Claudio Lolli
Ho visto anche degli zingari felici

It's always been like this: to be successful and followed, knowing how to sell oneself matters more than actually being valuable. Nowadays, for instance, people debate and write endless words about the fake crucifixions staged on stage by the "rebellious" Madonna, while the death, after more than thirty years of true passion in the madness of none other than a genius like Syd Barrett, is at most, fit for a few news snippets...

Claudio Lolli is followed by few, as reserved and modest as he is, capable of standing out (greatly) only on his records, with poetic stature equal to the best authors in Italy (and we have good ones, musically we trail behind but lyrically we fear no comparison...), also gifted with a beautiful and communicative voice, warm and with no specific inflection other than a generic belonging to Northern Italy. Those who are superficially familiar with his works might judge him unfairly due to the "loser" aura accumulated with the first three albums from the early seventies, so heavy with pessimism and nihilism as to be unbearable upon repeated listening, but anyone who has come into contact with this fourth album released in 1976 should have realized it is one of the masterpieces of Italian singer-songwriter music.

Lolli is a militant singer-songwriter, able on this occasion to put into verse and music with effective measure, strength, love, and sincerity what the seventies were politically, socially, culturally, sentimentally. He does it with his own Marxist perspective, with a touching sweetness, with the power and suggestion of the Italian language used at its best, and finally by structuring the musical part in a remarkable and unusual way.

"Ho visto anche degli zingari felici" is indeed a suite, consisting of seven different pieces plus a final reprise of the first one, linked together by the arrangement to form a compact and kaleidoscopic saga about those moments in Italy: politics entwined with love, feminism with anarchy, the unpunished massacres (even today...) with discussions in taverns, the social with the personal, and as the intersection of it all, crossroads of private feelings and public manifestations, the square of a city, which for Lolli is Piazza Maggiore in Bologna but could be any other meeting and reference point where each of us has accumulated memories, moments of doubt, turning points, happiness, despair.

Today as always, I feel a shiver run down my spine when, towards the end of track no. 6 "Anna di Francia" a sublime ballad of love and respect, the rhythm tightens and Claudio sings:

Non sarò per te un orologio,
il lampadario che ti toglie il reggiseno,
quando è tardi, è notte e tu sei stanca
e la tua voglia come il tempo manca.
Non sarò per te un esattore
di una lacrima ventuno volte al mese,
non conterò i giorni alle tue lune
per far l'amore senza rimborso spese.
Non sarò per te solo lo specchio
di una faccia che non cambia mai vestito,
non sarò il tuo manico di scopa
travestito da amante o da marito.
Non sarò quel cielo grigio quel mattino,
il dentrificio che fa a pugni con il vino,
non sarò la tua consolazione,
e neanche il padre del tuo prossimo bambino.
Per questa volta almeno sarò la tua libertà,
per questa volta almeno solo la tua libertà,
per questa volta almeno la nostra libertà
e la piazza calda e dolce di questa città