At the beginning, we gave importance to small things, the end of school, playing with friends, we marveled at the falling leaves in autumn and the water rushing in summer. Then time passed and the original order of values was lost, we unlearned to reason from first principles and shunned simple things.
And as moments, months, and years flow by, we talk more and more about freedom without asking what it really is, and we ponder the longevity of a marriage without questioning what a human relationship is and if it can last a lifetime. And today we are here, in this valley of Trentino, on a bench carved out of a large trunk, surrounded by the scent of wood and resin, here with the allure of femininity with whom I share a particular selection, here watching the river flow, feeling the mood of the forest today, with a guitar in arms vibrating in the air the reflections of Luigi Grechi. Me and her, the enchantment, the gaze, nature, poetry... leaning on to describe the essence of small things, the perfume that is here and nowhere else, the kindness and promises that are useless to make.
Luigi Grechi for us is just like that. An evoker of a dimension that is now scattered and lost, buried under a layer of "commitments" and cynicism, along with nights under stars, contact with the earth, and fields full of fireflies. Luigi Grechi is like that, a free and pure soul, a wanderer, a traveler on the paths of music, in the heart of Umbria, reflecting under a beech tree in the evening and miles of road ground during the day. Overlooking many important aspects, Luigi Grechi began as a great archaeologist of American Folk and Country by re-proposing many classics of the genre and carrying forward a precious work of disseminating American political and protest songs (thanks to Luigi Grechi, Italy began to talk about Woody Guthrie) throughout the 70s, especially at the Folkstudio and the Roman streets. Only later came the original compositions and a handful of records released over thirty years of predominantly on-the-road music. Luigi Grechi surprisingly finds himself in the words of H. Hesse, who said of his Luigi:
“Luigi the cruel had fallen from the sky, all of a sudden he was there… the wanderer, the unpredictable who had the railway for a home and the backpack for a studio… Luigi the bird, roamed on his bicycle all over the hilly area, was here and there... wrote with difficulty, Luigi, the lighthearted, his gaze lingered painfully on the paper even for an hour… departures were vital joy for his heart of a migrating bird… Luigi climbed on his velocipede, waving his hat, he was already far away. Night, stars. Luigi was in China. Luigi was a legend.”
Shy, free, and sincere, like the character just sketched, enough to change his name not to be recognized as "DeGregori's brother," enough to reject change and, with it, success, and to leave every record label to keep his artistic identity intact and to freely bring across Italy, night after night, that Country-Western scene he never wanted to be a prisoner of, always inclined to use that atmosphere and style as a track for his own path… "Pastore di Nuvole" is also this, a journey in wisdom and disenchantment, in replacing the unreality of myths with the truth of feelings…
The variety of themes is remarkable and of certain depth, the very start of the album ("Here he is, the jerk...") is a sarcastic self-critique of his being a cowboy, but in succession unfold moments of rare intensity and commitment in which the Country-Folk register teases vignettes of bucolic beauty, life stories, warm-toned reflections, meeting fresh and never cloying sounds, thanks to the wise and balanced arrangement by Guglielminetti.
"Il fuoco e la danza", the second track, adorns with sacredness the theme of the roots we cannot forsake, the arcane relationship linking us to origins and the land, "Le vespe" is an invitation to reconsider the small, the everyday and the concrete without missing a certain poetic fascination. "Diggeridoo" is a primitive and blossoming love, "Ma che vuoi da me?" a love declaration to Music that met and enchanted us, "Gli stivali e la tequila" and "Al di là del confine", bring us back to the broader theme of travel, the first connected to material travel, to the sensation of distance and physical discomfort and the second intimately linked to cultural travel, in otherness, in differences, perhaps even in discriminations. Discrimination is the keyword of "Venti gradi sottozero", witty counterpoint to today’s racism, without a drop of rhetoric.
In conclusion, "Pastore di nuvole", a song whose title already offers the poetry that unfolds slowly during the lines of a text rich in reflection and accompanied by a light melody just outlined by the guitar and the accordion that grows until to conclude the work in a long and dreamy instrumental escape. And it’s time for the Dream, which although wearing its different masks always hides just one desire, to find what we are searching for... and then we encounter a shepherd who keeps clouds at bay, like the artist his poetry, in a vulture that despite its old age has not yet learned to fly as the splendid intimacy of the man, naked before himself, before his desires, and his dreams.
An author’s album in a sparing use of means.
Tracklist
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