Richie Havens
Common Ground

It's 1982, and on the streets of Naples, you can only hear the songs from Bella 'mbriana by Pino Daniele. A record where rhythms, sounds, and overseas influences blend with the Neapolitan tradition had never been heard before, without mimicking the Americans. It was the era of Neapolitan Power.

Pino naturally managed to mix English, Italian, and Neapolitan (with a capital N as it is a language in its own right). He understood the true spirit that binds some peoples together, like love, suffering, and social injustice.

And despite singing in Tutta n'ata storia "je nun vogl'i 'America," he did go to America, and in New York, he met Richie Havens. Whether it was the 41st parallel that links the two cities or the desire to fuse the two cultures, he decided to write and play for the voice that opened the Woodstock concert, representing the cry for freedom of a people.

Common Ground was being born...

It was a gamble at the time to break away from major record labels to found his own label and produce autonomously, but Pino had no doubts and founded Bagaria. To get an idea of Italian music in '83, the best-selling singles were "Vamos a la playa," "Amore disperato," "Tropicana"... The result achieved is extraordinary, also thanks to the fact that musicians of the caliber of Jeremy Meek, Mel Collins, Kelvin Bullen, Danny Cummings, Joe Amoruso, Tullio De Piscopo, Enzo Avitabile and Pino Daniele himself, who duets with Havens in Gay Cavalier, the album's most successful single, play on this record.

Among the tracks that make up the rest of the album, there is also Dear John, written in memory of John Lennon who was assassinated in New York just two years earlier.

To this day, the album has not been digitally remastered, and this, all things considered, I like because it forces me to use the turntable with that background noise that sometimes makes Richie Havens' voice even huskier and more poignant.

Something no mp3 player could ever do.