Martello

Track 6: Centro Di Gravità Permanente (Remastered)
Brass instruments ringing out powerfully, a tune that has now become public. It's precisely "Centro di gravità." "An old Breton woman with a hat and an umbrella made of rice paper and bamboo" yes, yes, that’s her! But what does this image represent? What does this woman from Great Britain, holding typically Eastern objects, signify? It may refer to English (and thus European) colonialism in Eastern countries, which began around 1840, and can also be linked to the following two lines, "brave captains, cunning Macedonian smugglers." Then, "Euclidean Jesuits dressed like bonzes to enter the court of the Ming dynasty emperors"...quite complex verses. I turn to the internet...it says this line refers to Matteo Ricci, who, dressed as a bonze, managed to enter the court of the Chinese emperor. But until now we have been joking… sort of. Now comes "I seek a permanent center of gravity that never lets me change my mind about things and people," the most overused refrain of Battiato's entire musical career, filled with the doctrine of Gurdjieff that strongly inspired the life of the Sicilian master. Battiato himself says: "Georges Ivanovič Gurdjieff maintained that the permanent center of gravity should be, in summary, a remedy for the instability of contemporary man, be it emotional, intellectual, sexual, or motor," explaining worse a kind of absolute balance point where everything becomes certain and clear. So essentially, the message Battiato wants to convey in the refrain is "We are perpetually seeking perfection and we keep searching again and again, very often in vain"...it’s a bit bitter when read like this. But let’s move on. "On the streets of Beijing it was May, we joked about picking nettles," the references to China in the piece continue to increase; this time it depicts a festive day where nettles are being gathered (nettles sprout in spring, hence "it was May"), almost symbolizing a kind of "harvest time" that occurs regularly. But immediately after, Battiato goes on: "I can't stand Russian choirs, phony rock music, Italian new wave, English punk free jazz, nor even African black music," almost wanting to distance himself from everything that was emerging musically at the beginning of the 80s, especially when he talks about New Wave...but there’s a particular detail that sounds quite amusing: during those years, critics classified Battiato in that Italian new wave genre and he was, in fact, the first of this movement to achieve great success; it's a bit like blindfolding oneself and starting to whip all the passersby, realizing that there is a chance it might be his own behind being struck by his whip...Battiato is so wonderful.
Then the refrain starts again and the piece leads us with its ba

Track 5: Segnali Di Vita (2008 Remaster)
The most underrated track on the album... and to this day, anyone who ignores it deserves a beating, because it remains one of the most intense and classic pieces on the album. So much so that, here I say it and here I deny it, it wouldn't be out of place on an album like "Fisiognomica," further softening the arrangement. "Time changes many things in life: meaning, friendships, the desire to change that is in me, the need for personal evolution detached from common rules, from this false personality," in a few words Battiato describes the life of a human being, which constantly changes; every person matures with every passing second, living more and more as themselves, detached from all the fake personalities they wear every day. "Signs of life in the courtyards and houses at dusk, the lights remind us of celestial mechanics," a bit of the piece's leitmotif, simply telling us "something is changing," in simple things and places lies the future of humanity, and we must seize all of it because that's where life is. "Sounds that provide a background for the stars, the cosmic space is expanding and the galaxies are moving away," even the universe is constantly changing, expanding more and more; "You realize how low my mind flies" in relation to the previously mentioned cosmic space, "It's the fault of associative thoughts that I can’t stay here now," we are still too attached to a mundane mentality to understand these things that are much greater than us.
After the leitmotif of the whole piece (Signs of life in the courtyards etc.), perhaps the most intense and moving moment of the entire song arrives: the final coda: a pulsating drumbeat, saxophones animatedly reproducing the melody, violins soaring supported by pianos, and in the last 20 seconds everything comes together in a sound that strikes the heart with its power and refinement.
One very beautiful aspect of this album is that the more danceable tracks boast linguistic games filled with quotations, while the ballads choose a simpler yet emotionally charged approach, which is a stylistic choice that continues to resonate; even after 40 years, we all still let ourselves be emotionally carried away by pieces like "Segnali di vita."

