IANVA’s fourth release and eagerly awaited second full length album – almost 70 enthralling minutes dragging the audience into a new dramatic journey.
For this occasion a very special play is going to be staged, featuring as a main character a whole nation: Italy.
The darkest, gloomiest, most troubled and controversial chapters of the last 60 years of Italian history as seen through the eyes of those who are on the side of the Eternally Defeated: the humble, the idealist, the honest men.
The moral and spiritual dissolution of a nation is narrated with the appeal and the accents typical of Neorealism and more than just a reference to some of the greatest and most influential Dissidents of that time: from Pasolini to Curzio Malaparte, from Pietro Germi to Giorgio Gaber, and the bittersweet touch of Pure Popular Music of past decades (Dalida, Battisti, Morricone).
13 tracks engraved in IANVA’s usual flamboyant background, here, probably, at its most powerful and lyrical height.
September 8th 1943 – in the middle of the chaos, the dissolution and the dishonour of a state deserting a nation that is down on its knees, a voice comes out to claim the ultimate right for Dignity.
A long time opposer to the fascist regime shudders at the appalling sight of the easiness at which his fellow citizens jump on the winners’ bandwagon, willingly turning themselves into persecutors, only to please the side they’ve been “hating” just a few months ago.
DOV’ERI TU QUEL GIORNO? (WHERE WERE YOU THAT DAY?)
There was a time when the firm belief
Of not being wrong but absolutely right
Was more diffused in the air than April’s pollen
An imaginary strength, but to doubt it was but a sign of cowardice.
No debate, but just the pretension
To believe we finally had the necessary grasp
To spit all the bitter pills they made us swallow
Straight out at their sour-milked faces
Where were you that day?
You do remember, don’t you?
Where were you that day?
I’m going to tell you:
You were singing in the choir louder than ever before
Without hesitation – now you know.
With an imperious tone your voice was covering
My very own voice betraying some perplexity…
Then came the day when from aloft a balcony
We had been ordered to chose between bread and cannons:
If we were so stupid to leave the answer to the choir
Then we were even more stupid… to not actually demand for it
Now that it’s obvious and as clear as daylight
That all that “straightening up” craze was nothing but an orgy of words
There’s a rush to serve those who are seriously strong and powerful
All of us so perfectly on time just like those “famous trains”…
Where were you that day?
That day that was yesterday
Where were you that day?
Can you tell me where? Won’t you?
You open your mouth wide and sing over a brand new score,
A cycle is over and “step right up – who’s next?”
Yesterday’s brothers so hated today
But it’s still the quickest one to stand up and sing who gets his way
“But I who might have been the most foolish amongst the fools,
Now I would have something to object to:
In order to run joyfully in support of those who are already victorious
One has to slip into a very nasty dress
That for centuries won’t fade away,
Won’t fade away
Won’t fade away…
Autumn 1942 – Genoa suffers a heavy bombing that lasts a whole night and sweeps ancient and popular quarters away once for all, killing hundreds civilians and destroying an artistic legacy of inestimable value.
In the old Galleria Delle Grazie, used as air-raid shelter, dozens orphans and the nuns taking care of them face a horrible death among many other victims. But a survivor rises from the remains and debris with a brand new and different look in his eyes… A song to evoke those times when Italy was the country “importing Democracy”.
With Ms. Franca Lai (the most famous living Genoese folk singer) as a welcome guest in the role of the Voice Of The City.
GALLERIA DELLE GRAZIE
22nd October of ’42: my 16th birthday
An evening besieged by a black scirocco loaded with misfortunes.
The scirocco is the wrong voice of a sea
That’s almost turning to ink;
It’s a leaden sky, more apt for birds of prey
That once again prepare their talons
And already it’s too late when the air-raid-sirene
Freezes a poor supper in our throats,
Howling its alarm like a tortured soul.
With the same swift swarming of rats
Heading straight for a hole
We’re going to crowd together into this rotten tunnel
That they call “war shelter”.
The deafening crash, the darkness is retching,
The world is overturning.
I feel myself tossed onto a sea of screams,
Then suddenly I’m carried away by a feeling of nothingness
I don’t know how much time had passed before I regain consciousness
Of being here with my whole body intact;
I start to crawl through dismembered corpses,
I go upstream
A river smelling like sulphur and combusted metal,
Smelling like an abbatoir.
And if on the one hand I’m able to win my life back
On the other hand I’m staying here and die
But I’d strongly like to look
In the eyes of those anonymous heroes who
Had the “brlliant idea” of supporting
This bombardment
By making light at the right moment
During the blackout.
