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Rating: There is underrated music in Italy, or maybe it's just that people lack the sensitivity to capture the emotion of records like this. And this is making us all pay with cloudy skies (remember "Le Nuvole" by De André-Aristofane, where power and its servants were depicted as big clouds that come between us and the sky, obscuring the sun, that is, the truth?). The discussion could get broad, yet I don't think there's much distance between the society we're stuck in and the music we listen to. On the other hand, all we do is choose, absorb, and manifest, and what manifests is often quite sad.
One way to clear the sky of "obscurantist" clouds is, I believe, through essentiality, stripping down, reducing to the essence, and the essence, provided it exists, represents nothing but the truth.
And it's precisely essentiality that underlies this work, a work therefore true, courageous precisely because no superstructures and no artifice were used..
I don't think it's necessary to dwell on individual tracks, as they have already been reviewed by other debaserians, covering studio albums; however, in this live collection, there are two novelties: a short song that opens the concert, titled "La nave", composed by a Puglian singer-songwriter, not very well known to many, Angelo Ruggiero. At the end of the setlist, there's an unpublished song by Gianmaria Testa titled "Come al cielo gli aeroplani", a very "his" song that perhaps adds nothing new to his repertoire but is certainly another gem that rightfully joins the precious string of songs.
The origin of this live is quite well-known, it’s a casual story: Testa listened to a recording of the concert held at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, alone with his guitar, and realized that the recording managed to capture the emotions that were created on that evidently successful evening, so he decided to release the album.
During the listening, you can hear the natural stage noises, the applause without artifice or unpleasant overdubs, the phrases in Piedmontese and lucid irony with which Gianmaria uses to intersperse the songs. It's an album made of a warm, thick, rough voice, an acoustic guitar, and nothing else, and believe me, it’s no small thing, it is a choice that signifies courage, the courage of someone not interested in boarding the empty carriages of spectacle at any cost but of someone who prefers to stay grounded, walking and toiling, almost as if trying to closely observe the stories he tells.
Testa's songs in various studio recordings were almost always magnificently arranged, musicians of great caliber contributed to dressing them with mastery and composure. Yes, in terms of listening (and for an album, it's not a trivial thing!), in this concert, you seldom find better versions than the originals, indeed it would be entirely reasonable to wonder about the meaning of stripping songs that certainly weren’t overly dressed.
I believe it’s an act of courage and at the same time a way to challenge oneself to demonstrate that an artist must also confront their art laid bare, must understand if these blessed songs stand on their own. On the other hand, Testa has always declared that he loves to strip down the language, aware of moving against the tide in an era full of redundancies, but this characteristic perhaps represents the measure of the artist and this album is a clear demonstration of that.
I conclude by sharing something written by Gianmaria Testa (with a style very reminiscent of his friend Erri De Luca), from which his way of seeing things is quite evident: "People like me start battling a guitar alone. Until the wood gets denuded, and fingers get carved by strings. Some tips from a friend are welcome, but mostly it’s a stubborn vocation to tame something you feel anarchic and wild. Then solitary effort becomes a frontier: if you cross it, you’re left with a sickness for songs. That’s how it went for me and perhaps that’s how it was meant to go, with the guitar for accompaniment and company. And I would have played and sung anyway. With or without records, with or without an audience. That’s why in concerts I don’t suffer from anxiety, I tell myself it’s a meeting to honor. People who left home on purpose, someone by chance, not to disappoint. For this, with Paola, we decided to leave a black on white. Of a day in May in Rome, some friends, and the people coming as to an appointment.”
In fact, this brief writing by Gianmaria Testa would have been enough to explain the album and his way of seeing things in the best possible way... speaking of essentiality... if only one’s able to, damn it.
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