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Rating: I was eight years old: I couldn't understand anything about Fabrizio De André's lyrics, I didn't even know that Edgar Lee Masters existed. At most, I enjoyed the story of the dwarf "a real bastard because his heart was near his asshole."
But the instinct of a future libertarian and anti-militarist made me prefer my parents' old tape recorder (very cumbersome, with the huge reels to rewind), to the more practical radio, where I could have enjoyed Luttazzi's Hit Parade, with his Cugini di Campagna, Alunni del Sole, and similar trivialities. This and other masterpieces by De André from those reels quickly etched themselves in my mind and became the soundtrack of my first lonely bicycle rides discovering the world, essentially my first tastes of freedom. I felt, by pure instinct, that there was something good in that record, something that would accompany and guide me for a long time. The music already fascinated me, so suggestive, so different from the little songs recommended for my age. I was particularly fascinated by the chilling atmosphere of "Dormono Sulla Collina" and the dreamlike quality of "Un Ottico," with its ghostly overlapping voices.
Many years later, I discovered that my childish instinct had guided me towards a true work of art. I read Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, by then a classic. An American poet, libertarian like De André, Masters presented this gallery of characters in 1915, ordinary people who summarize their lives in a brief epitaph from the grave, with absolute sincerity, something that was never possible in life because of hypocrisy and conventions. De André chose nine out of the approximately three hundred stories from the original work and modernized them, significantly altering the original text. Therefore, reading Masters, while helpful, is not essential to understanding this work, which has its own autonomy and intrinsic value. Very inspired music, for which a then-unknown Nicola Piovani collaborated, who is now a renowned soundtrack composer, also contributes to making this sequence of portraits indelible.
"Dormono Sulla Collina," chilling music and lyrics, faithfully mirrors the introduction that opens the original poetic work, but it's the only case. Here are the characters then: "Un matto," or "the village idiot"; "Un giudice," a dwarf who takes revenge for years of mockery thanks to the robe: "And then my stature no longer provided humor to those who called me Your Honor at the stand..." "Un blasfemo" thinks that God tricked the first man: he will be arrested and then killed by two bigoted guards. "Un malato di cuore" knows only one moment of happiness kissing his woman, but just then his heart betrays him. "Un medico" understands his profession as a mission, immediately punished by colleagues, who assign him clients incapable of paying: he will end up in prison, "forever branded Doctor Professor Crook Trickster." "Un chimico" is so rational that he doesn't understand why human beings, instead of combining through perfect laws like elements, combine through love "entrusting to a game joy and pain." "Un ottico" is a "lens pusher," a seller of illusions, who makes custom glasses for clients who want to travel in fantasy. Finally, "Il suonatore Jones": the only character in his own way "successful," an artist out of the petty games of power and envy. He will die happy and without even a regret or a thought "not for money, not for love nor for heaven" (the title and sense of the entire record), having sought only freedom all his life, and this record is above all a marvelous anthem to freedom.
Now I hear that a certain Morgan (I confess I don't know him) will make a new version of it. I don't know what might come out of it, but in any case, it is welcome: if this new recording should serve to open horizons of freedom to some eight-year-old child, perhaps equipped with an mp3 player instead of a cumbersome reel tape recorder, it would have already fulfilled its function.
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