And then, what a style, those “liberators”!
What a rich, lavish profusion of means
When in order to hit half a barrack
They raze six quarters to the ground!
But rising out from the wreckage I regain the night,
And stand here to look at the stars again
With eyes that I feel reborn in that hour,
With eyes like those of a rebel.
Any choice the aforementioned survivor will make, it won’t change the feeling and the spirit driving it. Obeying to a natural law, the Rebel revolts against the wrongs and the injustice surrounding him. Where the Revolutionary undergoes a decline, the Rebel remains. And, if necessary, he falls down with no regrets.
NEGLI OCCHI D’UN RIBELLE (IN THE EYES OF A REBEL)
In the eyes of a rebel there’s not just a flame
Kindled by anger, among scorn and disapproval.
Like the sun among the clouds
Sometimes a fast parade of laughing ghosts
Appears in those eyes,
Just like the games the children play in the courtyards
In those clearest evenings so fondly remembered.
Eyes looking at you, eager to shake and stir
Convinced that the world wants nothing but joy and revolt.
Eyes that are certain that giving in is always the worst among all crimes.
Bright eyes filled with tears, eyes of he who went away leaving his love behind
Who knows why?
In the eyes of a rebel there’s a passing of shadows
Just like second thoughts that surprise and confuse him;
Almost like the fear of not bearing the impact
Of that tremendous gift the stars gave him.
In those eyes, as I said, there’s an old stubbornness
Which is the mute coachman of a whole Life’s choice.
Life that is born hazarded, with an ace of cups – the death:
The minimum promised punishment for those who go so far and beyond,
The eternal sentence that is used for the unforgivable guilt
Of having that widespread infection known as temptation to fly and be free
Although it’s quite unusual, sometimes he manages to undermine the power,
Then everyone is ready to kiss the hands that were trampled yesterday,
But only when the victory seems a matter of hours.
And in all civil wars, in all clashes down in cities’ streets
Ideologies collide and only one race rises:
The race made by those deluded, romantic and naive fools who are cut out for the coffin or jail
Over the centuries always the same, engine of an evolution
That will deny them in the end…
Milan, 1945 – among the countless victims of that cruel season, there’s also a beautiful and successful actress. In spite of her innocence and pregnancy, she’s sentenced to death by partisans: symbols of the regime must be destroyed. Her last hours as seen as through the objective of an imaginary camera which will turn out to be the foresight of a killing gun…
LUISA FERIDA
She dresses so sober, the woman you see,
But the ectoplasm of an old lamé dress
Still seems to undress her back,
Offered to the looks in so many soirées.
You focus her under the wan light
Of the closed shutters of a hotel room,
But she’s not going to refuse this last scene,
The final part that has already been written because…
… She’s Luisa, Luisa Ferida
The darling of Cinecittá
La Ferida, that autarkical Diva
The one her audience will deny…
She can’t forget
Those days that were brighter than a hundred August’s suns
Living through them without burning:
The most imperial of all hallucinations.
The rides
In her estate, the coke parties at Coppedé*,
Female Italy
Toward the future walking on her high stilettoes…
A brand new script: a defamatory role
A double is stealing the scene from her.
Even though she’s not guilty, it doesn’t matter at all:
There’s no parole for the one who got too much.
Symbol of roaring years,
There’s no need for Truth;
One more role as a Fedele D’Amore**
Waving goodbye to the sound of a clapperboarding gun charger…
… She takes the ring off her finger
And she’s already put her astrakan fur back into the trunk
It’s the only thing that she can do:
Losing everything as in baccarat!
The bank wins,
The closing credits are slowly appearing,
She puts her hand over her eyes
And she’s bound to a lie that will nail her for years…
She’s Luisa, Luisa Ferida
Wearing the grey-toned color of city’s rain
Stare at her while she’s still alive
You are the operator framing her…
It’s your turn…
It’s your turn…
It’s your turn…
“Read your charge, here’s your movie
Read your charge, here’s your movie
Read your charge, here’s your movie!”
…Dismantle the set…
* http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1544789
http://www.stuardtclarkesrome.com/coppede.html
** The Fedeli d’Amore (faithful of love) were according to some scholars a group composed mainly of Italian poets working in the 13th-14th centuries. It’s a pun, it can also mean “faithful to her love” (Ferida was killed together with her partner in life and movies Osvaldo Valenti)…
11944/1948 – the tragedy of Italian descent people living in Istria and Dalmatia, the ethnic cleansing on Italy’s doorstep, Italy’s enthusiastic supporters of the “foiba solution”, the censorship, the everlasting taboo. The country all Italians have inherited has more than just one root radicated in those Karst lands…
BORA (BORA WIND*)
I’m hearing the echoes of a celebration
Carried by the wind
In a few moments it will be here…
They’re dancing the Kolo
Neither style nor decency, but just great energy.
