Francesco Guccini
Canzoni da osteria

A year after "Canzoni da intorto", Francesco Guccini returns to take us, through music, into his past years.

The interpretation of the 14 tracks is subjective, while the sources are very varied.

It begins with Bella ciao, which would have been well placed on the previous album, and then musically and lyrically travel around Italy and the world. There's something for everyone: songs from South America, in dialects not only Bolognese but also Venetian, tracks in Hebrew and Greek, and reaching the cotton plantations in America.

Unlike the previous album, where the term "intorto" would have suggested more of a romantic discourse, but the tracks in that sense were one at most two, here there is a greater presence of the romantic component, with four explicitly sentimental tracks, namely Amore dove sei, Maria la guerza, Sur and La tieta, the latter recorded in 2004 on "Ritratti" and whose music is even from 1969, the year in which Mina, with a different text, made it a success as Bugiarda e incosciente.

Genre variety also means a variety of instruments used, thanks to the production of Fabio Ilacqua, also the producer of the previous "Canzoni da intorto", with the assistance of musician Stefano Giungato.

It begins, as mentioned, with Bella ciao, made more personal with the accordion, then travels to the Argentina of Jacinto Chiclana, by Astor Piazzolla and Jorge Luis Borges, a track that Guccini already sang in the Eighties and which has also already been published in "L'ostaria delle dame", in 2017. In this track, there is a successful combination of piano, accordion, and strings. Drums, guitar, and trumpet engage in dialogue in the 1970 success Amore dove sei, written by Giorgio Laneve and Marcello Minerbi.

A jealousy waltz, however, is Maria la guerza, who "betrays" her husband by consuming alcoholic beverages with a neighbor. The track is sung in the Bolognese dialect.

El caballo negro was also performed in the Eighties and also appears in "L'ostaria delle dame". It is the story of a man who desires a black horse of purebred to cross Argentina.

La tieta, a song originally by Juan Manuel Serrat, was translated into the Emilian dialect as La ziatta, that is, his aunt who never married. From the Emilian dialect to the Venetian dialect with Il canto dei Battipali, the workers of the lagoon sang it to lighten the work.

Hava Nagila was composed by Abraham Zwi in 1918 to celebrate the British victory in Palestine in the First World War. It is dedicated by Francesco Guccini to a friend who spent many evenings at the Ostaria delle dame.

The last thing on my mind is instead of a completely different type, a country blues by Tom Paxton supported almost entirely by acoustic guitar.

La Chacarera del '55 was also already published in 2017, featuring the return of Argentina, specifically a venue in San Miguel de Tucumán, where nights were typically spent with drinks and music. The track is sung in Argentine.

La madonnina di Borgo San Pietro, this is the Italian translation, was written by Quinto Ferrari, and invoked both protection from the plague and civil coexistence between the borough and the nearby Borgo Pratello. Guccini renders it with great nostalgia for an Italy that is no more.

The banjo is among the instruments of Cotton fields, a traditional song by workers on the cotton plantations in the southern United States. More than a country blues, it is rendered as country rock.

Argentina again with Sur, the memory of a woman now lost in the Buenos Aires of the Fifties.

It comes to an end with 21 aprile, dedicated to the Greek coup d'état of April 21, 1967. The author, Alexandros Devetzoglou, was a friend of Guccini, and the rendition is bilingual, Italian and Greek, like the original.

Compared to the previous album, there is a greater richness in everything, and despite the not impeccable voice and already published tracks, we can also give 4 stars to this one.