Ricchi e Poveri
I grandi successi originali

Hello folks,

today we are dedicating our attention to the Mama’s and Papa’s of Italy. The Italian Mama’s and Papas’? Exactly, you read that right. I can think of no better definition for the Ricchi e Poveri—name picked by Franco Califano himself, as wiki reports—a group based in Genoa active for over four decades, peaking in the seventies and eighties. True champions of Italian vocal pop, and still today, icons of national-popular style, sometimes exploited in advertising and cinema, as proof of a recognizable stylistic signature across the decades. Just think of how even the great Alexander Aja used them in one of his films to temper the high tension depicted on screen.

Indeed, Italy lacked in the early seventies a group capable of reviving the splendor of the joy of living typical of Californian vocal groups, which, around the sixties, had shown bourgeois and disengaged youth from the barricades the joys and dreams of the west coast: if the Italian west coast is, in fact, Liguria and Sardinia, it's not surprising that the Ligurian-Sardinian group composed of Angela (aka, the brunette), Franco (aka the mustached one), Angelo (aka the handsome), and up to the early eighties Marina (aka the blonde), provided the soundtrack for our parents while discovering those beautiful beaches. And let it never be said that any of you were not conceived to the notes of “Che sarà” or “Se mi innamoro,” played by some cassette player in a car or in a camping tent set up on some beach.

Re-watching their videos on YouTube, and reflecting back on their success, I believe that the Ricchi e Poveri can represent, both stylistically and in image, the counterpart of Albano and Romina Power, with whom they shared almost the same market niche: while the former, as I had the chance to write years ago, represented a sort of panicked fusion of man and woman in the name of (im)perishable love, our quartet was the bearer of greater freedom from the preconceived notions of the Italian family, even when declined in a modern exotic-foreign key as in the case of the Apulian-American couple. Notorious were the quarrels between the four Rich in spirit and poor in pocket (as legend would have it), as well as the disagreements between the women of the group, which led to Marina's departure.

As they represented the Italian way to the west-coast, the Ricchi e Poveri were also the bourgeois way to overcoming banality, internally undermining the classic model of the pacified family and its song representations, within a logic of group, permutation of vocal styles and lifestyles, which conceded nothing to political commitment or easy protest. Almost a decadence of traditional models sensed from within tradition, and hence, a full and effective anticipation of the retreat of the early eighties bridging the years of terrorism and Saturday night fever: this, both from the point of view of musical style and content.

I know the comparison might horrify purists, but the career of the Ricchi e Poveri represents, for the small and middle Italian bourgeoisie, as well as for the less ideologically inclined working classes, what De André's career was in the same years, with the difference that the great Faber was mostly followed by educated upper bourgeois or politicized working-class and student classes (also obviously responsible for many conceptions).

This beautiful and indispensable anthology takes stock of the quartet's (and then trio's) career, highlighting especially its virtues. Noteworthy is the primordial and very famous “Che sarà” – brought to success with Josè Feliciano, lyrics by the great Jimmy Fontana – whose lyrics touch poetic peaks almost unmatched, in singing the nostalgia for one's distant country, and at the same time, a mix of expectations and fears for the future of an adulthood full of unknowns. It continues with “La prima cosa bella” – lyrics by Nicola di Bari – which lingers on the theme of first love, youth's smile, and joy of living, viewed as openness towards others, without this meaning family, political, or religious commitment: already here, the alternative dimension characterizing the group and its message, and which has so much impacted in my view their national and international success, is emptied from within and revisited thematically.

It continues with the real classics of the group, tracks that don't miss any respectable party, even in remix version, and that have been appreciated even among the homosexual or simply camp audience: the group's peak, the best-selling Italian single in spring 1981, “Sarà perché ti amo” (lyrics by Pupo; in Aja's film notably exploited in a scene alluding to a sapphic relationship; covered among others by Ricky Martin's Menudo), of which I think it's fair to transcribe part of the compelling text: from the opening verse “che confusione/ sarà perché ti amo/e un'emozione/che cresce piano piano”, to the rhythmic chorus “e vola vola si sa sempre più in alto si va/e vola vola con me/il mondo è matto perché/e se l'amore non c’è/basta una sola canzone per far confusione/fuori e dentro di te” the whole track can actually be read as a hymn to liberation and breaking out of patterns, in the style that otherwise denotes the work and life of the author of the text.

Equally notable, and blessed by a Sanremo success marking the last stage of classic Italian pop at the Festival (after the Cutugno, Fogli, Rivale, Albano and Romina series, and just before the advent of the new pop by Ramazzotti), is the famous “Se m’innamoro” (1985), also dedicated to falling in love as a factor of life discontinuity, perhaps the only real discontinuity where ideologies have fallen and disengagement has now spread as a way of life. It has been exactly thirty years since this piece, which still relies on a recognizable and radio-friendly refrain: by then, the trio has already established itself as a leader on the music scene, and paradoxically almost an institution of our music (like the Pooh, the only group that precedes them in number of records sold), while being artists who first instilled the doubt that family wasn't everything. Stylistically, we are facing a fully controlled pop, perhaps lacking in arrangement quirks: and still today, I think about what would have become of the Ricchi e Poveri if they had been discovered by a Brian Eno or a Daniel Lanois.

I conclude with Coccobello Africa (1987, lyrics by Minellono, author of “L’italiano,” among others), a piece from the late eighties and our last successful single, which had, in my humble opinion, the courage—in the vein of “Rimini Ouagadougou”, by Lu Colombo—to legitimize interracial love on Italian beaches. A thorny theme, on the one hand, but expressed with allusive and elegant style, “cocco bello Africa/la parola magica/è un amore che/capita anche a te/ma non sai perchè”, which can still be read by less savvy audiences as the account of a common summer adventure of a middle-aged woman (almost a cougar today indeed).

Among other tracks, which I won't analyze here, I also mention the danceable “Mamma Maria” (1982) and “Voulez vous danser” (1983), reminiscent of the best Abba, both in style and in captivating rhythm. Also successful, of course, although based more on catchy and radio-friendly arrangements than particularly noteworthy lyrics.

Brave, iconic, endowed with a dose of charisma and spirit that makes them still great entertainers today, both here and in Eastern Europe and South America: perhaps the true symbol of Italian music and its transformations, and with them the transformations of our society, these eternal, pleasant, serene youths! More I will not say, get yourselves to the party with the notes of this anthology.

Eternally Yours

Il_Paolo