Franco Battiato
Caffè De La Paix

The album "Caffè de la Paix" acts as the vehicle for a true journey, an imaginary but vivid and evocative flight to mythological places, through historical reminiscences, in transcendental gardens beyond time and space. At the end of listening to all eight tracks, I realize I have laid eyes on a kaleidoscope mostly composed of oriental sounds, having flown over landscapes that blend reality and fantasy.

The strings start it off. They create a brief sound, almost coming from the music room of a Palladian villa... but it is only ten fleeting seconds, the instruments burst with joy as if a colorful court of musicians poured into the aforementioned room - sounds of glass doors opening onto the park would not be amiss. They invite to immediate dance, irresistible as the exhortation of the lyrics (sung with a voice that comes to me serene and calm, almost in antithesis to the lively and rhythmic pace) to “have tea at the Caffè de la Paix... come with me.”

I listen delightedly to "Fogh in Nakhal", I must say especially for the mastery of the language, and I truly rethink Battiato’s statements on how brief and fruitful his learning of oriental languages was (by contrast, in my view, the results, at least for Neapolitan dialect, are opposite...).

"Atlantide" is stunning. Both lyrics and music. I find it difficult to describe the pleasure that piece always leaves me. I should quote every single phrase. These hold the allure that, personally, might come from reading inscriptions on a rock submerged among barely visible ruins on ocean floors. Maybe I am guilty of too much emphasis, but it truly seems like a description, buried beneath the waters, of the life, rise, glory, and ruin of the mythical civilization of Atlantis.

An authentic poem that, in four minutes, does not condense a fascinating story but lets numerous hypotheses, implications, philosophical meanings on the human condition of all time be glimpsed. It’s hard for the suggestions not to leave a mark. Also, due to the inspired tone of the voice, precisely because calm and contemplative, it appears as if it were a bard assuming the role, in his artistic narration, of the eyewitness.

"In one day and night the destruction occurred, it returned to the water, Atlantis disappeared."

As sudden as the mythical birth of the island is its end ("Atlantis appeared, immense," after the division of realms by the gods) so everything concludes almost catching you off guard, when you might expect more images of that fantastic world, "a temple above, six winged horses, statues of gold, ivory and orichalcum..."

The calm imposed by the subsequent, beautiful "I Giardini della Preesistenza" is the sad acknowledgment of a state of bliss from which we derive and that we have lost. I like linking it to the previous one, thinking of it as the normality (albeit "privileged") that was experienced among the slopes of the island of Atlantis (which, at least in my readings, more or less fanciful – but what does it matter? – is described with a high mountain whose slopes overlook gardens and dwellings). It is melancholic and, again, the voice delights me.

"Delenda Carthago" is a masterpiece that relaxes and transports into the contemplation of legion ranks, triclinia where toga-clad patricians feast, the screams and clamor of the distraught throngs crammed in the arenas... The ancient Rome of which the distant past appears in all its aspects, the luxury that will become softness, the military power that challenges and defeats its first truly formidable opponents, only to disperse in remote borders become wider and less defensible, the blood rituals to satisfy only citizens worthy of such a name who will be overwhelmed by the barbarians they despised. The rhythm is slow (almost the march of soldiers among the high dunes toward Carthage) and the wind instruments recall the serenity of the shade of the luxurious gardens or even the crowded taverns and bloody entertainments of the circus.

"Ricerca sul Terzo" brings back to contemplation, not of a place of peace this time, but of oneself, almost the description of a traveler (us, the listeners?) who stops by the wayside, somewhat removed, and lets the mind align with the ever-active body and the beating heart, no longer dictating intentions, subjugating their movements. It, too, benefits equally, to the point of being capable of reaching the knowledge of the third, knowledge of something whose presence, albeit close and perceivable, we do not know.

It's enough to be aware of these potentialities to offer a small teaching.

"Lode all’inviolato" features the leading violin and the piano that continue, then, accompanied by sustained guitar and drums. It is live where it acquires the status of a semi-masterpiece, in my view.

And finally, "Haiku", a small pearl that silences, the melody minimal, once more, one stops to meditate to reach something, that place of universal peace that the beautiful Persian lyrics hint at and sigh for.

With "Caffè de la Paix" Franco Battiato fused a mosaic of sounds, places of the past, imaginary places, and places of delights yet to come.

Places we can "see" by listening to simple, short songs.