Fabrizio De André

On 19 September 1996, Fabrizio De André released “Anime salve“, his thirteenth and final studio album, written and produced together with Ivano Fossati. Thirty years on, rather than a record to be enshrined as a monument of Italian songwriting, it stands out as a work still astonishingly alive: an imaginary yet concrete journey that seems to speak directly to many of the fractures of our present day. Stories of marginalisation, difference, solitude and freedom, among the most uncomfortable and deeply felt of his career, delivered through lyrics that had never before been so direct, explicit and harsh, yet always retaining that poetic touch which made the Genoese songwriter's style unmistakable.

The anniversary

At the time, "Anime salve" represented, above all, the culmination of the long musical transformation De André had undertaken in the second half of his career. The exploration begun with “Crêuza de mä” expanded definitively into a boundless sonic universe, spanning the Mediterranean, the Balkans and South America, blending musical and linguistic elements from the most disparate traditions. Sound was no longer simply a vehicle for the words, but became an integral part of the storytelling, thanks also to the decisive contribution of Ivano Fossati, who wrote much of the music, and to Piero Milesi's arrangements and production.

But the record's true radicalism lay in its political outlook, in the deepest sense of the term: systematically choosing the point of view of those left out. "Anime salve" is an album about solitude, but above all about the condition of minorities and the price so often paid for stepping outside social conventions. It is precisely in this state of solitude, minority status or marginalisation — at once painful and potentially redemptive — that the conceptual core of the work resides.
So "Prinçesa" tells the story of Fernanda, a Brazilian transgender woman forced to fight for her own identity against the rejection of family and society, all the way to prostitution: in 1996, De André updated his longstanding attention to society's outcasts by tackling a theme that would become central to public debate in the decades to follow. "Khorakhané (A forza di essere vento)" instead restores dignity to Roma culture, setting the proud freedom of a nomadic people against the suspicion and cynicism of our society, while also recalling the persecution the Roma suffered under Nazism. "Disamistade" delves into the archaic mechanism of feuds and violence that divides communities, while even "Le acciughe fanno il pallone", behind its seemingly light touch, keeps observing the world from the perspective of those living on the margins.

Everything finally converges in "Smisurata preghiera", the testament within the testament. Here De André sets aside individual characters and widens his gaze to embrace all those who are cast out because they refuse to accept "the law of the pack": the outcasts, the irregulars, the minorities, those who move "in a direction obstinate and contrary". This is not simply a political opposition between majority and minority: De André explained the majority as the realm of the "maiores", those who hold privilege and wield authority. The record thus becomes a demand for moral redress for those who paid for their freedom with exclusion.
This is where "Anime salve" reveals just how relevant it still is. In an age once again gripped by migration, wars, discrimination and identity conflicts, De André sides unequivocally, once again, with those who have no voice and with those who today face even the deranged threats of neo-Nazism, such as the so-called "remigration". Yet his defence of the downtrodden is never maudlin. His characters do not ask for pity, but for recognition and dignity. Tellingly, an album so complex and so far removed from commercial convention was already hailed at the time as a major work: in 1997 De André won the Targa Tenco for best album with "Anime salve" and for song of the year with "Prinçesa".

Fate then transformed what had not been conceived as a farewell into De André's spiritual testament. When he recorded the album, he did not yet know about the illness that would lead to his death on 11 January 1999, and he was already thinking about other projects. Precisely for this reason, "Anime salve" feels even more significant today: not a conscious testament, but the unwitting synthesis of forty years spent telling the stories of prostitutes, rebels, nomads, the poor, deserters. Men and women pushed to the margins by society.

The celebrations

The thirtieth anniversary is bringing that legacy back to the stage too. Fiorella Mannoia has dedicated to De André and Fossati the project “Fiorella sings Fabrizio and Ivano: Anime salve“, launched with two sold-out concerts on 27 and 28 June at Genoa's Porto Antico and continued throughout the summer across Italy; the show is also set to become an album. Also in Genoa, on 7 May, Gnu Quartet, Federico Siriani, Max Manfredi, Giua, Federico Dragogna, Beppe Gambetta and other artists marked the anniversary with "30 anni di Anime Salve – Faber, Cohen e noi". And on 27 September, Modena's Teatro Michelangelo will host "De André, la storia: 30 anni di Anime salve", while the FaberNoster project will bring a special dedicated to the anniversary to Ferrara on 28 November.

