Iosonouncane
La macarena su Roma

"In a race as usual between blondes and brunettes. In a race as usual between blondes and brunettes. In a race as usual between blondes and brunettes."

Everyone loves "Die", and they're not wrong. But that album wouldn't have existed (and perhaps would have made little sense) if Jacopo Incani's debut wasn't as great and violent as, fortunately, "La macarena su Roma" is. It is also an incredibly difficult album to make, almost impossible not to get wrong. A debut that immediately aims to write a fundamental, definitive page of Italian songwriting.

Incani's invectives are not easy. They might seem so, listening superficially to the verses on migrants or the disastrous television culture of the song that gives the album its title. The phrases, comments, the images that the Sardinian singer throws up actually hide many folds painting a deep, complete, and in a way definitive scenario. This is a gravestone on Italy, on the society, and on the culture of the country from post-war to today. This is why with "Die" Jacopo had to rebuild a lyrical virginity because the whole socio-political discourse was exhausted in the first enormous creative effort.

Everything is there. Blacks, the province, and the dream of emancipation, racism and ignorance, soccer, cuisine, unions, workers, shopping malls. And the bosses, gluttony, and obesity, sex, and shame. The sublimation of all the distortions of the average Italian is television culture. It's no coincidence that the track discussing it requires almost ten minutes of dense phrases to exhaust the subject. The Italian's mistake isn't just superficiality. No, he is deeply deviated by TV, in emotions, in feelings, and in the most intimate memories.

Everything has gone awry. The post-war premises, economic and cultural, have been betrayed and wasted. The sixth estate lives in a "brand new post-war" because we have hardly moved from that situation. Simultaneously, the dream of freedom and participation sung by Gaber returns mockingly in the freedom to participate in a televote. Everything is lost, a world of possibilities thrown away.

Incani's greatness as a writer lies in being able to narrate the catastrophe both from the point of view of those who partake in it — and are partially responsible for it — and from that of the bard who pins them down with his judgments. Each piece has a dual reading: the animalistic and embittered one of the average Italian and the caustic one of the author. At his best, Jacopo puts into the mouth of the average man the very words that seal their condemnation. In other cases, he lets slip some venomous barbs. "Educated, with their butts out, like cows, like oxen."

In all this disillusionment, there is a glimmer of humanity, however aching, bleeding, and resentful. "Il corpo del reato" is the Sardinian province calling its son home who would like to leave. But it's useless, come back to the village since we won the elections. You're not an original type, in fact, you exist only because there's space. To the village's cruelty, the songwriter responds with a snapshot, a crime scene. A provincial boy, with builder's hands, who has decided to end it all.

Speaking of himself, Incani implicitly provides an answer to Italy's disastrous scenario. Going against the current, even when the choice is unpopular, when failure is almost certain. But there can't be a more bitter inner death than village festivals. And so Jacopo moved to Bologna and after a few years gifted us this masterpiece. "So have you decided? Are you really convinced you're going to do something original? But you know what? You're really an idiot."