•
Rating:
Dining at your parents' house is always a challenging and bitter endeavor, especially if we consider that my parents, like good failed ex-revolutionaries, have only one CD, Sanacore by Almamegretta, with that warty gorilla Raiz, then things really take a turn for the worse. Very much worse.
Knowing my father's passion for reggae, and certainly dub, I brought a disc lent to me by my trusty relative Ettore, a Sicilian by adoption but already tired of the heat and the occasional shotgun blasts to dodge.
I put the CD on the already heated player by the Mediterranean odors that I'm sure will flow copiously from the disc of wonders and here it is: un-za un-za un-za un-za un-za un-za un-za un-za un-za; damn, when does the rhythm change? But it doesn't matter; my grandma has already stopped scowling at our guest Agnese: a horrible and lonely woman with a Neanderthal face that my mother takes on out of pity.
In an instant, the chaos erupts: the two family idiots, the Pinczer dogs, start barking, and my father exclaims shamanically: "Porcu dighel sti stronsi di cani li pòdat nò lasà fòra d'la porta?" And my mother, petrified, attempts a slalom among the hounds while carrying a tray of ham and melon: what a wonderful caryatid!
Well, the lyrics flow placidly over the favorite topics of those who, after years of Mafia-controlled aqueducts, I write it capitalized just in case, feel the need and urgency for some refreshing drops to make the crops flourish, to revive the hazy days in an impossible climate that still makes us wonder today: who the hell was crazy enough to colonize such hot places?
I remember when, during a fleeting vacation in Lecce, I made the mistake of visiting the historic center alone. Entering a tobacco shop, the owner looked at me wide-eyed, saying: "Are you crazy to walk around here alone?" And he rescued me with his scooter from the clutches of the thirsty octopus.
All this is enclosed in this charming disc that makes me think of Rio De Janeiro's carnivals: the explosion of happiness when around the corner there are little girls who, lacking real toys, turn unearthed little corpses into their dolls.
But fiesta!!! The party must go on: reggae to not think, a steady rhythm to dull, not reflect the misfortune of a land. Of course, with that heat, probably, nothing else can be done.
Another anecdote: I went for a contest, of which I will not reveal the nature, in the blazing Salento, where the African wind blows as that script writer Vinicio reminds us, and I remember this communal house scattered among sand clods that already seemed like a desert... this fat man in his fifties, who was supposed to host us, with the dog on a leash saying: "nu ze sctannu o posto.... quì ierii è passsato u Franco nun cià datu la pussibillità"...from the hut came some intense techno music, you could hear the revelers' screams and he, pulling the leash: "Dai Buddha 'nammo và che nu ch'a sta nieente a fa...".
Acqua Pe Sta Terra is a disc of chilling repetitiveness and banality: it wants to convey warmth and gives me the impression of a corpse in the morgue fridge waving its arms, with a fixed smile and a brain turned off forever.
Needless to say, dinner ended with a pleasant lemon sorbet; my father turned up the TV volume and, after a few minutes, the small blaster was silenced too.
Only my grandma kept repeating: "But the song with love? Can you play it again?"
Agnese remained silent and cried.
Loading comments slowly
