Album: Crêuza de Mä
Artist: Fabrizio de André
Artist: Fabrizio de André
Born: Genoa, Italy
Released: March 1984
Genre: Folk
Influenced: David Byrne, Wim Wenders
Apart from the occasional detour to continental Europe, Africa and Jamaica, much of this blog's focus has been on Britain and America, so it's great to write my first entry about an album from Italy. When I spent six months in Verona aged 20 my mind was open to sampling Italian music without prejudice; sadly, Italodisco and Giorgio Moroder aside, much of the country's pop is overly sentimental and overproduced (I'm looking at you, Zucchero). Italian folk music, on the other hand, is a treasure trove. Given the country's only been united for around 150 years, Italy retains strong regional identities, as expressed by its wide range of dialects, local cuisines and passionate football fans. Fabrizio de André, one of Italy's leading folk musicians, drew on this rich history for his eleventh studio album, Crêuza de Mä, which is sung entirely in the Genoese dialect. De André had started out in the 60s as one of several "cantautori" (singer-songwriters), recording his own material as well as superb covers of Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs (check out Canzoni), but Crêuza de Mä marked a radical new direction. Just like the Genoese dialect is a hybrid of French, Tuscan, Arabic, Portuguese and Catalan, so too the music is a potent mix of Middle Eastern instruments and Mediterranean sea shanties. In the liner notes of the CD copy that I picked up in Italy over a decade ago, there are translations from Genoese to Italian, so I'll try and add some of my own English translations below to give a flavour of the lyrical content.
As I understand it, the album is a collection of stories, many of them focused on the port of Genoa and set a few centuries ago, about a sailor's travels around the Mediterranean. Crêuza de Mä is best translated as a "steep path by the sea" and opens with the line, "Umbre de muri / muri de mainé" (shadows of faces, faces of sailors), as it recounts the story of a sailor spending time with locals on the Ligurian coast, but constantly feeling the tug of the sea ("e andae, andae, anda ayo") as though connected to it by a "corda marsa d'aegua e de sä" (rope drenched in water and salt). Sidùn (referring to the port of Sidon in Lebanon, a site of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians) is one of the more political songs on the album, with de André using samples of Ariel Sharon and Ronald Reagan's voices in the intro. While the song is about a father recounting the death of his young son in the war, the "morte piccin-a" (small death) referred to at the end is that of Phoenician culture, a demise that de André evokes with a stunning, mournful vocal performance. Mauro Pagani, who helped to compose and produce the album, plays many of the exotic instruments (oud, saz, bouzouki, mandolas and plectrum viola, among others). Sinàn Capudàn Pascià is the story of a 17th century Italian who became a Turkish Grand Vizier, while  Pittima is about a debt collector in Genoa whose physical disfigurement, which prevented him from becoming a sailor, matches his moral bankruptcy, "vive l'è cäu ma a bu-n mercöu" (living is expensive but life is cheap).  duménega is one of my favourite tracks musically, with its Andalusian guitar and mandolin rhythms, while the lyrics recount with irony how the city of Genoa allowed its prostitutes the right to a Sunday promenade. D'ä mê riva returns to the theme of the opening song, the eternal travels of the sailor, in this case as he sings farewell to his beloved and also the city of Genoa, as he sets off to sea again. Knowing all this isn't essential to enjoying the album, but it does give a sense of the expansive idea of the Mediterranean that de André and Pagani were trying to convey in these wonderful songs.
Apart from the occasional detour to continental Europe, Africa and Jamaica, much of this blog's focus has been on Britain and America, so it's great to write my first entry about an album from Italy. When I spent six months in Verona aged 20 my mind was open to sampling Italian music without prejudice; sadly, Italodisco and Giorgio Moroder aside, much of the country's pop is overly sentimental and overproduced (I'm looking at you, Zucchero). Italian folk music, on the other hand, is a treasure trove. Given the country's only been united for around 150 years, Italy retains strong regional identities, as expressed by its wide range of dialects, local cuisines and passionate football fans. Fabrizio de André, one of Italy's leading folk musicians, drew on this rich history for his eleventh studio album, Crêuza de Mä, which is sung entirely in the Genoese dialect. De André had started out in the 60s as one of several "cantautori" (singer-songwriters), recording his own material as well as superb covers of Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs (check out Canzoni), but Crêuza de Mä marked a radical new direction. Just like the Genoese dialect is a hybrid of French, Tuscan, Arabic, Portuguese and Catalan, so too the music is a potent mix of Middle Eastern instruments and Mediterranean sea shanties. In the liner notes of the CD copy that I picked up in Italy over a decade ago, there are translations from Genoese to Italian, so I'll try and add some of my own English translations below to give a flavour of the lyrical content.
As I understand it, the album is a collection of stories, many of them focused on the port of Genoa and set a few centuries ago, about a sailor's travels around the Mediterranean. Crêuza de Mä is best translated as a "steep path by the sea" and opens with the line, "Umbre de muri / muri de mainé" (shadows of faces, faces of sailors), as it recounts the story of a sailor spending time with locals on the Ligurian coast, but constantly feeling the tug of the sea ("e andae, andae, anda ayo") as though connected to it by a "corda marsa d'aegua e de sä" (rope drenched in water and salt). Sidùn (referring to the port of Sidon in Lebanon, a site of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians) is one of the more political songs on the album, with de André using samples of Ariel Sharon and Ronald Reagan's voices in the intro. While the song is about a father recounting the death of his young son in the war, the "morte piccin-a" (small death) referred to at the end is that of Phoenician culture, a demise that de André evokes with a stunning, mournful vocal performance. Mauro Pagani, who helped to compose and produce the album, plays many of the exotic instruments (oud, saz, bouzouki, mandolas and plectrum viola, among others). Sinàn Capudàn Pascià is the story of a 17th century Italian who became a Turkish Grand Vizier, while  Pittima is about a debt collector in Genoa whose physical disfigurement, which prevented him from becoming a sailor, matches his moral bankruptcy, "vive l'è cäu ma a bu-n mercöu" (living is expensive but life is cheap).  duménega is one of my favourite tracks musically, with its Andalusian guitar and mandolin rhythms, while the lyrics recount with irony how the city of Genoa allowed its prostitutes the right to a Sunday promenade. D'ä mê riva returns to the theme of the opening song, the eternal travels of the sailor, in this case as he sings farewell to his beloved and also the city of Genoa, as he sets off to sea again. Knowing all this isn't essential to enjoying the album, but it does give a sense of the expansive idea of the Mediterranean that de André and Pagani were trying to convey in these wonderful songs.
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