Track 4: Cuccurucucù (Remastered)
"Cuccurucucù Paloma, ahiahiahiahia sang" these are the first legendary lines/chorus of Cuccurucucù, the fourth track of the album. But what does Cuccuricucù Paloma mean? Well, after some research, it turns out to be a clear reference to a song by the Mexican singer-songwriter Tomas Méndez, which Battiato uses because "Sicily from my childhood is very close to both Spanish and South American traditions," so one could perhaps erroneously say that he associates these surreal words with his Sicily. It would be nice if it were really so.
The first verse already offers some exceptional insights: "The serenades at the teacher training institute during gym or religion class," as a student of the training institute (now Human Sciences), I can’t help but be thrilled by this line, especially because he later takes gym and religion as the times for serenades, which have always been the lightest and freest hours of the week. Personally, my heart opens a little, but let's move on. "For Carnival, I played on floats in costume," this line comes from Battiato's youth experience when he played on a float during the Acireale carnival, earning 13,000 lire, and when he returned home, he found his father furious. "I already had the moon and Uranus in Leo," we can start by saying that in this line Battiato is not referring to himself since he was born under the sign of Aries, and he surely made it up for rhyme purposes (with "during gym and religion class"). "The sea in the drawer, the thousand blue bubbles, since you left, I no longer exist" in one fell swoop he cites Milva and Mina, and immediately after, he references Nicola DiBari with "The world is gray, the world is blue"...every time you hear these lines, you go crazy. After the chorus of Cuccurucucù Paloma, Battiato sings "The dire wrath of Afghan refugees who moved from the border to Iran, sing to me, oh goddess of American Indians, the erotic deeds of Squaw Pelle di Luna"; all this is a huge citation from the Iliad adapted to a context where Afghan refugees move to Iran and then unexpectedly shift to American Indians and Squaw (which means woman) Pelle di Luna. "The fountain pens with blue ink, the electric razor I don’t use anymore," perhaps the most cryptic and interpretable lines of the bunch, but I will try to offer my hypothesis, connecting a bit to Bandiera bianca: Battiato compares the past to the present, taking the fountain pen as a model of past times and the electric razor as an example of the present he no longer intends to use. It's an interpretation from mental illness...but it's my idea.
After hearing the chorus for the third time, we reach the most citation-rich moment not only of the song but of the entire album: "Lady Madonna," namely the eponymous song by the Beatles, "I can try with a little help from my friends" which cites With a little

Track 3: Gli Uccelli (Remastered)
A sinuous orchestral introduction guides us into the piece, the first slow track of the album. The lyrics, compared to the two previous ones, do not feature overly complex imagery, but in their simplicity, they hide a very beautiful meaning: the birds that are the protagonists of the song are divine signals, these entities that exist above everything and therefore have a closer connection to the origin of things. Despite the fact that the text expresses this without secret meanings in the verses, we need to pause for two minutes to discuss the chorus: "They open their wings, dive down, land better than airplanes, change the world’s perspectives. Unpredictable flights and very fast ascents, imperceptible trajectories, codes of existential geometries," meaning the birds are not just a form of "divine presence" but are themselves the regulators of existence through the trajectory of their flight.
But one very important thing for the vitality of the piece is the base, which alternates between orchestral and elegant moments to more danceable passages that do not lose a bit of the orchestra’s presence and the elegance that characterizes it; everything explodes at the end of the second chorus when the piece gains speed until the end of the track.
I know this time the listening review is slightly shorter, but this is all I had to say about this track; an extra word, in my opinion, would have spoiled it, and finding other possible hidden meanings would have somewhat ruined the experience of the piece, which manages to thrive in its elegant musicality and its "simple" and poetic lyrics. Nothing more and nothing less.

Track 2: Bandiera Bianca (Remastered)
"Mr. Tambourine, I don't feel like joking, let's put on our jerseys again, times are about to change." One cannot start talking about "Bandiera bianca" without mentioning the first legendary line, where Battiato tells Mr. Tambourine (the Italianization of Mr. Tambourine Man, a song by Bob Dylan, used here to represent lightness and leisure) to put his jersey back on, to set a limit because times are changing. In this surreal way, it pushes us into a piece that mixes not just musical quotes, hard-hitting verses that criticize society, but always enclosed in the Battiatesque kaleidoscope, becoming lighter and therefore understandable even to the casual listener. "We are children of the stars, great-grandchildren of His Majesty Money," quoting the famous song by Alan Sorrenti, Battiato tells us that it is useless to believe we are children of something sacred if we are all enslaved by material wealth. "Fortunately, my racism prevents me from watching those idiotic shows with electoral tribunes," one of the heaviest lines of the song, where Battiato scorns the entire Italian political class, defining this hatred as racism, almost as if he wanted to assert his intellectual/spiritual superiority over those who, according to Plato, should be capable of guiding society through knowledge. "And you want to put on perfumes and deodorants," meaning: how pointless it is to care for appearances if our being is rotten. "You are like quicksand, pulling everyone down," the moral decay of some characters (especially those financially advantaged) drags everyone down with them, normalizing even the most unhealthy aspects of their lives. "Some put on sunglasses to have more charisma and symptomatic mystery" may seem like an extension of the line about perfumes, but in reality, it is a demonstration of terrifying self-irony: during the period of "La voce del padrone," in many music videos, Battiato often wore sunglasses; this is quite beautiful because despite having a monstrous hatred for this society, with that small detail he practically says, "Yes, all this makes me sick... but I am part of it too." "How hard it is to remain a father when children grow up and mothers turn gray," in collective thought, the desire not to age has seeped in; even at seventy, one must stay young and take care of one's body; there is always that concept of appearance, where adults constantly try to rejuvenate themselves to avoid accepting their old age. "How many miserable figures cross the country, how wretched life is in the abuse of power," yet another invective against Italy of that time where the life of those who abuse their power is defined as miserable, as something cheap and forgettable.
Here we are at the chorus "On the bridge flies the white flag," a line taken from "L'ultima ora di Venezia" by Arnaldo Fusinato, and q

Ladies and gentlemen, buzzurri and not, as usual, I am happy to present to you 40 YEARS OF LA VOCE DEL PADRONE, where we will analyze in detail the 7 tracks that make up Franco Battiato's masterpiece. Let’s get started.
Track 1: Summer On A Solitary Beach (2008 Remaster)
The album opens with a distant sound of waves, upon which the base unfolds, with verses that are urgent yet slightly melancholic in melody. "We spent the summer on a lonely beach," these are the first lines of the piece and they are disarming in themselves: a summer spent in solitude, without that summer joy that brings comfort. This makes this beach almost a metaphysical place, unreal, as if by eliminating all the summer elements, the beach loses its common meaning.
"And we could hear the echo of an open-air cinema and on the sand a tropical warmth from the sea," typical elements of a summer vacation, yet always mixed with this veil of solitude and sadness, in such an empty seaside town that only the cinema can break the silence. "And in the afternoon when the sun nourished us, every now and then a cry covered the distances and the air of things became unreal" – even during the afternoon, there is no one around, just an occasional shout; but the lyrics say that the air of things became unreal, which, connecting it to the earlier line, could suggest that on that beach, in that climate of solitude, a kind of magic was created, a moment of peace that lasts for a long time.
Then the chorus kicks in, the base calms down and becomes softer, and Battiato intones the iconic "Sea, sea, I want to drown, take me far away to shipwreck, away away away from these shores, take me far away on the waves"... which, in extreme summary, means he’s fed up, he’s had enough of the sea and he begs his companion (or companion?) to take him away from there. The base then explodes again in this sad dance and the second verse begins: "A wonderful summer on a solitary beach, against the sea le Gran Hotel Sea-gull Magic" – in content, it's somewhat the parallel of the open-air cinema, only with the Grand Hotel... and in English. But strangely, he says A wonderful summer after complaining about being fed up with the sea: I've always viewed this as a veiled attack on the man of consumer society, who constantly changes his mind, who goes to the sea in summer simply because it’s common to everyone and instead finds himself alone.
Then comes the most cryptic and indecipherable part of the entire piece: "While in the distance a dark miner was returning." It’s a line full of mystery and questions; why introduce a dark miner in an anti-climactic way? And where is he returning from? By looking into it a bit more, we might see that Battiato could be referring to the sulfur mines in Sicily, active until the late '70s, where miners worked in inhumane conditions, or he could be referencing a song from the '30s called simply Miniera; in short, there are many interpretations.