25 years have passed since the death of Fabrizio De Andrè but his
thought, his musical research and what he transmitted in terms oflyricism and political commitment in its highest meaning are still
alive. I focus on the personal path that gave birth to a singing
revolution that started from the influence of French chansonniers and in
particular with the Brassens records that his father had given him, up
to his research and valorization of Italian dialects. Brassens became
his life teacher who confirmed his anarchist ideas, but he was a musical
example that gave him technical openings on the use of the guitar. He
matured the awareness that, as Brassens suggested in his songs,
everything arose from social and moral problems that often conflict with
each other. According to Fabrizio De Andrè, morality is a set of laws
established by the ruling class, so much so that it created many
problems for him with the Catholic Church after his harsh criticism of
the Ten Commandments, which were contrary to any social sense: "It is
convenient to say 'do not steal or desire another man's wife' when you
have money and concubines". So he frequents the Italian Anarchist
Federation of Carrara with some Genoese comrades. His political and
personal journey leads him to detach himself a bit from everyone,
including his family, but by observing reality, he invented his own
style that led him to be an artist and a poet of the most intense,
poignant and sophisticated poems of our time. But De André had to deal
with his poetic anarchy that preceded Communism and the workers' and
trade union movements: because from the moment Marxism took hold in the
early 1960s, anyone who did not equate the Left with Marxism was
considered a political opponent in the Soviet style, while, for him, the
difference between communists and anarchists was that communists based
themselves only on Marx while anarchists based themselves on Bakunin and
Stirner and the criticism of Hegel. The communists, Fabrizio said, did
not know that the Spanish civil war had been lost by the Republicans
because in the trenches the anarchists (who constituted the largest
number of combatants) found themselves fighting two wars: the one
outside the trenches against the Francoists and the one inside the
trenches with their comrades from the Stalinist International Brigades:
this, Fabrizio commented, a year and a half before Stalin, who knows
why, had them sign the non-aggression pact with Germany. So in the first
months of 1936 the Soviet weapons had stopped arriving at the front,
which meant that Stalin despite all his proclamations, had more interest
in seeing Francisco Franco's order established in Spain. But let's get
to the analysis of his works, I am convinced that nothing in De Andrè's
production is not poetic and inspired and it is difficult for me to
indicate the best album, I can only express my preference at this moment
that I write, because over time I have become attached to all the works
of Faber (nickname that his friend Paolo Villaggio had given him). In
this phase of my life and of the political situation that Italy is going
through, the album that best fits these feelings is undoubtedly "Storia
di un impiegato" because it has entered, for better or for worse and
forcefully in our personal stories and has given us food for thought on
many issues that are still very current, the struggle, the relationships
between generations, violence, prison. An album, written in 1973 with
Nicola Piovani (music) and Fabrizio Bentivoglio (lyrics), a concept
album that together with "La buona Novella" (1970) and "Non al denaro
non all'amore né al cielo" (1971) is part of a trilogy that reflects on
great themes. A particular album, which has been much talked about and
even contested by some because it almost seemed like an incitement to
rebellion, while in my opinion it represents a picture, in the form of
poetry, in which an important historical period is described. A very
marked portrait but absolutely devoid of any pretense of teaching or
inspiring violent actions, even if its strength is undeniable, made of
melodies and new sounds that, combined with the many hot and heartfelt
themes, blend into an explosive mix. "Storia di un impiegato" is an
album about the illusion that was born from that great mass movement
that was 1968.
