Aktuala
La Terra

“This experiential journey … I embarked on it trying to bring Nature back to life through my work, playing seeds to regenerate forests…” *

I smile, reading the words of Walter Maioli, the “leader” of Aktuala.
I smile while listening to the seeds playing and watching the forests vanish, sitting in front of the monitor while the speakers fill the room with the sounds of “La Terra”.
The second album, following the self-titled debut, from the Milanese collective led by the muziekmagier, created in 1973 and released by Bla Bla the following year, represents an astonishing testament of that fervor, not only musical, that also rippled through Italy in the first half of the '70s, involving ideal, political, and emotional aspects to which the winds of '68 had thrown open the doors.
But if these references, which I nevertheless consider indispensable, might seem driven by a rhetorical intent, the music that Aktuala delivers to listeners from the future is of an unquestionable concreteness.

It is one of the first examples of what we now commonly call world music.
It is so because it chooses to represent a need that is felt as irreplaceable: harmony with vital and fundamental elements. Whether they are tangible, like the branches of trees that enable our breathing, or immaterial, like the desires that cross us.
It does so by electing the "organicity" of sound as the most direct vehicle to achieve this harmony.
And by assimilating in this design modules and rhythms originating from different parts of the globe. As was happening elsewhere, in different measures and forms both in jazz and in some offshoots of the more experimental “rock”, but with an attitude that seems to favor a sort of spontaneous naturalness in the creative process.

It does so, for example, by discarding the drums in favor of an impressive array of percussion from other traditions and cultures: a vast collection assembled over years of study and research, which in this record Maioli entrusts to a young Trilok Gurtu, who is thus initiated into the multifaceted world of ethnic music.

It does so by layering sounds in directions that do not seem to develop according to a preordained composition, but by following a current that aligns with the suggestions evoked by those sounds.
It's not improvisation in a jazz sense, but rather a surprisingly "natural" flow, made possible by the undeniable preparation of the musicians involved in the project, in a sort of musical “community” that brings together diverse experiences.
Coming from conservatories as well as from improvised jazz or psychedelic "rock", deeply knowledgeable in folk music not only from Italy, they find a truly surprising harmony and balance, which across the four tracks of the album release moments of hypnotic and enveloping beauty.

The opening, which entrusts a theme to a harmonica that will dissolve into the sound fabric only to reemerge later, already smells of earth: the spirit of a traveling caravan that captures us along its path.
A path that will allow encounters with the oriental fascination with cyclicality, with the hypnotic percussion trance of Africa, and with the depth marked by the draw of a cello, to an airier space designed by wind instruments, also of different origins, or by the harp. In an original and ever-changing sonic blend that unravels without interruption.

We are traveling with them, still today, over thirty years later, as soon as “La Terra” begins to spin.
And we cannot forget that what today might sound almost obvious, assimilated over the decades to come, was at the time a true exploration of other strands of folk music.
A journey that Aktuala concluded shortly afterwards, with a third album “Tappeto volante” completed in '76, after a relocation to Morocco.
I've only managed to find the first two so far, and I've chosen to mention this one for purely “sentimental” reasons. But I have no hesitation in recommending the first one, less immediate, with some echoes of a certain “experimental” jazz, and also that “Tappeto Volante” which I haven't listened to in too long.

In short, I believe that the work of rediscovering the Italian musical heritage of those years, which is also testified in DeBaser by the interest of many listeners, even very young ones, should not overlook these albums: so original in intentions and results, so ahead of their time, so irreducibly honest, so deeply and simply beautiful.

* from an interview