Colapesce - A round trip through the Sicilian provinces

We meet up with the Sicilian singer-songwriter right around the release of the soundtrack for “Iddu – Sicilians Letters”, the film presented at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, written and directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza. It's a solo return, a temporary pause (so no split) from the duo with his longtime partner Dimartino, for an album that harks back as much to the film scores of past greats like Egisto Macchi and Fiorenzo Carpi as to the mystical third-worldism of Jon Hassell. The musician from Solarino tells us about the genesis of this new path of his, reflects on historical revisionism, and even reveals his recent listening habits.

Tell us about the genesis of this new soundtrack.

I started working on the music while the screenplay was still being written, and from there I already sketched out the musical imagery. It helped me a lot not to work solely from the images alone, since screenplays are always very detailed, and that helps a great deal — specifically, it allowed me to be more precise. Cinema is, after all, a collective art form.

Ennio Morricone, Egisto Macchi, Fiorenzo Carpi, but also echoes of the worlds of Jon Hassell and bands like Popol Vuh. It seems this is a mystical and sensual period, to put it in Battiato's words, in your career as a musician, don't you think?

Definitely, yes, also because with adulthood other kinds of imagery come into play. This time, the screenplay dictated a path shared with the directors, who are both great music lovers and connoisseurs, as well as with Federico Nardelli and Davide Rossi. Let's say I'm going through a very reflective period, no doubt about it.

The record also features the Schola Gregoriana Mediolanensi choir. How and when did the idea of involving them come to you?

The line that opens the film is taken from “Ecclesiastes”, so from the Bible. People usually think criminals are all ignorant, but instead, in this specific case of Matteo Messina Denaro, we discover that's not always true, since he had various kinds of knowledge, including that of “Ecclesiastes”. The line taken from the sacred text is “gli uomini e gli animali hanno tutti lo stesso destino: devono morire”, which I find very stark. So I translated it into Sicilian, and from there came the idea of having a choir sing it, which at first increased the difficulty, because I knew nothing about choirs. So together with Federico I did some research on Google and we found them: a Gregorian-school choir, including some older members, based in Milan. To make it all sound convincing, I had to put together a tutorial on how to pronounce the words correctly in Sicilian, all inside a church, where I set up the microphones and had the women sing first, then the men, and finally everyone together. It was a particularly moving experience.

The record moves from piano and strings to guitars and synths. And then there's the epic quality of passages like “Felice chi non è ancora nato”. A title that couldn't be more nihilistic. And yet the epic sweep of the track leaves room for light. What did you picture when you had to compose this part of the film?

To score the film I mostly worked by subtraction, precisely so as not to turn Matteo Messina Denaro into a myth. There is, however, a scene near the end where the tone shifts, and the soundtrack inevitably becomes less dark. Catello, on the other hand, is like a commedia dell'arte mask, so I worked on him in the opposite way, even though in the end the two characters converge. Specifically, I composed this moment before seeing the footage. It's the music for a capture scene, and to create it I pictured this somewhat French-sounding saint, along with a few things from Morricone that shift the mood of the piece as a whole.

If you could go back to 2017, what would you say to the Lorenzo of “Infedele”?

I'd simply say “you're doing the right thing”. I'd give Lorenzo a pat on the shoulder and tell him, “look, you've made an auteur record that stands apart from most of the trends in Italian indie”. I'm happy with “Infedele”. I don't have any musical regrets, I've never really had to shed my skin, my imagery has stayed pretty much intact. Sure, there were some naive moments, when I think back on certain passages, but they were necessary naiveties that helped me grow as an artist.

“Wickedness is a star, wickedness laughs and plays and shoots, sometimes it repents, if it falls into the dark it stays there. Wickedness serves the whole world”, you sing in the single “La malvagità”. But what is it that terrifies you most today?

Wickedness belongs to mankind - it might sound obvious, but that's how it's been since the dawn of time, from Cain and Abel to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to Israel's bombing of Lebanon in these dramatic recent days. Rather than rejecting this horror, I think the first step is to accept wickedness, that is, to somehow “accept” that man is unfortunately wicked. You can't expect to change something without first becoming aware of it.

Fiorella Mannoia changed the lyrics to “Quello che le donne non dicono”. Do you think retroactive self-censorship is right? And would you ever change the lyrics of one of your own songs if someone found them misogynistic or offensive?

I think doing it retroactively is ridiculous, because you always have to put things in context. Sure, at the exact moment you're writing certain things, you also have to think carefully about whether they might offend someone. But it's absurd and sad to revise past phrases or images according to today's ethics. For example, I find it ridiculous to censor the seven dwarfs because there's some bodyshaming involved.

Whose idea was it to lift the strings from Scott Walker's “It's Raining Today” (!) for “30.000 euro”, featured on “Lux Eterna Beach”?

I'm a huge Scott Walker fan, but so is Antonio. “It's Raining Today”, by the way, is one of my all-time favorite tracks. I'd been dreaming for ages of using that dissonance somehow. So when I suggested it to Antonio and Federico, they were both on board with the idea of including it.

What have you been listening to lately?

“Cutouts” by The Smile, which I think might actually be their best album. Then I've been listening a lot again to Paul McCartney's early records, but also Dead Can Dance, the new one by Nick Cave, which I liked a lot, and the self-titled debut album by Supertramp.

So, basically, all over the place…

Yeah, in the end I really listen to everything, regardless of era, because what matters to me is that records are sincere. Whether they sound like death metal or classical, it doesn't really matter.

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