These are spontaneous celebrations of an album that, however, does not ask to be revered like a relic. Thirty years on, "Anime salve" is still there, with its fierce power, reminding us that a society's degree of civilisation is also measured by how it regards those left out or pushed to the margins. Because "people come before borders". It is hard to imagine a more fitting testament for Fabrizio De André. (Claudio Fabretti)

The review

A journey. Imaginary and concrete at once, made of distant echoes and direct contaminations. The last journey, the longest one, capable of touching the furthest extremes, of pushing beyond boundaries that had until then only been glimpsed. "Anime salve", the final album of probably the greatest singer-songwriter in Italian music. A swan song which, as such, carries for some an incredible sentimental and emotional weight, a kind of farewell. Yet one which, perhaps because of the "myth" built up around De André the poet and songwriter, has never been given the recognition it deserves within the evolutionary arc of De André the musician and researcher.

We could say, without much risk of being wrong, that the true greatness of Fabrizio De André revealed itself in the second phase of his career rather than the first. That phase in which, after having written pages of Italian music history by filtering current events and his own cultural background through his unmistakable poetic sensibility, he put himself back on the line, venturing to grapple with new traditions and cultures far removed from his own. A project decisively shaped by the notorious kidnapping he suffered in Sardinia at the hands of the anonima sequestri, of which the famous "Hotel Supramonte" (and indeed, from its very cover, the whole of the so-called "disco dell'Indiano") could be seen as a quiet, indirect starting point.
Research: this is the key word of the path that led from "Creuza de mä", the last great turning point of his career, to "Anime salve", its final destination. Almost as if the former had been nothing but a dress rehearsal, a rough sketch of a journey. Migration as the theme at the heart of this exploration: migration as openness, as the study and absorption of new musical cultures, as an escape from introspection and pessimism, as fresh artistic stimulus. All elements proving just how alive, curious and inspired the De André of "Anime salve" truly was, and how the album had been conceived to be anything but a swan song, a closing chapter.

De André is thus the first migrant, ready to borrow musical and linguistic elements from the most disparate traditions, and behind him, the protagonists of the stories told in the songs are migrants too. Stories of marginalisation, difference, solitude and freedom, among the most uncomfortable and deeply felt of his career, rendered through lyrics that had never before been so direct, explicit, in some ways coarse. The focus on the "other", the eternal, thoroughly Baudelairean tension between the horror of reality and the contradictory wonder of humanity, between a marked rejection of (presumed) conventional virtues and an almost obsessive justification of vices (spuriously labelled as such), is perhaps the one true lyrical thread linking the early De André to the last.
What intensifies decisively and extraordinarily alongside the lyrics, in the late De André, is the music. No longer a mere expressive vehicle through which to develop the lyrics, but an artistic element in its own right, on equal footing with them. "Anime salve" is not only his most sincerely multi-ethnic record, but also his most choral. This is evident in its relationship with the lyrics, with which the music lives in wonderful, complementary harmony, as well as in the style and at times dense arrangements, and again — above all — in its guest appearances and collaborations. As if the name Faber left solipsism behind to become the name of an ensemble, a trademark, a corporate name, an umbrella label.

So many companions accompany De André on his journey, a host of trusted friends in what is a collective, almost Platonic quest, where the master and expedition leader (in this case, quite literally the conductor) is – and must always be – ready to welcome and engage with the point of view of his fellow travelers: Piero Milesi in the production booth, his son Cristiano, chosen as his true right-hand man, Ellade Bandini on drums, the orchestra "Il Quartettone", his wife Dori Ghezzi and daughter Luvi on vocals, and above all his fellow Genoese Ivano Fossati as co-writer, just as he had been on "Le nuvole" – a difficult collaboration that saw the two diverge on more than one point.
And then there's the great Brazilian percussionist Naco, the legendary cimbalom player Sàndor Kuti, Russian accordionist Vladimir Denissénkov, the unmistakable harp of Cecilia Chailly, the equally faithful Mario Arcari, and a long list of top-tier musicians, many of them drawn directly from the traditions being explored – decisive in guiding the group through sonic worlds far removed, both geographically and culturally, from their own origins.

