Alessandro Mannarino - From the Tiber to the Amazon

A working-class neighbourhood, a troublesome kid and a guitar given to him as a gift "so that this one calms down". The story of Alessandro Mannarino, the Roman singer-songwriter known even just by his surname, starts out like that of so many other musicians, from Noel Gallagher to Eddie Vedder. What sets him apart from those more famous examples, though, is his trajectory: he emerged from a music scene dominated by sounds and themes quite different from his own, carving out a highly personal approach to the singer-songwriter tradition somewhere between Roman stornello and world music.

Born in 1979 in the San Basilio borgata, a place immediately branded in the minds of Romans as a drug-dealing hotspot, Mannarino grew up falling in love with the poetry of Trilussa and the theatre of Petrolini, both passions passed down by his grandfather. He took his first steps in live music in his early twenties, performing in the nightspots of Rione Monti with distinctive sets that combined acoustic performance with DJ sets. These shows, which offered an alternative take on the typical Roman minstrel, won him a following and brought growing popularity in the years that followed.

In 2006, as Roman song seemed to be enjoying a revival once again thanks to artists like Ardecore, Mannarino founded Kampina, a folk sextet that quickly widened his audience in the Capital, cementing his status as an unrepentant, irreverent stornello singer who made Romanesco dialect the keystone of a whole world of his own, suspended between everyday life and imagination. Where Ardecore had rehabilitated Roman stornelli in the age of post-rock, Mannarino turned them upside down, transforming them into boisterous swing numbers and rumpled waltzes, full of fantasy and biting irony.

During this period, scarcely documented since it still predates - if only just - the smartphone era, some of the first songs that would later make up Bar of rage began to take shape. It was a time of great ferment for the future author of radio hits, who started appearing in contexts outside music, from theatre shows with Massimiliano Bruno and Valerio Aprea to TV programmes like Serena Dandini's "Parla con me", as well as numerous radio appearances, from Fiorello on Radio 2 to Radio Popolare. The image of Mannarino - hat on his head, guitar in hand, and a piratical ring in his ear - began to draw attention.

The moment of his recording debut finally arrived on 20 March 2009, the release date of Bar of rage. Produced by Universal, the album immediately won over both public and critics, catapulting Mannarino among the big things of the moment. And the impact on first listen is just as powerful: after barely a minute of introduction comes "Me so' mbriacato", a genuine instant classic for the Roman singer-songwriter. A track as simple as it is irresistible, both in its rhythm and in its sincerity, instantly adopted by countless guitarists on street corners and around campfires.

Mannarino's intention, as he explained in interviews following the album's release, was to pour pretty much his whole world into it, telling the story of Rome's streets, its characters and its nightlife, caught between dreams and furious disappointments. But within the grooves of Bar of rage there is more than pure folklore or a documentary-style snapshot: the Roman artist also works in several threads of reflection, even if they're often only hinted at or expressed in a still somewhat unrefined way.

Mannarino's stornelli are a slap in the face to the hypocrites and bullies, but also to that radical-chic snobbery that has long polluted the Italian alternative scene. The Roman minstrel criticises, picks fights, and sides with the weakest with the world-weary, nihilistic swagger of a street kid, taking aim at contemporary society, from politicians to the religious to opportunists of every stripe. That's the case with the attack on society's superficiality and indifference in "Svegliatevi italiani", or with the disillusioned closing blues number "Soldi", where he pays tribute to his idol Tom Waits.

Other highlights on the album include the thoroughly Roman title track, the ballad "Scetate Vajo'", a riotous serenade in which Mannarino plays with Neapolitan song, adding echoes of De André, but above all "Tevere Grand Hotel". This last track is accompanied by a famous video showing him crossing the Roman suburb of Centocelle to reach the city's largest Roma settlement, Casilino 900, which becomes the stage for his performance, painting an imaginary world worthy of Emir Kusturica. Here, for the first time, appear the elements of ethnic contamination that, in the years to come, would take on an ever more central role in Mannarino's artistic journey.