The doctrine supports the hatred
They think that the best way to begin
Lies in destroying
The traces of history that passed through this land.
Yes, they have a score to settle
Ideology is a dribbling
But it’s hard to put an end to this once and for all…
I believe at least in what I see
The art
Of those who re-shaped
With their hard work and patience
The rough land of this Eastern Gate
It’s clear and obvious.
There’s no doubt: Roman are the origins of these people
Who tamed the stone and the wind of the gulf…
They came from the woods with a shepherd’s pace
With five-year plans and a brand new tricolor flag
With just one star replacing the Orsa Fiumana**
They broke into our houses in just one week…
Bora wind on Zara, Fiume and Pola
There’s a word in the air
And everyone will be silent about it.
Foiba, the word is Foiba!
Some people find it so epic
And with a taste of freedom,
You fall down without making any sound
Not bad as a burial!
You rest in Mother Nature’s womb
Thinking that in your homeland someone will cheer and clap.
They came into our villages
Putting a new dress
Made of magniloquent dogmas
On a much more ancient hate
And in every exiled heart the Bora wind will blow
We grew one hundred years
In just one hour
Via Roma – Nikad Doma
Via Roma – Nikad Doma
Via Roma – Nikad Doma****
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_(wind)
** Orsa Fiumana – Ursa Maior stars standing out on the flag of Free Republic of Fiume (today Rijeka)
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foiba
**** “Roma Street – Never back home”.
Anyway, it must be said without reserve that during the Fascist regime for Slavic people life wasn’t easy at all in the Karst lands, and they suffered persecution in their turn.
1952, near Rome – A brand “new” Italy has just begun. The republic is born but one can already perceive a sense of déja-vu in the air… VIPs, depraved noblemen, shady businessmen, ambitious girls, corrupted politicians, dark authorities…. All the grothesque and gloomy vaudeville as seen as through the weary eyes of a disgusted house-maid who must keep silent because she has a family to support..
A song inspired after the ill-famed “Montesi Affair”*, the first one of a series of more or less covered up Italian scandals…
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Montesi
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,819571,00.html
IN COMPAGNIA DEI LUPI (IN COMPANY OF WOLVES)
What makes a servant more faithful?
Some people think it’s his Master’s fancy,
In my case it’s just a matter of being a penniless wretch,
Not a matter of using the carrot and the stick.
To be a widow providing for three children
Means, at least I think so,
A good spur to swallow and get used to
All obscenities and filth I see.
And I don’t deny that the fact of pretending
To be “blind” and “deaf”
Is a very good way to
Make ends meet*…
But… I would really like to let you know
That I only enter the rooms where those “gentlemen” guzzle and have fun
Just to do the cleaning.
So don’t expect me to tell you
Any dirty gossip to drool over
A mother should not even imagine
That such things do exist
But…
It happens that tonight there’s a big party
At this villa in Torvajanica
That “Great Lady” with a noble demeanor
Is putting her cards on the table:
A huge pile of white powder,
And some young and easy sluts
For the minister, the president of the bank
And other influential and important clients.
And there’s nothing that, without hesitation,
These girls are not ready to do
Longing for future careers
Hand in hand with the Power…
But… Meanwhile there’s more champagne to be served
One girl who wants to show up and draw attention to herself
Decides that she must overdo it.
And what happens?… She stands up laughing,
Takes a breath, then she bends her head,
Her nose dipping into a big heap of coke –
She’s risking her life, that vapid goose!
And then… She begins to grow pale,
Kicking and choking, in a desperate need of air.
She crashes face down on the floor,
Turning blue
Then… We drag the poor thing out of the room:
The shore is just a few steps away
And, after all, she got what she deserved, they say…
So it will be a child’s play to solve the “problem” for this dirty clique,
They’ll surely call a brother** coroner
Certifying about an imprudent footbath
Alas, a fatal one!
It’s very hard to imagine
How ruthless some people can be***
On our way back I suddenly realize
That I’m in the company of wolves…
And now I’m afraid that getting rid of them
And seeing them all hanged
Will be very hard.
