Mina
Leggera

"Not impossible. Inevitable, Mister Anderson" (Agent Smith, from "Matrix: Revolutions" by Andy and Larry Wachowski)

It's inevitable to start with a cliché: these are strange days.

Among ministers who use words (although my friends, now lost in artificial paradises, would say “vaccaboli”) like “choosy”, left-wing people who call for the failure of the right and don't realize they risk being represented, in the upcoming elections, by a Christian Democrat who, as a “PR”, has a former lackey of the national Silvio (not that the alternatives are more credible...), journalists (the temptation to put quotation marks was strong) who “discuss” about sewage and bidets, on-demand outrage for the dearly departed, debates on whether it’s more serious to stab a couple (or more?) Swedes or to sing “Vesuvio, wash them with fire”, small and big racisms (from both sides: let's stop the hypocrisy, please!) and other trivialities (which, let's admit it, are now part of our daily life) there would be enough to write an editorial, yet here I am writing a review.

I write a review because, indeed, these are strange days: in all this chaos, I should be angry, disappointed, skeptical, and so on, in a litmus test of the civic mood that “steinbeckianly” could be summarized as “The Winter of Our Discontent” (how many have there been?), and yet despite the fact that the price of strawberry jams spiked this morning, I can't darken my state of mind.

It's inevitable to continue with a cliché: things change.

In the long run (if humanity manages to avoid self-extinction due to technological abuse), mankind is destined to continually improve (and the existence of Italy as a unique and indivisible national entity is not a necessary variable for this, nor is the presumed Western moral superiority), but this is not what I want to talk about. Rather, I want to reflect on the short prospect.

When I was “little”, one of the things I hated most was “Sledgehammer”: now I adore everything about Peter Gabriel (and I am among those who prefer his solo career to that with Genesis). During the same period, I despised asparagus (and the immortality of the soul) and I continue to hate them (ditto). All this because things change, but they do so according to patterns that we small carbon-based beings cannot interpret (at least for now).

A bit like octopuses, whose biological life is too short to accumulate the experiences necessary for cerebral evolution (otherwise they would rule the world in our stead), our gaze is busy looking at the future while the present slips through our hands. In the end, I am too busy putting everything that represents me into philological order to be genuinely pissed off. Am I wrong? Probably yes. Then I see all these angry people around me who, from a “civic” point of view, are actually more passive than I am because they end up getting lost in useless “noisy debates”, and then a doubt arises in me. But in my small way, I prefer not to investigate further.

Looking at the list of my DeReviews (this is the 140th), I see that the gaps left to reveal an overview of my philological essence are fewer and fewer, but unfortunately, many are very complex to fill (although this doesn't scare me too much): partly because some could be duplicates, partly because many are so personal that it is difficult even to set an opening, partly because many would require arguments difficult to propose and accept (especially on this Site), partly because they, outright, involve characters disliked by the average DeBaserian.

So while I carve out a free moment from the nonsense of life, mulling over all this, I can’t help but think back to my childhood (up until the age of 8: afterwards, I selected my own listens) marked by the nefarious constellation “Mina-Celentano-Battisti”. I'm not going to explain my “relationships” with the latter two (maybe later) because it would add too much to an already sprawling discourse, but I’m finally getting to the (former?) “Tiger of Cremona”. While sticking to the dominant adjectives (“inevitable” and “philological”), I have to admit that Mina, up to a certain point (around my twenties), was quite “indigestible” for me (beyond acknowledging her obvious technical skills that only blatant bad faith could deny), perhaps due to the aforementioned “childhood overdose”, but in some way, I felt linked to her.

I don't know if this has ever happened to you (I think so). These are things that happen and make you feel part of a “self-contained and autonomous universe”: like discovering that your two “heroes” (for example, Neil Gaiman and Tori Amos) are linked by a fraternal friendship, beginning to appreciate an artist (Amanda Palmer) and seeing that years later she marries one of the “heroes” mentioned above, discovering that Bruce Dickinson favors the same comic character as you do (Silver Surfer) and so on in many other cases. Obviously, I am not so naive as not to understand that there are very explainable statistical phenomena underneath it, but I like to think that there is an invisible gravitational center deciding all this...

I started appreciating Mina well before this album came out (1997) (incidentally, the fact that it hasn't been reviewed yet might be another “dharmic” signal), and this must be clarified because in this album there's “Tre Volte Dentro Me” aka “Dentro Marilyn” by Afterhours. Here's where an aside comes in, but I'll be brief: by listening to Mina's version (with a certain level of arrangement), it becomes clear that the strength of Agnelli's group wasn't so much in their technical capabilities (limited, no problem saying it) but in their expressive ones, which, if you allow me, have made them one of the best (the best in my view) Italian rock realities ever.

“Leggera” within Mina's career is certainly not among the most memorable albums. There are no songs that have remained in the popular imagination, as often happened for her (just a year later, I recall, she recorded “Mina Celentano” where “Acqua e Sale” is present), nor others destined for a more elitist cult (from just one year before “Cremona” with “La Bacchetta Magica”) where our heroine often stands out. It’s an album that I particularly love for emotional and “cosmic” reasons (I think I’ve already explained them). There is no lack of valid points here too (always a Mina album). At least, for the pleasure of hearing her voice “play” with various genres, the adeptness of the arrangers (capable of inserting Mina's voice-instrument in ever-changing and elegant contexts) that surround her, and the “diversity” of the project compared to her other works. Notable are the retro jazz club atmospheres of “Someday in my Life” (duet with Mick Hucknall), the entertaining cover (“Suona Ancora”) by Casinò Royale “duetted” with “Le Voci Atroci”, the fascinating “black” seventies “Johnny”, and, of course, the already mentioned “Tre Volte Dentro Me” where the unusual insertion into soft and rarefied atmospheres (an almost lysergic minimalism) contrasts with a decidedly warm and lived-in interpretation.

An album that, however, respects the title (in many songs even too much), on which there's not much else to say (good the “minestrone” of opinions proposed by the Wikipedia page) except that I invite you to listen to it (in the info, I attach the link to my playlist on YouTube) before expressing judgments (feel free to rate the “review” with a series of ones).

Hemophiliac in its dharmic version.

P.S.: While writing, 100 women have been killed in this nation since the beginning of the year. Perhaps it is from these numbers that we should start to get angry.