Fabrizio De André
Crêuza De Mä

There is a logic in wanting to talk about Creuza de mä today, a logic that transcends annalistic, artistic – undoubtedly many, and acknowledged[1] – and intellectual reasons, a logic that emerged already at the dawn of the collaboration between the Genoese singer-songwriter and Pagani, a collaboration that dates back to La buona novella.

The album, which De André remembers as «a kind of synthesis of the sounds of the Mediterranean: not only instrumental but also vocal sounds», reveals itself as a concept album centered on the sea, beginning with the title track introduced by a Macedonian bagpipe, followed by the bouzouki and the plucked viola: it narrates the return of sailors exhausted by fatigue («shadows of faces»), a company arriving in the city and not seemingly respectable, hungry [2] and attracted to girls who «smell good» so much so that «you can look at them without a condom». (There is a reading of this song that overturns the canonical challenge to the fate of the poor, the key in which the entire album is commonly read, and throws it into politics[3], precisely the song becomes a sort of critique of the Craxi government: the growing morning («u matin crescià») thus becomes the socialist dawn and the brother of carnations and girls («frè di ganeuffeni e dè figge») would be Craxi, whose socialism is the master of the corrupt rope of water and salt that binds us and leads us into a sea path («bacan d'a corda marsa d'aegua e de sä che a ne liga e a ne porta 'nte 'na creuza de mä»), in essence, if Craxi were a true socialist we, that is, the sailors, would not have been emigrants of laughter with nails in their eyes («emigranti du rìe cu'i cioi 'nt'i euggi»).) Also interesting is the musical structure: after the bagpipe introduction, the drums, which in the first half of the song delay the weak beats, play a larghetto disguised as a moderate, striking sixteenths on the hi-hat.
And speaking of condoms and girls, here is Jamin-a, a much livelier song (see the bass), almost an allegro moderato, also supported by the bouzouki solo, centered on the eponymous woman who represents «an idea of positive adventure that finds space and refuge in a corner of the sailor's imagination»; Jamin-a, like Bocca di Rosa[4], is described as a dark-skinned she-wolf with an open mouth («lua de pelle scûa cu'a bucca spalancà»), a black star shining («stella neigra ch'a lûxe»), sultana of the whores («sultan-a de e bagasce») and queen mother of the sambas («regin-a muè de e sambe»), offering hope to – or rather, it could be said that she herself is the hope of – the sailors (the one speaking, in particular, says he wants to enjoy himself in the sweet wetness of the honey of her beehive, an expression in Genoese that has a whole different connotation: «me veuggiu demuâ 'nte l'ûmidu duçe de l'amë dû teu arveâ»). And so here are vividly erotic expressions,; over all: «and the last breath, Jamin-a, queen mother of the sambas, I keep it to get out alive from the knot of your legs». Because «where there is hair there is love»[5].

With the track that follows (Sidùn, Sidon[6]) we move to a completely different land, in Lebanon, amidst the anguished notes of Fabrizio’s singing which here limits itself to drawing vocal brushstrokes – and the voice tries to be an extension of the instrument, tuning the notes being played – to compose fleeting yet anything but weak images in the listener's memory («the eyes of angry soldiers with foam at the mouth hunters of lambs»[7]), then moves on to a second and third portrait of Genoese people: the first, Sinàn Capudàn Pascià, begins with a synth accompaniment later supported by a three-note riff that gradually gets harmonized until completing the harmonic structure, and deals with a sailor, the Cicala (Sigà, in his native tongue), captured by the Turkish fleet in the 16th century and inexplicably became the Grand Vizier and Seraschier of the Sultan of Constantinople under the name of Sinàn Capudàn Pascià, who finally imparts clear lessons in philosophy; the second instead focuses on 'a pittima (the pity), a term dating back to ancient Genoa, where the lord used creditors – the pittime, precisely – to collect his debts, debts which often weighed on families on the brink of poverty, and the pity thus earned the reputation that still gravitates around it today, akin to a chupacabra (naturally, the analysis that De André makes is not that trivial and simplistic, so much so that a social marginalization emerges from the figure of the pittima due to physical shortcomings[9] that made it impossible for him to embark at sea and forced him to go among people (so the creditors, out of shame, would pay) to ask for money from creditors, who, if they opposed, the pittima would remind them that living is expensive but cheap («vive l'è cäu ma a bu-n mercöu») for those who ask for money and don't give it back and if they really didn't have that money, here emerges a touch of humanity: it’s the pittima giving money to the victim («quandu a vittima l'è 'n strassé ghe dö du mæ»).
Then comes the liveliest text of the album, entitled Ä dumènega, Sunday, the day when, in old Genoa, prostitutes were allowed to leave their neighborhood (what we would now call the red-light district) and stroll through the city. That was allowed because with the proceeds from the brothels, the municipality was able to pay for port works. Naturally, this clashed with the bourgeois & narrow-minded city («and the deeper they go into the city, the more eyes and voices follow them, saying what they can't say on Thursday, Saturday, and Monday»[10]), the emblem of which is «u direttú du portu», the harbor master[11], who shouts at the prostitutes: «bagasce sïi e ghe restè», whores you are and remain.