The twenty years of those**** who came before
Will just seem a few months in comparison…
* The original Italian version is a pun that cannot be translated between “pontile” (“wharf”)
and “sbarcare il lunario” (this idiomatic expression means “to make ends meet” but literally it’s translated as “to put the calendar ashore ”)
** A freemason brother, in this case.
*** Again: the original Italian version is a pun that cannot be properly translated. A ruthless person is said to have “a hairy stomach”, just like the beasts, and, of course, wolves…
**** ie: the Fascist regime
1968/1980 – many young people supporting opposite extra-parliamentary movements and coveniently manipulated by shady “masters of puppets”, raise the level of the fight and spark the fire of civil war off again. A unique case in the whole Western world, this period* will last for more than a decade; the number of the girls involved in this revived civil war is quite striking…
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anni_di_piombo
(note that English Wikipedia entries are mostly written with an American perspective).
PASIONARIA
If I had to place an adjctive on my recollection of you
Wintery, I would say, and you’d surely know the reasons why…
Those dark years in black and white freezing on us –
The school today, the grave tomorrow.
It might have been convenient to lower our eyes,
The price of self-respect is so high…
Survivor and veteran is the career
That I still don’t fit in;
To evoke you is to bleed
The same way I used to do at that time, maybe even more so now.
Melancholic afternoons that were spent too fast
For our discussions, not to mention the rest…
I was raised playing among puddles and building yards,
Without your high education.
And that incredulous remorse of mine arises just from this:
It’s just me who was your “Cattivo Maestro”
Too many books that were exchanged with inflammatory urgence
And then your nickname: Pasionaria
But I’d like to be able to tell you
That now I know that there was love…
After all, a fossile kind of reserve
Still deeply kept on resisting,
A shy reserve that can instill
Into two bodies with expiry date
That Breath Of Eternity
Everybody go without today…
You walked until the end of our stormy boulevard
With that style of yours, so keen.
Maybe only to my indolence
I owe my escape
From that fate you were doomed to.
The wild season, your Summer Of Lead
Then, was it so necessary to reach that bottom?
Like bullets in the night
May my contempt catch and hit you
You, who pulled the strings
Just to pontificate and lay down the law now,
After having teased us
When my generation fret and fumed
And for the Reason of State
Which makes you say: “ok, one less…”
Rome, 1975 – Among the vast number of violent and everyday deaths one stands out because of its symbolic value, almost like a human sacrifice to the Spirit Of The Age: the Pasolini’s murder.
Right after one of his most desperate, vehement and controversial articles, his voice is silenced forever…
Featuring the Italian rapper Duke Montana as the “Ragazzo Di Vita” (male hustler) in a short but incisive guesting.
PIAZZA DEI CINQUECENTO*
Who knows for sure if something does really exists
Something that is so weary of itself
Like a rainy Italian Sunday.
Then if the night is coming, and it’s November
With its twilight that is falling
Over this urban dew
More and more I regret those vigils around the fireplace…
I had to say to the host:
“You’re always in time to fly from this country”
And he was afraid that I was talking about the dinner.
An old-fashioned and honest Italian man,
He’s just unaware of his own strength
And his affection makes me feel so sweetly sorry
But his thick wine can always make my heart warm…
To testify the Truth:
Now there’s nothing left to be said,
I wish I had the courage of my Faith,
I’d like to free myself from cowardice
From the fear of dying
As only the believers can do…
But under a desperate sky
What drives me to go out now,
Still tastes of impiety,
And I hope
There shall be a new Christianity
After my clandestine Dies Irae
Because love and compassion
Also lie there…
So dear to my heart are the popular jargon,
That childish sense of honour
The joy, the tragic unconcern;
There’s still a feeling, a passion
A Nation survives there
With a residual and bold sense of belonging;
I don’t know how long this is going to last,
But it’s all better than you or I
Perhaps to stretch my look so far
I hurt my eyes
And I would like a balm, or maybe a child
Or some innocence to drink from
Like it’s done among those young delinquents
So handsome and beloved by the Gods.
And I pray:
Please ferry** my body across the night,
Across the city streets’ drains
Until I reach the peace that
Can be allowed by this foolish time that
Turned all ancient Gods into a sickness,
A fever of my days…
You did have your dinner, didn’t you?
Why are you so formal?
“So, what’s up? Can we go now?”***
* Piazza dei Cinquecento is a famous piazza in Rome where Termini station is situated; it’s also a male-hustling place where Pasolini met Pino Pelosi, his alleged killer.
** Just like Charon in Dante’s Inferno. In the classical underworld (Hades), Charon is the ferryman that transports shades of the dead across the waters into the lower world.
