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Stranizza d'amuri is one of the most beautiful songs in both "light" and "heavy" Italian music of the past 50 years.
Some time ago, I read a comment online by someone who wrote that Fabrizio De Andrè, in reference to this song, supposedly said: "Stranizza d'amuri is a masterpiece. I would trade all my songs to have written it". The source isn't reliable, but I like to think he actually said it. Or rather, if he did say it, I wouldn't find it strange. Not a bit.
This song, in the prologue, describes images of a Sicily that once was, where the cart drivers in the valley of Scamacca would relieve themselves and the flies would buzz over them. An image not exactly flattering (lol) yet not vulgar in the way it's sung, in a rather understandable Sicilian dialect. Battiato sings with his not at all stentorian but faint, plain voice, with that personal white voice tone but not falsetto, yet he still manages to capture attention with images of everyday life. Kids hunting lizards, the Circum-Etnea, the Nabucco, gymnastics demonstrations, and the school that's ending. It seems like a shopping list but with a few flashes, you quickly trace the life of these kids, you see them playing, and with the school ending, the song's prologue also ends. A prologue where there's only Battiato and a violin or cello, I don't know, forgive me, after all, I'm just slightly more than a simpleton scribbling about a piece way beyond me. Yes, I know I'm rambling on but let me be, it's hard, I don't know what to write. Ugh, I ratted myself out.
The prologue is over, stranizza is about to (literally) take flight. The xylophone comes in and creates a simple, harmonious, perfect melody. The bass comes in, Tullio De Piscopo, guest-drummer enters and we're at high altitude. Hold on tight, now a choir comes in, this song is a bolero, it grows, rises, flies into the sky and space, and there's no stopping it, seriously.
And what, then, is the strangeness of this love? It's that when I meet you on the street, my heart gets a shock despite everything dying outside. A fever rises in my bones, with everything and the war outside. Enough, what am I even writing for?
Stranizza ends and fades but it's clear it continues to fly and could go on forever, and if we don't stop clinging so tightly, we could also fly too high, even if we're just simple travelers.
Stranizza d'amuri is a heavenly song, eternal, perfect. It will never age, and I will never renounce it.
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