Grazia Di Michele
Rudji

There are artists who, for one reason or another, are considered "minor" and who in their repertoire can boast a small number of successes, which can be counted on one hand, but at the same time a much larger quantity of gems scattered throughout the albums that have marked their artistic path, mostly unnoticed.

An Italian artist like Grazia Di Michele, an elegant and ironic singer-songwriter, who has always written songs with her heart, or rather "thinking with her heart", can be considered part of this category of artists.

Her long career reaches its peak in a recording project of little success, "Rudji" (1995), but considered by critics to be her best work: in contrast with previous works, the album is played in an essential and very ethnic way, with acoustic instruments, first of all the guitars and was recorded in a few days. The title-track captures in a sunny and smiling portrait a little girl met on an island in the Seychelles, who carries the vibrant colors of her land on her:
"and sings African songs/come drink the sun here in my hands"
"Mama dances the mutia/for the foreign people/Rudji dances alone with the crabs on the beach/in the evening".

It is yet another picture of a woman, it seems that Grazia Di Michele's mission on Earth is to characterize with chiaroscuro, but also bright colors (see, or rather hear, "Le Ragazze di Gauguin" or "Storia di una polena") female characters, even if only ideal. The second track, "È che restiamo bambini", is a homage to spontaneity and an admission of how difficult it is to "learn love",
"to find a smile/if a game hurts" and at the same time the joy that comes "in always holding its hand/without knowing the sin/to erase its name/on a fogged glass".

This song also expresses great genuineness and pure emotions, highlighted by lively music. In listening, we find "Semplice" with Brazilian atmospheres used to declare that "this love between you and me/is as simple as a song"; then "Mondo", a cry of nostalgia and a desperate need for affection: "do you know if there's a world for me?". Here poetry perhaps reaches the album's peaks, in addressing the world itself
"that collects the pain", almost on its knees if it could: "I am here on your shore/but I never look at you/time is sand between fingers/it's life you don't know".

Passing through "Notte d'Oriente", the most oriental piece of the album, we listen to "Pane e ciliegie", a fairy tale in song form set in a simple rural context, outside the world and our technology-driven time: a poignant lullaby dreaming of the halting for a moment of all wars and wishing the child a moment of peace and that all the "golden fields of spikes/tomorrow will have bread/bread and cherries for my love/my love who sleeps".
The poetic quality in "Pane e ciliegie" is strong, despite the text being extremely simple and devoid of stylistic ornaments: the noblest dream, a sweet utopian ideal told in a language, if you will, "rarefied" precisely because it is abstracted from time and daily life.

After such a gem, we encounter "Sopra i tetti", written in collaboration with Massimo Bubola, and this too reflects the unspoiled air breathed in "Pane e ciliegie":
"clearer, limpid eyes/we will have after the storm/and we will no longer have to stumble over these heaps of words/on these piles of snow" "and we will go above the roofs of a new love/we will dance in the squares of a new love/we will follow life that goes/faster than us/faster than the heart".
And indeed "after the storm", comes "È musica" which "is in the background of every waking/moment you color the sky of Milan/it's on the land where I walk/it's in the voice of this child" "is harmony that lives freely/doesn't let itself be stopped and doesn't let itself be touched/it's music that breathes around us/that travels with time".

Following such sincerely tender and sweet songs, but that never border on the sentimental, come "Ama le tue mani", a call to love the "Universe", which is also a song bearing witness to Grazia's social commitment, as well as the beautiful and profound "Mandragole", dedicated to the increasingly less respected Earth. The final verses strike the heart:
"I dream of a night of Moon/and men laying on your body/to fertilize you in a gesture of love/and the morning amazed to discover stretches of roses/without a name".
"Cose senza nome" describes the feelings of precarious uncertainty palpable in Africa, not well defined: "What day is it/what life is this/that everything changes/and then nothing changes/.... all it would take is a hat pulled over the heart/your hand over the eyes/for this nameless thing".
The album ends with "Mi stai cercando" "inside a morning of sun and wind", a sensation reminiscent of security.

To conclude, we can say that "Rudji" is a thoroughly enjoyable album, containing sincere and deeply light songs (deeply light, not heavy and lightly deep) to use an expression from the singer-songwriter.