Fabrizio de André
Fabrizio de André (L'Indiano)

There were these tapes that my dad would always play when they took me mushroom picking. One talked about dwarves and eye doctors, while the other had a strange Native American with a stone face on the cover, and it talked about Indian massacres and women cut to pieces. I hated going mushrooming, I hated getting up early, and I hated all that winding road that inevitably made my stomach upset. But I liked the music blaring from the car radio, even if at that time I understood very little of it, and it didn’t matter if during the long journey the tape restarted countless times, I was fine with continuing to listen to it while staring out the window for hours on end.

That album with the stone-faced Native American was Fabrizio de André, but to everyone it’s "L’Indiano".

"L’Indiano", recorded in 1981 and once again featuring the collaboration of Massimo Bubola (this album is probably the happiest product of the collaboration between the two singer-songwriters), was born from de André's idea of creating a parallel between the history of the Native Americans and that of the Sardinians. Two proud, closed-off peoples, suddenly finding themselves in contact with different people who, in various ways, have subjected them.
With this premise, every song on the album can have a double interpretation, starting with the first track, Quello che non ho, a bluesy piece that could feature either the Genoese singer-songwriter or the indigenous Sardinian, whose lifestyle and needs contrast with those of the wealthy foreigners who invade the island with their villas, Ferraris, and motorboats.
Already at the second track, one realizes that the rhythm of that first piece was nothing but a deception, the music becomes sweet, and the collaboration between de André and Bubola shows its mature fruits with a lyric that’s nothing short of heart-wrenching. It is the Canto del Servo Pastore. Here, the contrast between the two worlds becomes implicit: a shepherd, who has never even been “taught” his name, speaks but nonetheless shows extraordinary sensitivity towards everything around him, cloaking it in poetry. Despite this, however, he remains always a servant.
The third piece is probably the most famous of the album, Fiume Sand Creek. The Sardinians are set aside to sing about a real massacre of Native Americans, which took place in 1864 at the hands of Colonel Chivington, seen through the innocent eyes of a child.
The first half of the album closes with a traditional Sardinian song, an Ave Maria that seems to anticipate the Smisurata Preghiera that de André will write many years later.

The second part opens with one of the most heartfelt and beautiful pieces of the Genoese singer-songwriter’s production. That Hotel Supramonte dedicated to the kidnapping of the author himself and Dori Ghezzi, in the summer of '79. Through intense lyrics and sweet, calm music, de André primarily shows one of the responses of the Sardinian people to the "invasion" they are forced to endure: banditry. But intertwined with this, the author manages to weave another theme, love, and his are the words of a lover whose only thought is for his beloved who at that moment is suffering with him and for him. Any further description would be useless; the only thing to do is to listen to it, to realize the power of his words, his metaphors (And metaphors are dangerous, Kundera warned, from just one of them can love be born).
I’ll just quote a single stanza:

And now I sit on the bed of the forest that now bears your name
now time is a distracted lord, is a sleeping child
but if you wake up and are still afraid, give me your hand again
what does it matter if I’ve fallen if I’m far away
because tomorrow will be a long day without words
because tomorrow will be an uncertain day of clouds and sun
but where is your heart, but where has your heart gone.

The discourse on love continues in the next piece, Franziska, but with a sort of reversal: The love sung this time is between a girl and a bandit on the run, a "forest sailor," and it translates solely into loneliness and pain, without even the possibility of physical contact between the two lovers (and in the theme of contrasts, the almost joyful music that contrasts with the gloominess of what is sung is also noteworthy). And love returns in the song that follows, another high point of the album, Se ti tagliassero a pezzetti. As often happens with de André, the love sung is a finished love but no less absolute, total. The dual reading becomes more subtle but still apparent: who is de André singing to, a flesh-and-blood woman or his ever-beloved, Freedom? Whatever the answer one wants to give, it is certainly no coincidence that during live performances the line "miss imagination" often became "miss anarchy".
The album closes with the classic exception to the rule: Verdi Pascoli is a sort of dedication to the children by a father too distracted by his own concerts, and it flows by cheerful and festive.

Like all of de André’s works, it is impossible not to recommend this one as well.
It is an album of metaphors and hopes, each song a pearl that reveals itself to those who wish to discover it. And, sometimes, when the record ends, you might find yourself a bit more confused staring out the window, thinking that there, right behind those trees, the Indians are getting their revenge.