Fabrizio De André
Anime salve

THE REVIEW

As in his earliest songs, in what is unfortunately De André's last album, the protagonists, the "Anime salve" indeed, are the marginalized, the poor, cut off from a society based solely on money and competition. For the music this time the distinguished fellow citizen Ivano Fossati collaborates, and it is a pity that this partnership could not continue. The two complement each other perfectly: De André is primarily a poet, Fossati an already refined musician. The album generically mentions "Lyrics and music by Fabrizio De André and Ivano Fossati," but it is plausible that the former dominated the lyrics and the latter the music.

Nonetheless, what emerged is the true masterpiece of the last De André, the "ethnic" one, although perhaps the only songs that seem a bit out of place are the dialectal ones: "Dolcenera" (partially in Genoese) a love story intertwined with the event of a flood hitting Genoa, and "A cumba" (The dove), a popular nursery rhyme like "Volta la carta", in Genoese, about a marriage proposal. "Princesa", which opens the album, is the story of a Brazilian, born male, who undergoes the most terrible treatments "so that his body resembles him on the seafront of Bahia", finally becoming a "viado". Rich in raw words, as the story and environment demand, it ends in a wild samba. The most chilling song on this album is dedicated to a marginalized people, the Romani: "Khorakhanè - a forza di essere vento" is at once a picture of the squalid life of a camp "torn by the wind," of monotonous days where "even today we go begging," of nightmares like deportations, but also of dreams, of festivals, of journeys made "for the same reason for traveling: to travel." Moving and inspired, it culminates in the desperate final song in the Romani language (voice of Dori Ghezzi).

"Anime salve" has splendid music, a slow and very elegant rhythm, but a text a bit too enigmatic, the most "Fossatiano" of the album. "Le acciughe fanno il pallone," although in Italian, recalls those fishermen and those sea places described in "Creuza de ma". Evocative flutes accompany an elaborate, not too fast rhythm. "Disamistade", with its dark, nocturnal setting and tragic imagery, recalls Sardinia and its feuds. "Ho visto Nina volare" offers dreamlike atmospheres and a clear classical guitar. "Smisurata preghiera" is the hardest track, the most "rock" (excluding the orchestral finale), but it compensates with a text that is the synthesis of the entire album: it is a hymn to "those who travel obstinately and contrary to the direction", to "servants disobedient to the laws of the pack". This is also somewhat the meaning of De André's entire artistic journey, which leaves this album as the last testimony of a life and art "against" to be framed.