Certified platinum, Bar of rage thus drew considerable attention to its author, who would go on to be a finalist for the Gaber Award and the Tenco Award in the "Best Debut Work" category, performing on the stage of the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo. This success seems almost surprising in years when the Roman music scene, especially in the outskirts, appeared dominated by the underground rap of artists like Noyz Narcos and Truceklan, Gente de Borgata and Brokenspeakers. They too were street characters, sharing with Mannarino humble origins and messages of rebellion, but also an over-the-top lifestyle, marked by excess and public behaviour that wasn't always impeccable.

Mannarino is certainly not one to sit idle: exactly two years after his debut, he returns with his second album, Supersantos (2011), a miscellany of outlandish stories and picaresque characters, a superbly arranged and played song-theatre piece that moves between stornelli and ballads, gypsy rhythms and folk fairground whirls, street life and, above all, a biting irony that spares no one, from bishops to politicians to lovers who don't know how to love. And Mannarino certainly doesn't mince his words. These are tales of drunken benders, fights and passions. But also of death. So in "Maddalena", the wife of a proud god who feels untouchable runs away "on a little boat going against the current" together with that drunkard Judas who used to go "to die in the night/ for wine, for women and for fights". Meanwhile "L'onorevole" carries on his thoroughly respectable public life despite being dead inside and out, a metaphor for the putrefaction of politics, which has long been dead without realizing it, intent as it is solely on amassing wealth and power, while the desperate souls of "L'ultimo giorno dell'umanità" - refugees, thieves and ex-convicts - end up at the Caritas soup kitchen "handing out cold minestrone to the spoiled children of a Jesuit father" or "in a pay-by-the-hour hotel" settling for thirty euros' worth of "three scratches on the back and a wife" (and here the echoes of De André, in the lyrics, and Capossela, in the delivery, are unmistakable).

The unbridled, infectious rhythms that had won over audiences also return in fine form, so even a non-rumba can become "Rumba magica", with the help of trumpets, violins and accordions, framing a vital slice of life from the city's margins; or one can get swept up in the mocking "Serenata lacrimosa", with its choral refrain ("O mamma' come se fa'/ Ce dicono de vive da morti pe' poi resuscità"), almost an anticlerical sonnet by Belli transfigured into a rowdy working-class patchanka.

There's no room for bishops and cardinals in Mannarino's street gospel, where instead poor souls like Judas and Mary Magdalene loom large - redeemed sinners and worn-out lovers who let themselves be carried along by life's great swell. Characters like "Marylou", the woman of the harbour who "dances in her short dress" to the notes of an unrestrained swing, breaking the hearts of all the sailors. Behind the irresistible rhythm and the playful singing lies, for the first time, a theme dear to the artist that will be taken up increasingly in his later work: the crisis of the cold, rational man faced with a vital, passionate woman (“Ma poi un ragioniere ha svalvolato/ Perché non riusciva più a contar/ Poi precisamente ha calcolato di ammazzarla dentro a un bar”).

But perhaps even more bitter is the conclusion of "Serenata silenziosa", whispered almost under one's breath, to remind us that "this is the age in which whoever profits is whoever keeps quiet". The apocalypse is near, in short, but at least there will be the consolation that "the tears of hell serve some purpose, they nourish the earth and make a rose grow", as the heartfelt waltz "Merlo Rosso" puts it, sung as a duet with the seductive voice of Claudia Angelucci. And then there's always love, a full-blooded love, but also a rough and suffering one, as in the open-hearted ballad "Statte zitta": “Che ne sai tu de quello che sento/ c’ho na fitta ma nun me lamento, nun me lamento/ Amore un corno i panni s’asciugano soli/ e sto freddo non viene da fori/ io ce l’ho dentro”. And "Quando l'amore se ne va", there's nothing left to do but drown in a flood of overflowing words, because "the wheels start spinning" and "beds become stretchers". Eccentric and disorienting, finally, is "L'era della gran publicità", where the macaronic Frenchified lyrics conceal subliminal and far from politically correct messages.

Certified gold, Supersantos kicks off a successful summer tour. In the meantime, Mannarino composes the theme tune for the Rai Tre programme "Ballarò" and, on the occasion of a collaboration with artist Valerio Berruti, releases the track "Vivere la vita", recited entirely in a child's unbroken voice. "Vivere la vita" soon becomes one of the highlights of his repertoire, frequently used to close his concerts. A new tour follows, titled "L'ultimo giorno dell'umanità" after one of the tracks on Supersantos, in which the Roman singer-songwriter reinterprets his songs in theatrical form.