Migration and marginalization, as we said: the key themes of Roma culture told through the poignant "Khorakhané (A forza di essere vento)", which pushes the standard Cohen-esque waltz and chansonnier-style ballads to new artistic heights. It all begins with an electronic dawn over which an introductory recitative unfolds, and ends in an orchestral air of Donizetti-like intensity sung in the Romani language. A passage that reaches its emotional peak live, carried by Luvi's crystalline voice, which steps in for Dori Ghezzi's drier tone on the record. In between, De André lays down, with the utmost delicacy, colossal lines like "Saper leggere il libro del mondo/ con parole cangianti e nessuna scrittura" ("To know how to read the book of the world / with shifting words and no writing at all") or "Questo filo di pane tra miseria e fortuna" ("This thread of bread between misery and fortune").
The universal two-voice psalm of the title track, meanwhile, epitomizes the collaboration with Fossati, the hard-won harmony the two eventually found, and the vocal and stylistic differences that here enrich the duet's interplay rather than undermine its unity. Diversity – the key word that resurfaces both in the vocal contrast and in the "solitary spirits" of the lyrics, free by choice from the conventions that flatten people into uniformity, forcing them to hide their personality and, with it, their best selves. A process entirely absent from the spontaneity of the animal world, honored in the hushed, absorbed dance of "Le acciughe fanno il pallone", whose intricate structure conceals an instrumental drive that finally bursts out in the finale.

The magnificent overture of "Prinçesa" blends South American harmonics and overtones with a jingling refrain reminiscent of "Creuza de mä", swing interludes and folk dances. It's a combination that beautifully echoes the theme of the journey and ties it to another subject dear to De André, prostitution, in what stands as the most emblematic example of the songwriter's poetics adapting to his own stylistic and cultural migration (from the prostitute to the transsexual). The protagonist is in fact Fernandinho, who becomes Fernanda, misunderstood within the Brazilian peasant family context and forced to sell, in order to support herself, that longed-for feminine body. Once again, an outsider; once again, a marginalized figure forced to pay the price of freedom.
"Dolcenera" follows the same line, pairing a Brazilian chant with one of Faber's finest tarantas, setting the accordion's expansive melody against one of his masterful narratives built on parallels, allusions and metaphors. Here, love takes center stage – the love of a man anxiously awaiting a woman, so consumed by anticipation that he imagines her arrival even as she is submerged by Genoa's 1970 flood and the overflowing of the Nera river. A love that De André himself once described as "paranoid, tyrannical, to the point that the protagonist mentally erases every obstacle between himself and the woman he loves, even the terrible flooding of the river."
The sardonic ballad "Disamistade" likewise showcases De André at his rhyming best, while also drawing strength from free verse that heightens its pain ("uno scoppio di sangue, un'assenza apparecchiata per cena" – "a burst of blood, an absence set at the dinner table"), alongside Milesi's liturgical electronic backing and the orchestra's sighing strings. It's another tribute to musical Sardinia and an indictment of the island's traditional feuds of decades past. It stands as one of the two major exceptions to the album's thematic homogeneity, along with the Genoese-language duet "Â cumba", set to a sparkling saltarello rhythm and buoyed by a female chorus – the record's only moment of pure positivity amid a set of long, tormented songs built from complex genetic crossings.

The closing is entrusted to a pair of tracks that once again play on contrast: first, the autobiographical, cinematic tableau in verse of "Ho visto Nina volare", carried by a hushed rhythm and solo classical guitar. De André recounts, in fictionalized form, his first childhood love, his rebellion against paternal authority and, once more, his solitude in having to watch the girl he loved from hiding as she played on a swing. All of this while rejecting the fear of being discovered and thus forced to leave home, along with the self-imposed instinct that would have him defend, "knife in hand," his right to feel such emotions.
By contrast, the unstoppable close of "Smisurata preghiera" is the album's true climax: three minutes of invective and spiritual indignation set against the moved jazz chords of the keyboards and the solemn, ceremonial syncopation of the drums (of which the title track, in hindsight, turns out to be a premise), followed by four minutes of instrumental transfiguration – first a swelling invocation of Mediterranean horns, then a symphonic digression from which the album's moral emerges: all the boundless sorrow of the "souls" of the title. It is the furious demand for redemption voiced by the characters described throughout the record, those who chose to pay for their freedom with loneliness and marginalization.

It is the journey's conclusion, its release, the synthesis of the idea of freedom, born of the long clash between the original thesis (the desire for freedom, the wish to tear down borders and confront the world beyond oneself) and the many antitheses encountered along the way (the price to be paid for that very freedom). In the collective imagination, it is the epitaph within the epitaph, De André's pre-mortem testament – for some, even the summation of the artist's entire musical and poetic body of work. A role that, broadening the scope, belongs to the whole of "Anime salve" itself. A role certainly not foreseen for what remains, without doubt, one of the absolute peaks of Italian music in terms of stylistic range and lyrical depth, as well as the final gift from one of its greatest voices. (Matteo Meda)

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