It is a musical novel that traces the path of a young man who, starting
from listening to a 1968 protest song (La canzone del Maggio), reflects
on his inability to take part in the struggle, because he is now too
integrated into bourgeois society, but it is a song in which there is an
awareness of social problems and the need to fight to change the
situation; it talks about struggle, it remembers the events that
happened during the revolt born by the students and, addressing those
who did not participate in the struggle, it accuses them and reminds
them that anyone, even those who, in those days, locked themselves at
home out of fear, are equally involved in the events. The song contains
the statement that the revolt is not over but will be there again, in
the future, stronger. The employee reflects on his life made of
mediocrity, fear and so much individualism and compares himself to those
kids who wanted, instead, to rebel against the system that oppressed
them. This reflection awakens dormant ideals of protest in him, which
slowly make their way into his mind and his dreams (At the Masked Ball
and Dream Number Two), in which he thinks of individually solving all
the problems. So he decides to throw a bomb at a masked ball attended by
all the myths, values of bourgeois culture and power. And he begins to
dream of witnessing the effects of the explosion on those he has
respected for years, he witnesses the agony of everyone, of his father
and mother and of the friend who taught him to rebel. The dream
continues: the voice of a judge informs him that the bourgeois power was
aware of his actions, it was even following him from birth just as it
follows all its subjects. The accusation of murder, of massacre, turns
into thanks for having eliminated old residues that were annoying the
power itself, which has now found other ways to govern.
The judge informs him that he has used the instruments of the law
correctly and that his gesture is nothing other than the search for
personal power. So they welcome him among those who count, among those
who decide, among those who govern and dispose of others' and their own
freedom. A new dream, or a new episode of previous dreams, and the
employee takes the place of the father he himself sacrificed in search
of personal space. He relives a harrowing life, made of illusions and
related disappointments, of desperate defenses of his own integrity, of
his own money, of his properties, it is no longer a dream, but a
nightmare and the employee wakes up. He has understood that in any case
he is a finished man, without any possibility of recovery, that his
gestures will always be individualistic, aimed at his own personal need
and that climbing the ladder of power does not escape his own condition
of isolation, of anguish. The bomb that in the dream had been thrown
with force, with anger, for revenge, now, in reality, becomes a moment
of intoxication and, obviously, of lucidity. The dream turns into a
nightmare when the man dreams of his father, whom he himself killed "in
a previous dream," and realizes that he is just like him (Song of the
Father). The employee wakes up aware that he is in every way functional
to that society he hates. The employee knows what to do, knows where to
go, knows who he has to hit and why; he goes straight to the parliament
to throw a real bomb to kill real people, but his skill was only a
dream: the bomb rolls down towards a newspaper stand and the only thing
it hits is, as if by prediction, the face of his girlfriend who is on
all the pages of the newspapers.
And to the monster's girlfriend, the employee writes a letter from the
prison where he is locked up (Verranno a Chiedirti del nostro amore),
and then, in the last track of the album, he finally assumes a new
awareness of his role within a community, in this case the prison, and
of the struggle (Nella mia ora di libertà). In prison, in a reality that
is no longer individualistic, but perhaps the height of being equal, the
employee who is no longer an employee discovers a new way of
understanding life and the things that surround him. He discovers the
reality of the word "collective" and the word "power". And then,
imprisonment itself makes the boy take the last step to reach full
awareness of what is right to do: the struggle in prison from individual
becomes collective again and the renunciation of the hour of fresh air,
as a renunciation of individualism, prepares the ground for the
kidnapping of the guards with the help of all the prisoners, united, to
reconquer the real air, the real freedom that had been, unjustly, taken
away from them. A great stylistic innovation of the album is in the
language, a modern language that instead of a story becomes images that
are sometimes psychological, sometimes dreamlike, in a potpourri of real
and non-real elements.
New tracks that outline a path in which the different phases of his
conscience chase each other, dreams sometimes full of lyricism (They
fought just like you play/the puppies of May were normal/they had time
even for prison/the same spring remained waiting outside/the same
anger), and irony (there are those who saw him cry/a torrent of
vowels/seeing a newspaper kiosk explode). A special mention goes to a
masterpiece "Verranno a Chiedirti del nostro amore", one of the most
intense love songs ever written, the letter from prison by the bomber to
his woman: starting from their relationship De Andrè pushes himself to a
broader reflection on the compromises of the bourgeois couple.... "you
didn't manage to change me / I didn't change you, you know."
ENJOY LISTENING OR RE-LISTENING FROM JANKADJSTRUMMER
*A lot of information is taken from the album's liner notes by Roberto
Danè and from Doriano Fasoli's book, Fabrizio De André. Passaggi di
tempo, pp. 175-176
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/10/29/fabrizio-de-andre-ora-sappiamo-che-e-un-delitto-il-non-rubare-quando-si-ha-fame/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten