Ritmia

Successor to the bagpipe and the launeddas and, at the same time, forerunner of the accordion and concertina. This magical status of transition, of crossroads, of blending ancestral and modern, makes the diatonic accordion, also known as the melodeon, the principal instrument of traditional songs and dances of central, southern and insular Italy. Its incredible popularity led Riccardo Tesi — centuries later — to relaunch it with the utmost rigour in terms of instrumental philology, while also bringing out its innate harmonic qualities in new ways.

Discovered in the late 1970s by Caterina Bueno, Italy's foremost ethnomusicologist, the Pistoia-born musician first established himself as a distinguished instrumentalist, revealing an extraordinary talent, before becoming an Italian Alan Lomax of sorts — an ethno-methodologist and passionate researcher scouring the peninsula. Tesi thus recorded in the field the exploits of important traditional musicians, along with their instrumental techniques and styles, and was consequently able to absorb and handle a wide range of highly diverse idioms, from the saltarello of central Italy to the tarantella of the south, to the Sardinian ballu tundu, right through to the folk repertoire of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennine region. Tesi moved beyond mere revivalism and simple archaeological fascination. Precisely thanks to this accumulated wealth of knowledge, he developed a new instrumental technique and his own compositional style, eventually rising to become a leading artist on the Italian folk scene of the early 1980s.

His flair for meaningful friendships and for ensemble writing and interplay blossoms in tandem. With guitarist Alberto Balia and wind player Daniele Craighead — who came from Antonio Breschi's Whisky Trail (Italy's answer to Clannad) — thus adding a touch of "Irishness" too, he founds a first trio with which he records an album of traditional dances, "Il ballo della lepre" (1983), which, as proof of his growing abilities, also features the 8 minutes of "Saltarello per Eugenio", written by himself.

The newly formed combo then shifts gear into Ritmia thanks to two developments: the arrival of a second guitarist, the no less talented Enrico Frongia, and the influence of that "Creuza de mä" (1984) by De André/Pagani, which had meanwhile come along to dismantle new conventions in the field of dialect folk revivalism.

Their "Forse il mare" (1986) shows off four folk excursions of broadly progressive stamp, two per side, powerful in their synthesis of this newfound instrumental and compositional freedom and an engaged, unconventional (but not too unconventional) approach to the traditional folk heritage of Mediterranean and Apennine Italy. Sadly, though, it was destined to last only the span of one LP, later projects aside.

In the opening "La stella e la luna", a toccata of crossed winds introduces a superb, breathtaking dance steeped in the moods of Central Italy, with just two vocal phrases (written by the new arrival, and thus the only creative moment beyond the traditionals). The improvisations flow, glide and sway, from the accordion that ushers in a darker variation of guitar and jew's harp, to bare percussion, always driven by the whip-crack of Lucanian folk, before finally slowing into a polka of weeping counterpoints. It's a 9-minute gem, one of the album's most intricate tracks, yet at the same time strong in its own concentric cohesion — whirling one moment, melancholy the next, now aching, now unbridled.

The game here is to unite, or at least cross-pollinate, a breathless survey of ancient Italian tradition with flecks of jazz-rock, which works best of all as an interlocking, clockwork mechanism — or better still as a kind of mimicry, an illusionism able to engage and enliven intricate rhythms (hence the band's name), while avoiding any brutal collision with the earthly, maritime flow of the music, with its constant but imperceptible reshaping between styles and idioms.

The debt to traditional songs, in this sense, sounds almost artificial. Take, for instance, the piece underpinning the other 9-minute masterpiece on side one, "Serenata mare": it becomes a majestic choral refrain built from the ritual intoning of dialect vocals, always set against the epic harmonic coloring of the melodeon — the words matter only up to a point, what matters far more is the ensemble's concertation. Not by chance, right afterward comes the record's emotional peak, worthy of Penguin Cafe: a splendid, epic, joyous, pulsing chase of arpeggios and glissandi on the battente guitar over the steps of Sardinian dance, the accents of castanets, the shimmering polyphonies of the accordion. Far beyond mere folklorism, Ritmia proceed through a weave of unruly imagination and a caretaker's respect for traditional heritage that automatically makes them — though sadly overlooked by almost everyone, working away like worker ants — crucial to passing on and preserving Italian folk for generations to come.

Even more expansive is "Siscari", a full 13 minutes of pizzica with the winds in unison, a sparkling electric guitar solo over the frenzied rhythms of the accordion and a tangle of tambourines and bells, leading into a luminous expanse with a "Gershwin-esque" clarinet moment, before the dances resume with a yearning saltarello. Tesi's accordion, in this evolution, truly plays the role of the original spark. Never had traditionals received such rhythmic-harmonic atmosphere, and that, in the end, is precisely the band's and the record's fundamental lesson.

But treating the scores as sensations and impressions also proves to be a factor of great importance. This is shown by the melancholy double piece "Adieu Adieu/Moresca nuziale", a closing note in the form of a Renaissance-stilnovist appendix, here too built on a solemn crescendo (from the Provençal counterpoint courtship at the opening to the fiery Arabic tone of the closing turn).

Overall less spectacular, this second side nonetheless still confirms the quartet's fiery attitude and their technical and spiritual rapport.

The album, almost entirely misunderstood, fails to achieve even the modest success one might have hoped for, and from the moment of its release it remains tucked away in one of the least visible corners reserved for connoisseurs' gems. Italian music audiences' attention was turned far too much elsewhere, so much so that, three years later, the band tried an English-language version for the foreign market, "Perhaps The Sea" (1989), following in the footsteps of the similar (and already unsuccessful) commercial experiments of re-translating Battisti's LPs into English — an operation that would confirm just how little the public responded. The record's true worth would only be rediscovered, superficially and incompletely, during the wave of Italian folk-punk in the first half of the '90s.

At this point the group splits up: Tesi and Craighead record "Anita Anita" (1988) with Patrick Vaillant and Jan-Maria Carlotti. Balia joins jazz bassist Riccardo Lay's Quartet for "Totem" (1988). The collaboration between Tesi and Vaillant continues on "Veranda" (1990) and, together also with Gianluigi Trovesi, on "Colline" (1994) and on a "Trio" (1997), while the leader also has an ambitious "Trans-Europe Diatonique" (1993) with Kepa Junkera and John Kirkpatrick to his name. Balia and Lay, together with fellow ex-Ritmia guitarist Frongia, would later reunite as Trio Argia for "Microcosmi" (1999).

Tesi's solo career gets underway toward the end of the '90s and includes "BandItaliana" (1998), "Flatus Calami" (2002), "Acqua Foco e Vento" (2002), "Riccardo Tesi" (2007), "PresenteRemoto" (2008), "Cameristico" (2012) and "La giusta distanza" (2023), as well as a tribute to his artistic godmother Bueno, "Sopra i tetti di Firenze" (2010) with Maurizio Geri, and a few albums made in collaboration with Claudio Carboni.

Among them all, though, De André still stands out. The connection between the two, at first purely ideal and idealized, finally takes concrete shape when the great Faber enlists him for the lineup on his testament album "Anime salve" (1996), to frame the instrumental closings of two of his greatest cornerstones, "Khorakhané" and "Smisurata preghiera".

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26/02/2026