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Rating: In 1982, Ornella released an album containing the Canzoni della Mala, thus organizing the songs that were scattered across 45 records from the Fifties.
It's 1956: while the vast majority of Italian singers started to become screamers or sing silly songs or with rhymes like cuore amore fiore, in Milan, Giorgio Strehler & co. (Dario Fo, Fausto Amodei, and Fiorenzo Carpi) reworked some old ballads or stories of Milanese underworld for a young Vanoni who sang and acted during the intervals of the shows at the Piccolo Teatro.
Thus, the Canzoni della Mala were born, partly in Milanese dialect, which Vanoni brought to the stage by emphasizing the texts with gestures, a delirious voice, and a bad-girl look.
It starts with "Il Disertore" , which isn't a true mala song but a cover of the French Mouloudji, and then continues with "Canto Di Carcerati Calabresi" , where Vanoni's voice, combined with a repetitive hammering, turns this song into a lull of certain southern villages. We return to Milan with "Hanno Ammazzato Il Mario In Bicicletta", a text by Fo, where accompanied by bittersweet music, Ornella tells us the misadventures of a rascal like Mario with the police who ends up "like the calf, when they give him the final blow". I love this song because, besides having references to specific places in Milan, it brings back to a reality of the city that is no more. This journey into the past continues with "Senti Come La Vosa La Sirena", also by Fo, which begins with the sound of the siren towards Corso Sempione after the Arena because there they killed my love, who killed the chief of police and was dealing at the station. The text is in Milanese dialect, and you can already see that Vanoni would become one of the greatest performers.
We then go down into the mine with "La Zolfara" and to the prison with "Le Mantellate" (I prefer the Ferri's version), where miners die for the master and where "a bell sounds at all hours but Christ is not inside these walls". This is followed by the famous and splendid "Ma Mi", by Strehler, with Ornella interpreting this ballad with an almost drunken tone, empathizing with the faithful prisoner, locked up, and beaten in San Vittore, for speaking but "mi son dei quei chi parlen no", stunning is the closing "solo." The whole thing closes with the waltz of "La Giava Rossa" which is a whole plot of love and death and here you can feel that Vanoni grew up in theater with Strehler, it's pure theatre.
Some might not like it, as usual (even in those years, it was censored by radio and television broadcasters for the social themes of the texts), also because the voice is very particular and expressive, but it definitely stood apart from a certain type of music that was fashionable in those years.
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