And you who shout after them
you don't even have a new nose
you bastard of a Christ-bearer
you are not the only one to notice
that amidst those creatures
who earn their bread naked
there is also your wife.[12]

The album, probably De André's artistic peak both musically and poetically, concludes with D'ä mæ riva, from my shore, a track (the only one composed in 6/8) full of melancholy soaked in fading through the notes of the evocative octave guitar played by Fabrizio: it’s the moment of the sailor’s departure, thus the farewell to the love of his life (ti me perdunié u magún ma te pensu cuntru su, you will forgive me the pain but I think of you against the sun) and the departure from certainties.
In André Talk, Fabrizio says: «When a sailor leaves the dock of his home city, it's the moment of separation from security, from certainties, perhaps in the guise of a wife who is the keeper of the marital bed, waving a light and tearful handkerchief from the shore. The separation from that piece of garden, from the lemon tree and, if the sailor is leaving from Genoa, certainly from the basil pot, placed there on the balcony to stimulate the appetite of those who stay, the desertors of the sea. It is a subtly dramatic moment, a moment lived as if blinded by a backlight, which elicits nostalgia as soon as, on board, he inventories his sailor’s trunk, prepared by his wife: three velvet shirts, two blankets, the mandolin, and a hard wood ink-well, in case he might want to write. But at sea, there is little time for nostalgia, there is danger under each gust of mistral, behind every swell of a wave coming from the southwest and, above all, after passing the famous bridge of Portofino, reemerges like a rock to cling to the hope of a Jamin-a, of that dark-skinned she-wolf unleashed in love and so different from the life partner of whom the sailor only has a faded photograph left when she was still a girl, a faded photograph at the bottom of a black cap, to be able to still kiss Genoa, as the song D'ä mæ riva says, on the image of a mouth that I describe as being in mothballs».


[1] The frontman of the Talking Heads, David Byrne, wrote to Rolling Stones magazine describing the concept album as one of the most important records of the eighties, and the album soon became one of the masterpieces of ethnic music, reaching Japan, France, Spain, England, the United States, and in Italy, it won the Club Tenco for the best album and best dialect song, Telesette &cc.

[2] A list of traditional dishes is given, such as lamb brains dipped in the white of Portofino and the sweet and sour hare pie of tiles(=cat).

[3] http://chefacciamo.wordpress.com/2004/05/07/creuza-de-ma/

[4] Fabrizio himself compares her to the now-famous graceful woman: «It’s a Bocca di Rosa seen through a personal experience». (Alfredo Franchini, Men and Women of Fabrizio de André)

[5] Where there is hair there is love.

[6] «Sidon is the Lebanese city that gave us, besides the use of the alphabet letters, the invention of glass. I imagined it, after the attack by General Sharon's troops in 1982, as a middle-aged Arab man, dirty, desperate, certainly poor, holding in his arms his child, ground by the tracks of a tank. A clot of blood, ears, and milk teeth, only recently thick lips under the sun, sweet and benign tumor of his mother, perhaps his only and unbearable wealth. The small death referred to at the end of this song should not simply be confused with the death of the small child. But it should be metaphorically understood as the civil and cultural end of a small country: Lebanon, Phoenicia, which in its discretion was perhaps the greatest nursemaid of Mediterranean civilization.» (Fabrizio de André, André Talk. Interviews and articles from the era)

[7] And the eyes of dog soldiers angry with foam at the mouth hunters of lambs.

[8] He wonders, in fact, what the difference is in blaspheming Christ instead of Mohammed («giastemmandu Mumä au postu du Segnü»), and invoking his love he contemplates that misfortune is a dick flying around the nearest ass («amü, me bell'amü, a sfurtûn-a a l'è 'n belin ch'ü xeua 'ngiu au cû ciû vixín»).

[9] A torso broad like a finger, just to hide with the dress behind a thread («'na cascetta larga 'n diu giûstu pe ascúndime c'u vestiu deré a 'n fiu»).

[10] And the more they enter the city, the more eyes and voices follow them saying what they can't say on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Mondays.

[11] who sees the gold in those resting buttocks, not to show that he is happy that the new pier has funding he gets lost in the confusion with an eye full of indignation («c'u ghe vedde l'ou 'nte quelle scciappe a reposu da a lou pe nu fâ vedde ch'u l'è cuntentu ch'u meu-neuvu u gh'â u finansiamentu u se cunfunde 'nta confûsiún cun l'euggiu pin de indignasiún»).

[12] «And you who shout after them not even more have the nose of a new ugly bastard of a Christ-bearer you're not the only one who noticed that amongst those creatures who earn their bread nude there is, there is, there is, there is also your wife».

[13] who wanted to take risks and do what he liked, two phenomena that now appear pale when looking out to what is the music market. The previous de André album, the eponymous one, also nicknamed L'indiano because of its cover, was the one that earned the most, and when the singer-songwriter wanted to come out with the idea of the dialect album, the record companies pulled their hair out, because it was a risky choice (he could have continued on the path of the previous album: risk little, earn much), but De André, an artist above all, wanted to embrace the risk and throw himself headfirst into an endeavor that resulted in something unimaginable, a total masterpiece. This is art, and this – in my humble opinion – is one of the most important reasons to remember Creuza de mä. Especially in these musically troubled times.