*** It’s the male hustler, answering Pasolini’s question.
The “Estate Maledetta” (Bloody Summer) of 1980: Ustica’s “mysterious” aircrash, Bologna train station massacre as seen as through the eyes of a young Mercy and his private memories…
His first summer spent far away from home, the discovery of archaic feelings through an arousing sensuality, the endless discussions about politics… A swim in the beautiful “Etruscan” sea and the news about the most dreadful massacre in the history of the Italian Republic.
A shattered country with its hands tied up….
L’ESTATE DEI SILENZI (THE SUMMER OF SILENCE)
A gloomy decade has been dismissed
With a last burst of flame,
It was Summer time again
And it caught us like a wild monkey
Piercing our adolescent loin
And turning it into a pure light of creation,
Just like in the old age of Thyrrenian people
The sea is the conclusion of every journey.
An Etruscan sea
And a journey of mystery,
Clear rites of passage
In the frescos of Tarquinia.
It was just like having seen
The fragrant blood
Of a world that was still young
Circulating
Into this crippled and withered era…
Then we would have gratefully put
The Heroes’ bundle aside
By that time reduced to be a burden of cobblestones.
We were not exactly reconciled
But a bit more aware and self-respecting:
To be stylish is to be free.
We would have been damned in the end
Because of our poor intuition,
In our endemic carelessness
We were unable to recognize
The neutral and cruel look
That Mother Nature was reserving
To the agonies and pains
Of every one of her good creatures.
So damned because we weren’t able to hear
Echoes of caves and gorges
And of more spectral essences
In the depth of long-lasting lethargies.
And how not to find the pungent smell
Of the slaughter
In that coarse cult of vitality
That we’re a little proud of, after all?
But in the middle of a station’s crossroads
August Fire, the servant
Was addressing badly the forgetful ones,
Saying there’s always a stick ready that,
Like an Atlantic aphasia,
We’ll call it “Freedom”
(It will be our “Freedom”)
The standardization of ’80s and ’90s has come to an end.
Italy is a disintegrated nation at both a cultrual and social level, under the total control of international hidden powers which are making the country bleeding to death, as always with the help of eager local servants. Paradoxically, Italy is on the forefront of avant-garde again: the forefront of a doomed West drowning in the darkness.
ITALIA: ULTIMO ATTO (ITALY: FINAL ACT)
It’s obvious that it ended this way: a disgusting country
Defeated to that point
That it thinks to be entitled
Not to restrain itself.
And meanwhile, above all of us
The jackals are scratching
And everybody’s tipping the wink.
Although we’re accustomed to being treated like dirt
We couldn’t have found worse masters
Than those we already have.
If you begin to spit in the dish you’ve been eating from all along*
You’re sharing the general relief we have already experienced.
That food is more and more hard-won and tasteless
But they tell us it’s going to be rationed soon
And perhaps it already has been…
FIRE
You won’t find enough fire
To tame this pestilence
Not in the stars, not even in the terrestrial abysses.
Italy the Great Whore
Crowned with snow-clad peaks
You can contemplate from a distance
Like an eagle with its nailed wings
And to hear some mouths honouring our flag is just nauseating;
With all those dead on their conscience,
it will be blown by the foulest of breaths*…
But how did we reach this bottom?
I can’t believe it
Just like the cuckold
Always facing accomplished facts
Now you can swear, if you want.
An ancient servants’ cunning has not helped us for some time
And it’s not surprising that for the lack of this behavior there’s nothing left
To risk or gamble upon…
You’re waiting for a day of reckoning that will never come
But how does one expect for such a herd to rouse and revolt?
If the worst comes, everyone will make an imaginary list
Including all the true or supposed bastards who will have to pay
In case that day will come…
EMPTINESS
You will never stop falling,
Every time it’s a lesser evil
That we must swallow
Until the next is worse
They pretend to convince us that
This usual rape is but a compromise.
Yes, I remain a patriot but just when I ‘m with myself.
I live in an Ideal State*** between the walls of my room
To call for the curtain to fall is normal, when a farce has lasted long enough…
* “To bite the hand that feeds you” in Italian is translated as “to spit in the dish where you’re eating”.
** the original Italian version is a pun that cannot be properly translated between “gozzo” (derogative for “throat”) and “fiato pesante” (“bad breath”). “Avere qualcuno sul gozzo” (literally: “to have someone/something in one’s throat” is the Italian for “to have someone/smth on one’s conscience” and/or “to find someone/smth indigestible”, “not to stomach someone/smth”.
*** another pun: “stato ideale” means “ideal state” but also “ideal condition”.