Italy: a storia d’amore
A musical break, with perhaps something new to you
No one learns German in order to listen to Wagner – even if I believe they should. Still less do they learn Czech in order to listen to Dvorak. And they should. But many do learn Italian in order to listen to Puccini as he minutely carves out their hearts, or to Verdi, as he smashes them out with his anvil and hammer. It’s a language that also comes in mighty useful when ordering pizzas and the like.
I play my iTunes on “need to raise the voice a bit for conversation” level through the house and, one after the other, the i lines up the tunes for broadcast to the entire lower floor and parts of the garden. It comes as mild relief to neighbours, since we do have a disco on the other side of the railway tracks, with which we play “volume games” on Saturday nights till way past their bedtime, if not ours.
Here is a tune that played today on my side of the tracks called L’Italia, sung by Florentine Marco Masini, which got him good credit a few years back at San Remo although, on first hearing him, you may occasionally get an uncontrollable urge to clear your throat, even if he doesn’t have one to clear his.
The Eurovision Song Contest is good fun mixed with political mud-slinging and can throw up some hits, but the annual May evening where even wild horses will not drag you from that box won’t advance your worldly wisdom if you’re no close follower of the music scene; San Remo, which is Italy’s own national “Eurovision”, truly is a showcase for the very best pop in Italy, however, and L’Italia featured in 2009.
It has a rattling good rhythmic beat, and singable melody, good counterpoint and harmony. The lyric bursts at the seams of the melody, as with many Italian songs, having just slightly too many words for the melody to accommodate on the “one word for every note” lesson learned from Do-Re-Mi; the surfeit of text lends the lyric added drive and demands an “acting” quality from the artist: this one wrote the song and performs it, so the soul is palpable.
L’Italia starts quietly, in negative mood (Italy’s a mess), with a slightly nervy, insistent, onwardly pressing rhythm that drives us forward. The pulse rises through the song’s mid-section (Italy just gets worse, and we make it that way) and, by the time we arrive at the last stanza, Masini has us nodding in agreement with his miserable balance sheet.
This is fattispecia Italia, nevertheless, and, with the liabilities listed, Masini turns to the assets. His state has risen to the apoplectic: my mind’s eye sees Turiddu stage left, blood freshly gushing from his chivalrous knife fight, the ghosts of Puccini and Verdi arise pillar-like, left and right, Mimi and Violetta expire centre stage from the mere emotion of it all. If you want drama in your pop music, Italy’s the place to go: for, the asset balancing these liabilities is the Italians’ love of l’Italia: the scent of an Italy that awaits its love story.
When you know that as you listen, you’ll understand the apoplexy and you’ll feel the emotion. It’s a storia d’amore. And of a quintessential Fiat 500.
You must be gasping to hear it. Just a click away:
(For those who don’t speak Italian, here’s the original lyric to follow, followed by an English translation, which scans no better than the Italian does. Dino Zoff played football for Italy (in goal):)
