Casa del Vento
Sessant'anni di Resistenza

The memory. A more or less distant figure nestled somewhere in the mind of man. The memory that is a deliberate or unfortunate evocation of the past. The memory that makes one smile, get angry, feel uneasy... and sometimes, to say the least, understand. The sketches of the past lurk everywhere, hidden on films, papers, tapes, photographs; and more often among the utterances of our fellow humans. The stories of yesterday provide a testimony to human reason, which with age becomes memory. Thus, a sound album of memories is unearthed, introduced by a solitary round of accordion and the clapping of hands hinting at the theme Bella ciao, before the ghosts of Modesta Rossi, Licio Nencetti, Pio Borri, and all the other heroes of the Italian Resistance peek through the notes of this musical fresco that paints an Italy violated, humiliated, oppressed by the Nazi-fascist dictatorship, and its ideals of dominance heroically opposed by partisan actions. The atmosphere is raw, tragic, heartrending and above all traditional, in the sense that in an hour of music the electronic instruments remain just a hypothesis. In their place, acoustic guitars, violins, accordions, and all those instruments capable of shaping a genuinely popular environment sneak in. Everything is narrated without the well-known poetic concoctions that characterize singer-songwriter songs; the language is therefore quite simple, sometimes even elementary, as if to emphasize the direct and powerful tones of oral storytelling, as if the words were dictated by a war hero, or by a true eyewitness. The fifteen tracks thus narrate the desperate and courageous oppositions of the rebels against totalitarianism, which is why the praise to the red flag, or the reaction against servile subordination, cannot be considered a pretext for corruption towards the listener, meaning an exhortation towards a certain political orientation, first for the truthfulness of historical sources, second because the album praises something much greater: the exaltation of human rights, the desperate search for a freedom that could lead man towards a better future.

Federico “Dragonstar” Passarella.