In 2012 Mannarino performs overseas for the first time at the Hit Week Festival, playing venues such as the Highline Ballroom in New York, the Arts and Park Amphitheatre in Miami and the Leonardo Da Vinci Theatre in Montréal. The following year marks his return to cinema, with the score for Rolando Ravello's film "Tutti contro tutti", for which he wins an award at the Magna Grecia Film Festival. That same year also sees the launch of the "Corde: concerto per sole chitarre" tour, in which Mannarino is joined by Fausto Mesolella, Tony Canto and Alessandro Chimienti.

It is probably all this activity that spurs the Roman singer-songwriter to undertake a deeper human and musical search. Despite having reached full recognition, Mannarino seems to chafe against the role and the many, too many, labels pinned on him: minstrel, stornello singer, poète maudit, drunkard, yet another hat-wearing singer-songwriter. The result of this inner turmoil will be his answer to the famously tricky test of the third album.

Preceded by the single "Gli animali", Al monte comes out in May 2014, bringing an unexpected gust of change. Among Mannarino's works, it's the shortest album and the one generally least appreciated by critics, who are thrown off by the change of course. Al monte almost entirely abandons the Roman dialect and the gypsy rhythms, leaving more room for storytelling through imagery while still retaining its author's political streak. The spoken word takes on greater importance, becoming in several tracks the undisputed protagonist ("Al monte", "Deija"), while the instrumentation is more delicate and refined, with greater attention paid to the acoustic guitar. These elements make the record, overall, less immediate than its predecessors, earning it several "accusations" of heaviness.

However, the - objective - absence of a "Me so' mbriacato" or a "Serenata lacrimosa" should absolutely not be read as a lack of inspiration. Although less fun than its predecessors, Al monte fully retains the Roman artist's genuineness and intelligence, managing to express them at their best in its finest moments. This is above all the case with "L'impero", one of the finest songs Mannarino has ever written, a sweet, melancholy ballad open to multiple interpretations. The track also best represents the shift in artistic direction: whereas before Mannarino sang in a cheerful, carefree way, but with a constant undercurrent of bitterness and disillusionment, now the situation is reversed, with vocals that seem sad on the surface but are actually underpinned by a greater self-awareness and a sense of the possibility of change.

The more rowdy tones of the classic Mannarino are only hinted at in the opener "Malamor", a track that's decent enough overall but lacking the inspiration of his classics, while other tracks, such as "Gente" and "Le stelle", suffer from the barer, more stripped-down sound. Definitely worth noting, however, is "Scendi giù", a story inspired by abuses of power committed by authorities both inside and outside prisons, for which the artist will receive the 2015 Amnesty International Italy Award for best song on human rights.

The tour to promote Al monte, on which the singer is joined by no fewer than 11 musicians, proves a considerable success. Between dates, however, Mannarino gets caught up in a brawl at a venue on the Ostia seafront and is arrested. Looking back, the episode represents, in a sense, the last price the Roman artist has to pay to finally shake off his image as a cursed, troublemaking figure. Despite the incident, Mannarino continues to rack up accolades, from the Mei's Premio Pimi for best independent artist of the year to an appearance at the New Year's Eve concert at Rome's Circo Massimo. In July 2015 the singer embarks on a further tour of theatres and auditoriums, titled "Corde" and centred, fittingly, on guitars, double bass, cello, violin and musical saw.

At the end of the tour, the Roman singer-songwriter decides to set off backpacking through South America, with the idea of broadening his horizons and continuing the journey of growth begun with Al monte. In the resulting album, released in January 2017 under the title Good heavens, one can glimpse a destination reached, a balance achieved between introspection, lightness and spontaneity. Recorded with no fewer than thirty musicians, the album debuts at number one on the Fimi chart for the first time in Mannarino's career and receives a warmer critical reception than its predecessor.

The previous manouche and patchanka sounds give way to the colourful, seductive sounds of South America, while more impersonal, deeper subjects take the place in the lyrics of the characters of Roman nights the artist portrayed in his early work. Like its predecessor, which it exceeds only slightly in running time, Good heavens (2017) is made up of just nine tracks. In this case, however, it's harder to single out any less focused moments, thanks to the greater thematic and compositional variety.

As in the past, the figure of the woman looms large in both the lyrics and the performance. "Le rane", for instance, is a nocturnal ballad with hazy, half-glimpsed lyrics, a kind of lullaby that, conceptually and structurally, has more in common with the alternative-folk of Marta Sui Tubi than with anything the Roman artist has done before. In "31 lune" - the most obvious point of reference - where the Sicilian band used the splendid voice of the little-known Sara Piolanti, Mannarino chooses to be joined by that of Ylenia Sciacca, who is likewise far removed from more famous circles.

The real departure from everything that came before lies above all in the fact that Mannarino seems to have freed himself from the role of the pure and simple stornello singer and pushed further, moving past a rhetoric that had been both the strength and weakness of his poetics. There are still the downtrodden and the others, even here, the simplistic, patched-together dualism of us-versus-them, the daily battle against an enemy that hides - at times with a populist vagueness that's hard not to fault - in anything that might threaten individual freedom. The shift, if anything, translates into a lower-key, less brash profile.

After the opening track, titled “Roma” and containing more than a few jabs at the Vatican, come two well-crafted singles: the airy title track, dedicated to the theme of immigration, and the Brazilian-tinged “Arca di Noè”. Mannarino ranges from the flamboyant, theatrical pacifist manifesto of “Ghandi” to the rhythmic “Babalù”, which is covered in enigmatic lyrics open to different interpretations. It's here, in certain vocal and expressive tricks, that Mannarino even winks at the brine-soaked Vinicio Capossela of “Sailors, prophets and whales“, while the female voices gain greater prominence than in previous albums (among them, notably, that of Lavinia Mancusi, the longtime vocalist of Mannarino's outfit).

Up to the closing “Un’estate” – the epilogue of a record lasting exactly 40 minutes – there's barely a trace of the characters who once populated Mannarino's nativity scene; types rather than individuals, from Osso di Seppia to Mary Lou, children of ordinary stories, tales that would interest no one were it not for the fact that they were told by someone who partly lived them and partly knew how to sing them.

Good heavens is richly dressed yet lean at the same time, necessary and mature, owed and sought after in equal measure. It sticks from the first listen and lasts less than three quarters of an hour, only spinning its wheels on rare occasions that, perhaps, coincide precisely with its clunkier passages, the ones where Mannarino bothers to describe and explain (“La frontiera”), when he'd be better off saying less and letting go.

The image of the roguish street-singer songwriter, then, finally gives way to a more mature and self-aware artist, albeit one with a renewed hunger for life and for putting himself on the line. “Feeling good is contagious, it's the most important political act in this moment in history,” he would say in an interview shortly after the album's release. Even his streak of social criticism blends harmoniously into this new image: the “ultimi” [the downtrodden] so dear to the singer-songwriter remain at the center of his battle, but their position is now examined within a broader context. The attacks are more targeted; gone is the fervent, scattershot approach of his early work, replaced by a far deeper cultural argument that rejects the Catholic and psychoanalytic notion of original sin as an evil rooted in man. Change is therefore both the origin and the object of a work that transforms Mannarino into a rebel with a cause, fully freeing him from the lineage of polemical artists later defeated by life, like Rino Gaetano.

The "Good heavens tour" marks the triumph of Mannarino's gamble, as he doubles many of the originally scheduled dates, racking up numerous sold-outs. The success is celebrated in October 2017 with the release of Good heavens live, a special edition of the album featuring a double live disc recorded across various dates of the tour and a studio version of the track “Fatte bacia’”, which had long been part of the live setlist but had never been recorded until then. Among the performances, which faithfully capture this positive moment for the artist, the rearranged versions of older songs stand out in particular, such as “Osso di seppia”, enriched by female backing vocals, and above all “Quando l’amore se ne va”, completely wrapped in a sunny, funk-inflected reinterpretation running over seven minutes.

Afterwards, Mannarino received the De André Lifetime Achievement Award. In the early months of 2018, further musical collaborations followed: the single “Ultra Pharum” with Samuel of Subsonica, and the charming “Madur – Morte accidentale di un romano”, featured on Luca Barbarossa's album “Roma è de tutti”.

The “Good heavens” tour reached its culmination in July 2018, with the show “Apriti cielo – Il gran finale” set against the backdrop of Rock in Roma. The three-hour concert saw Mannarino joined by all the musicians from his previous tours. His social commitment was reaffirmed when 40 members of the Movimento Immigrati e Rifugiati di Caserta came on stage holding a banner reading “Apriti mare e lasciali passare”, referencing the song. Looking out over the 10,000 attendees at the event, the variety of the crowd is striking: Mannarino reaches everyone, from the radical-chic university student to the rough kid from the suburbs, right down to young parents with small children in tow. The Roman singer-songwriter later received two awards, the Targa Faber from the Fabrizio De André Foundation and the Gabriella Ferri Prize, established by the Fondazione Musica per Roma to honor artists who celebrate the capital's popular musical tradition. But the greatest recognition came out in the field, or on the stage, so to speak: in January 2020, Mannarino was invited to perform at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris during the “Curieuses Nocturnes” series. The performance, held on a platform suspended beneath the museum's famous clock, made him the first Italian artist ever to perform in that prestigious cultural sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Mannarino continued his musical exploration, traveling between Africa, South America and the United States. Like many other projects, the release of his new album was also pushed back following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in the longest break of his career.

But his adventurous comeback, titled V and finally released in September 2021, shows just how well the Roman singer-songwriter managed to turn the lockdown-enforced pause to his advantage. V is in fact the deepest, freest, and most cathartic work in his discography. Rather than a continuation of the previous album, it represents the full-blown triumph of the new elements only hinted at there. The main shift lies in the lyrics, which play on evocative images open to different interpretations, particularly in the dreamlike one-two of “Fiume Nero” and “Agua”. Nature, emotion, and above all the feminine image emerge as the decisive protagonists of his journey. The album's sound, meanwhile, comes across warm and enveloping thanks to a deliberate choice of musicians, from longtime collaborators like Tony Canto and Simona Sciacca to unexpected new entries like Gioia Persichetti (vocals on “Vagabunda”) and the choir of indigenous Karuana women on “Amazónica”.

What strikes you from the very first listen is the lead single “Africa”, which harmoniously blends a delicate acoustic intro with a groove that is at once intense and delicate, brought fully to life by the chorus. Another standout track on the record is “Bandida”, where the sweetest percussion and Lavinia Mancusi's voice flow into the chant of the feminist collective “Las Tesis”, backed by a powerful electric guitar riff. While “Congo” pairs a spoken-word text with ethnic sonorities, “Cantaré” is instead a rousing anthem of resistance, with a liberating chorus made to be belted out at the top of one's lungs. Little remains here of the blunt, crowd-pleasing Mannarino of ten years earlier: only “Banca De New York” faintly echoes those tones. Even “Ballabylonia”, the album's most carefree track, gets people dancing without a worry, but in a more visceral and less automatic way than in the past.

Mannarino's artistic search moves decisively toward a break with dominant Western culture, seeking to challenge its dogmas in the face of an ancestral dimension of harmony between man and nature. The indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and in particular its feminist collectives, thus become a symbol of resistance against oppression. These are stories of women, roots, fulcrum, drive, reasons to live beyond personal, social, cultural and economic “Paura” [fear] – a small handbook of hope and self-conviction, a closing lullaby and a call to begin again, after hearing the gospel-like choirs of the indigenous women of the Tapajós and sensing the tolling of “Agua” in the footsteps of Iracema, his own battle to overturn a destiny of submission to imperialist cultures.

Mannarino ventures onto risky ground, full of superficial rhetorical traps, but he's kept afloat by a lightness of melody and authorship all his own. And so he can finally look up at the “Luna”, amid liturgical choirs and hushed orchestral brass, and cry out V, as in Vittoria [Victory].

Recently interviewed about new musical trends in Italy, Mannarino replied that he's focused only on his own personal path of exploration. At the moment, his career seems to bear out the vision of an artist who, with considerable courage and a touch of recklessness, has managed to shake off easy labels and seek out a personal dimension within an increasingly homogenized showbiz world. And who, perhaps, still has his best work ahead of him.

Contributions by Claudio Fabretti (“Supersantos”), Federico Piccioni (“Good heavens”), Davide Sechi (“V”)

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