Franco Battiato
La voce del padrone

THE REVIEW

What is the point of reviewing such a famous, important album, one that has been talked about so much? Practically none. So I explicitly declare that this is a pure personal pleasure. A tribute to a master (how he would hate to read this epithet) who is inimitable with a unique path in the Italian music scene. For those familiar with Franco’s career, what I'm about to state may sound like blasphemy, but La Voce del Padrone is the most "avant-garde" album by the artist. It seems absurd to say so for someone who, after starting as a melodic singer in the 70s, sailed the seas of the most daring and brilliant experimentation (how can we not mention the spectacular Fetus?). But La Voce del Padrone is the perfect result of a "scam": writing a pop and commercial album (because it is pure and simple) while disguising its lofty and refined nature. The musical solutions are (apparently?) simple and catchy, particularly aligned with the current "trends." But with a careful read (and even a not-so-careful one), the literary, historical references, and the mystical and sophisticated thought of the Sicilian author are all present. Indeed, in the most pop episodes (Cucurucucu Paloma, Centro di Gravità Permanente, and Bandiera Bianca), the experiment becomes even more daring, where nonsense and danceability provide a usability and immediacy inconceivable for the study and depth behind the pop choices. For example, who has ever delved into: "Dress like bonzes to enter the court of the Ming dynasty emperors"? And so many other seemingly innocuous but rich in meaning verses. The album, and at the time it probably was, can be enjoyed as if it were written in English and listened to by those who do not know the language very well but are carried away by the atmosphere. In Sentimento Nuevo, the mythical desires of Libyan prostitutes and the sense of possession that was pre-Alexandrian can be hummed without any idea of their meaning. With those very easy keyboards framing the verses. "Mister Tamburino I don't feel like joking the times are about to change," in which two songs by Nobel laureate Dylan are mentioned, is the beginning of a super-pop song (Bandiera Bianca) where meanings and hidden invectives in phrases that sound almost like simple and useless word games are instead heavyweights of authentic nonconformism and thought certainly not in line with the dominant one. And there is no lack of irony and self-irony ("Some people put on sunglasses to have more charisma and symptomatic mystery"). "Summer in a solitary beach" seems like a summer song while it is a gem of melancholy. In Segnali di Vita or Gli Uccelli, the signs of the more cultured and elevated Battiato are more clearly visible. In particular, in the song that closes the album, it almost seems that Battiato allows us to understand that his preferred perspective is almost always that of looking from above and not from within the humanity he finds himself living in (as opposed to how it was typical of other great singer-songwriters such as De André, who had a more carnal, more human view, even though he was also extremely cultured).
An album that is fully from 1981 and at the same time completely transcends its "historicity." A mockery, a masterpiece. A moving and eternal emotion.