Roberto Vecchioni
Rotary Club of Malindi

An unusual album in Vecchioni's discography, in a very different way than "Ippopotami" in 1986, "Rotary Club of Malindi", released in 2004, is definitely a transitional record in the artistic journey of the Professor from Carate Brianza. The album follows "Il lanciatore di coltelli" and precedes "Di rabbia e di stelle", sharing some soundscapes with both, although the motivations and setting of this work make it different from those that "surround" it. First of all, the decision to make a trip to Africa for about two weeks, precisely to Kenya, following the depression and difficult time the Professor was going through, and then the consequent decision to create a record influenced by African influences, both linguistically and musically. From the first point of view, one can mention the opening track "Nini kuna?", which means "Why?", where he asks the father, both biologically and spiritually, what is in the world, what can still be found. The reference is clearly to Africa, and it highlights the disparities between the Western world and the Third World. The title track also contains a Swahili proverb, which opens the song: "Tone Tone Vunja Jiwe Jambo Jambo Asante Sana", meaning "Drop by drop the stone breaks, a deal a deal thank you very much". The first three tracks of the album contain explicit references to the trip to Africa, in addition to the two aforementioned there is in second position "L'uomo che vorrei", which mentions the African sea and musically picks up certain solutions from the album "El bandolero stanco", from seven years earlier, specifically a bossanova style. The fourth track is one of the best on the album: "Il libraio di Selinunte", which in the same year also gave the title to Our Professor's third novel, after "Viaggi nel tempo immobile" in 1996 and "Le parole non le portano le cicogne" in 2000. It's a tribute to the word: "and the words like silk music took me by the hand... and the words filled with love, his words became of love, his words became love". The novel also describes a civilization that has lost the use of language and is trying to regain it. Vecchioni, a good Professor of Latin and Greek, praises the art of the word. "Dimentica una cosa al giorno" is a dedication to his mother, who had recently passed away, and forgetting becomes a remedy for pain. The song is short, just three minutes, but intense, and the ending is explanatory: "but after having forgotten everything that has passed, like a wind that no longer blows, forget, last, even me or I could not forget you". Roberto Vecchioni demonstrated in records from the '90s, particularly in "El bandolero stanco", that he could range from profound and melancholic songs to ironic ones, without giving up some political flair. Thus comes "Faccetta rosa (in campo azzurro)", with a sarcastic melody and text referring explicitly to then-Premier Silvio Berlusconi. The first is "he must swim, he must swim, because he is too short to reach" and the second is "You can dance, you can dance, in the winds of life, now that, now that little pink face is no longer there". A year earlier Antonello Venditti had also written a sarcastic song about Berlusconi, "Il sosia". The singer-songwriters during this period thus have the same political target. From bossanova, to African music, to tango. Already "Tango di rango" to be precise, where Vecchioni claims his own virility. It is an ironic song about sex, on the same path as "Piccolo pisello" from 1991 and "Saggio di danza classica e moderna" from 1993: "I was young when girls never gave it... tango, I am a skeptical of rank and then I don't even have it long, always if it's still there...". Change of register, and return to the deep lyricism of "Momentaneamente lontano", which is evidently about the journey he is making: "God, how difficult it is to see me so far, far, far, without my words, which no longer come as they used to; without my songs that I would die to make on moonlit nights... and greeting myself in the mirror when I don't drink and don't smoke". The distance from Italy and Milan must have also meant abstaining from smoking and wine for the Professor, in a journey that was certainly beneficial and therapeutic. The inevitable literary citation, beyond the literary self-citation of "Il libraio di Selinunte", is found in "Il vecchio e il mare", a novel by Ernest Hemingway from 1952, which Vecchioni renders into a track with classical atmospheres (he also cites Gustav Mahler). The meaning of the song, and perhaps of the entire album, is summarized in the verse "because the old man is now twenty, and the sea has millions upon millions", to witness that the sea itself is more important than all the things that pass, between love, regret and pain. Love is certainly one of the important themes of this album, seen as Total Love, and not just love towards women, although "L'uomo che vorrei" is dedicated to Daria Colombo, the Artist's second wife. The album closes with the singular "Marika", the story of a kamikaze who could have lived her life as a woman had she not decided to blow herself up. In the year of beheadings and terrorist attacks, the singer-songwriter paints a portrait of stark relevance. But it is love that triumphs, in the (almost) concluding song: "E invece non finisce mai", referring to love. In an album that is ending, love never ends... AND NEITHER DOES THE ALBUM! Indeed after about two minutes of silence within the eleventh track, there is another song, a "ghost-track", "Papà", where Roberto's second daughter, Carolina Vecchioni, pays tribute to her father in a song written by herself and sung with voice and guitar, where she thanks her father and declares she wants to be like him. Love and hope, along with the theme of the journey, already addressed in the repertoire in a very different way in tracks like "Velasquez" and "Livingstone", bring back, at least existentially, Vecchioni, who three years later will unleash all his anger, and his stars one might say, in the 2007 album.

This album marked Roberto Vecchioni's transition to Sony Music, after eleven years with EMI where he had released all the records from "Per amore mio" to "Il lanciatore di coltelli", and it will also be the only album released with this label, before another transition to Universal. After proving his exceptional multi-instrumentalist skills, PFM Mauro Pagani even moved to the role of producer, and the musical results are evident. The album should have been called "Il vecchio e il mare", but in the end, to better convey the sense of the African setting, "Rotary Club of Malindi" was preferred, which was the name emblazoned on a bus stop provided to the local Kenyan populations in Malindi, precisely. This album also represented an opportunity for social commitment, indeed Vecchioni donated the publishing rights of the title track to Cedius (Center for Human Rights and Public Health), mainly to prevent the transmission of the HIV virus from mothers to children.

In conclusion, despite the journey and social commitment, "Rotary Club of Malindi" is a transitional album, which does not represent Vecchioni's artistic peak, with somewhat overly simplistic music and arrangements that are not "thrilling" and for this reason does not reach the three stars.