Antonello Venditti
Ullalla

“Jodi was a little boy, Jodi and his monkey, abandoned to his fate in the land, in the cursed land…”

After the enormous sales success of his pinnacle “Lilly”, among bitter reflections on drugs, ibexes fleeing to Switzerland to escape tax evasion, and stars threatened by the Flagellum Dei, the then-promising Roman singer-songwriter Antonello Venditti decided to deeply change course both musically and textually to write what is perhaps his least loved and least known album in his entire discography: “Ullala” (or the song of “Jodi and the monkey”) was released in 1976, a year of grace for many Italian authors of the period, and immediately caused division between the public and critics.

The arrangements, until then so deeply and violently pianistic, underwent the introduction of guitars by Ivan Graziani, the attacks of Walter Calloni (in the same year at the court of Area in their “Maledetti”) and a much more sophisticated and sparse approach. It is mainly a very “political” album, a collection of strong reflections on some of the events that had characterized the so-called “years of lead” until then, obviously revisited with an allegorical key. Just place the needle on side A of the vinyl to hear:

“This is the story of Mary Magdalene, lost and innocent, forever cursed by her father. She was twelve years old and knew love, between the thorns and rags of the man who passed by.”

A very strong attack immediately, forged by the union of a religious episode (that of Magdalene) with the heavy affront of a delicate topic like prostitution, a subject considered taboo at the time. Indeed, because the Italian public of the time embodied nothing but the respectability of an era, of those who “Where will we end up?” to “See what desolation!”, statements that recur in the same piece. There are also accounts of episodes that greatly stirred public opinion, and “Canzone per Seveso” is profound testimony of this, nothing other than the meticulous description of how a Swiss industry released a cloud of toxins onto the population, causing severe and irreversible damage. What has always distinguished Venditti from many of his contemporary singer-songwriters is his approach to feelings of love, far from the horrid sentimentality of the following decade, with “Una Stupida e Lurida Storia d’amore” that many of us and still others would have wanted to write in the evening and dedicate it to their girlfriend, or the citationism to other artists of the time, with the ode “Per Sempre Giovane” that winks so much at that “Born to Run” of Springsteen's memory, so much so that it is recalled in the last seconds of the track.

“Ullala” is above all a record endowed with soul, with conscience: Jodi and his monkey know it well, a splendid ballad with a reggae rhythm, on which the focal center of the album hinges. The president to be killed in this case is the corrupt system, the power that crushes individuals and leads them astray, the Leviathan of Hobbes that instills terror with its appearance.

After this LP, Venditti will never be the same again and, following the well-crafted social denunciation pop of “Sotto il segno dei pesci”, he will begin his descending parabola that still today seems to have no end. All that's left for us is to stop for a moment and think:

“Jodi built the hope, the hope rotted in the shadow of a courtyard. To his companions the adventure, of a life destined to live.”

Singing the lullaby “Ullala”…