Mauro Pagani
2004 Creuza De Ma

THE REVIEW

Mauro Pagani, one of the historical leaders of PFM, is launching his new record label, Officine Meccaniche Music.
And he's probably doing it in the best possible way, revisiting together with Italian, Tunisian, Israeli, Turkish musicians, the masterpiece that Pagani himself produced and signed together with Fabrizio De André twenty years ago, Creuza de Ma, one of the most important albums of Italian singer-songwriter music, which with its multicultural foundation anticipated the wave of upcoming world music.

Many say that records of that magnitude are no longer made in Italy, and so Pagani, perhaps taking the complaints a bit too literally, remade it exactly as it was. Or almost.
The new cd, which Pagani dedicates to his late friend ("older brother and wonderful travel companion"), contains the original tracks from the old album and tracks not belonging to the original version of Creuza such as: "Quantas Sabedes", written in 1981 by setting to music the Galician text of a "Cantiga de Amigo" by Martim Codax, "Megu Megun" published in 1990 and an unreleased piece born from an old project. The title of the album is the same, Creuza de Ma, but accompanied by an eloquent 2004, further emphasizing the sense of gentle melancholy present in that old sea path, a parable of dialogue between peoples.
Almost all remakes with the two-thousand label, both in music and cinema (just think of Blues Brothers 2000), are not remotely comparable to the originals. This half-clone labeled 2004 is no exception. Nevertheless, the new cd, thanks to the care of a musician like Mauro Pagani, offers interesting variations on the theme, with a single, irremediable absence: the voice.
Among the musicians, we mention Emil Zhrihan, considered one of the four best countertenors in the world, the Turkish Savas Zurnaci on clarinet, Tunisian singer Mouna Amari, and Andrea Parodi, former leader of Tazenda.