Nicola di Bari
Un successo dopo l'altro

Hello everyone, continuing our journey through the "lesser-known" Italian music, today we stop by Nicola di Bari (Michele Scommegna, born 1940), a singer and songwriter who enjoyed his greatest success between 1970 and 1972, only to gradually, but inevitably, fade into obscurity, at least here in Italy, although he compensated with significant and lasting success in South America.

I'm glad to talk to you about him because, unlike other artists rightly forgotten by most of us, he is a serious and well-prepared professional, with a warm and well-modulated voice, whose pieces are not banal, neither in terms of musical accompaniment nor in terms of lyrics and themes addressed. This anthology, released in the '70s to seal the first and richest part of his career, contains the best of his production and allows me to analyze it, albeit in necessary summary, with you and for you.

From a purely stylistic point of view, the music of Nicola di Bari draws an ideal bridge between the neo-romantic melodism of Salvatore Adamo, from whom it borrows an underlying expressive composure, the alternation of moderately toned verses and more sustained and emphatic choruses, and certain Mediterranean moods, which stand out especially in the predominance of plucked guitars, well supported by percussion and keyboards capable of creating an atmosphere of perpetual suspension and anticipation, which perfectly fits the lyrics of Our Artist.

In producing these works, after all, Nicola di Bari relied on the label of Mogol and Battisti, taking full advantage of the professionalism of various session musicians and arrangers of the era, who "dressed" the songs of the Apulian-born artist in a decidedly fitting manner.

The most important aspect of the singer's work, however, can be found in the underlying poetics present in his songs, almost all dedicating, through different but complementary perspectives, to the theme of "separateness" and "detachment."

Indeed, I seem to perceive in Nicola di Bari's pieces a careful and non-trivial reflection on the processes of separation and detachment that each individual experiences at various stages of their life concerning their own reference points, and a disenchanted, but therefore poignant, awareness of the impossibility of returning to the original harmony, to the serenity (perhaps imagined, perhaps not) that every human has felt in the early times and years of their life, remembering the original union with their mother, with their family, with their land, and with their former self.

In Nicola di Bari, detachment often appears as an indefeasible necessity, which the author sometimes tries to legitimize, sometimes to justify, sometimes to mend, without ever fully succeeding in a task that seems impossible, almost titanic. There is the rational acceptance of division and the irrational attempt to mend it, naturally destined for failure.

As evidence of what has been noted, consider the famous "Vagabondo", where detachment is justified and rationalized in terms of emancipation and freedom, of possible futures; or the equally renowned "Il cuore è uno zingaro", which tells of the split of a couple and a vain attempt at reunion destined to break on the fickleness of the soul; the magnificent "Zapponeta", an electro-acoustic journey where the migrant returns to his native village with the knowledge that he can no longer be an integral part of it. A separate discussion is deserved by "Chitarra suona più piano", where there is an apparently successful attempt at reconciliation between two lovers, in a nighttime atmosphere that leaves doubt about the fleetingness of the relationship, destined to disappear at dawn, and, again, "I giorni dell'arcobaleno", a track where the loss of an adolescent's virginity is described with the melancholic tones of a premature and ephemeral detachment from one's childhood.

Music for migrants then, in space or, simply, in the soul.

Migrantemente Yours,

Il_Paolo