draw a new aria. The return to collage is underlined by a series of phonemes made by a voice inside a tube. At 13:15 Salvetta resumes the narrative with an excerpt, adapted and translated into Sicilian, of the Chanson de Roland, an anonymous epic poem of the twelfth century: “E accussì finì a storia d’Orlandu cà sunava e sunava e u sangu dinta a’ricchi ci nisceva. Diu mi perdunerai, oh, mi perdunerai, curpa di la guerra si la genti ammazzai.” [“And so ended Orlando’s story as he played and played and the blood in his ears came out. God forgive me, oh, forgive me, it’s the fault of war if people kill me.”] The excerpt is repeated several times, with the voice of Antonio Ballista who at a certain point bursts disconsolately (“Ah, the evil of being. Ah, what torment does Chopin’s music cause me and what weight is there, and the time that does not pass… And must I give without loving or loving without giving?”) From this point the third piano interlude enters the scene, with the presence of Salvetta intent on whispering and then explaining the voice in a series of vocalizations that ferry the composition towards the end.

8. “Martyre Cèleste,” Juke Box (1977)

One of the two compositions on Juke Box featuring the violin. In this case the violins are two, overlapping. One moves on long notes to act as a base and the other with solo hints of a lead (a technique that consists in the separation of the notes under the same arch). The peculiarity of the composition is that when it seems that the long notes are forming the basis of the lead, in reality one realizes that it is the opposite: the base are the lead, and the protagonists are the long notes. This continuous and unpredictable exchange of roles continues throughout the piece.

9. “Sud Afternoon,” L’Egitto Prima Delle Sabbie (1978)

This composition sees the presence of two pianos that describe a desolate landscape like the one that characterizes the cover. A desolation that smells of sea and vegetation, the typical one of the south on a sleepy summer afternoon. There are no arpeggios in these 18:32 minutes but struck chords, long rests and the direct use of the piano tailpiece. Once again the procedure is similar to that of Zâ, but the chords are in greater number and the resonances are only important up to a certain point. It is more the spaces of silence that count in this sunny southern afternoon, that silence that lets nature breathe and remembers one’s existence. Unexpectedly at 6:35 the landscape comes alive with some short melodic movements, at 6:56 the striking of the keys becomes almost obsessive (traces of it will be found in the 2011 opera, Telesio), first in unison and then in an out-of-phase way, as if to generate echoes between the two instruments. The striking becomes continuous at 3:19, it calms down again and becomes thicker again at alternating moments. At 17:08 silence again, interrupted only by small groups of notes and resonances, to then become more and more present and complete.

10. “Stranizza D’amuri,” L’Era del cinghiale bianco (1979)

Nostalgia is the emotion that most characterizes this song, the second great strength of the album after “Il re del mundo” [The King of the World]. The genesis of “Stranizza d’amuri” dates back to a series of experiments on the song-form that Franco carried out around 1977 (this audition can be heard on the 2002 CD-compilation, La Convenzione). The piece reaches its full maturity during the sessions for L’Era del cinghiale bianco, with an intro for strings and voice that is a mixture of images of childhood (the Scammacca valley, the theater of the games of his youth). After the initial part at 0:58, Tullio De Piscopo begins to weave a dense weft of vibraphone in 7/4; the rest of the piece will develop on this rhythm, together with the overdubbed string sections by Giusto Pio that take up the theme of “Agnus,” from Juke Box. The text (sung in Sicilian dialect) focuses on the events of two young people who love each other during a time of war and, despite the horror that surrounds them, they feel that their feeling does not yield, it remains pure, stable. “Stranizza d’amuri” is a celebration of what does not let itself be affected by even the most negative adversities.

A CLOSER LISTEN would like to extend our thanks to Fabio Zuffanti, and to the maestro Franco Battiato (1945-2021).