Antonella Ruggiero - A voice without borders

To understand the significance of Antonella Ruggiero's solo career, there's no better starting point than her departure from Matia Bazar and the long seven years of absence from the public scene that followed. This break from public artistic activity happened to coincide with an era of major shifts in musical taste starting from the second half of the '80s. Emblematic of this sudden change in direction was the burial of the icy Anglo-Saxon electronic music (new wave and the like) that had reigned supreme during a brief golden season (running roughly from 1977 to 1983, the year that saw the release of Matia Bazar's electronic "Tango"). The market would inevitably swing toward rockier sounds on one side, and more black music on the other (eventually leading to the dominance of hip-hop).

But we shouldn't overlook, on a global scale, the explosion of Latin American dance music, nor, locally, the rediscovery of ethnic and regional folk music (Tazenda, Parto delle Nuvole Pesanti, Tenores de Britti, Modena City Ramblers, to name a few). If in the '70s Kraftwerk classified their own music as "Volksmusik", nothing in the future would seem further from being so. Where once the "Intelligentia" sung about by Matia Bazar meant being futuristically "ahead", it would later come to mean skilfully blending genres together (perhaps also because, by then, every genre had already been invented) - for instance, knowing how to "modernize" folk music, repackaging it in more contemporary forms for new generations. Gone was the era of a diva-like Antonella Ruggiero as a "Greta Garbo of vanity", with the rest of the band behind her like so many expressionless "Schaufensternpuppen" straight out of Kraftwerk's imagery; the new Antonella would instead present herself as a simple, humble anti-diva who, rather than looking forward, looks "back", to the geographical and historical roots of folk and popular music.

After the modest success of 1987's “Melò” (promoted by the single “Noi”, with the band at the peak of its Teutonic “intellectualism”) and the only partial relaunch two years later with the single “Stringimi” from “Red Corner”, Antonella Ruggiero left Matia Bazar. During the seven long years away from the scene that followed her departure, she withdrew into private life and made several trips to India. Her exploration of that country would prove an intense existential and spiritual experience for her, but also a musical one, so deeply formative on all these fronts that it would irreversibly mark her future solo work. Though “solo” isn't really the right word: it would be more accurate to speak of the fruit of an artistic (as well as romantic) partnership with Roberto Colombo, a heavyweight producer (who had already been behind the desk for “Tango” itself). Ruggiero's records should in fact have carried both names (though that would actually only happen with Pomodoro Genetico). Colombo's contribution as a producer is fundamental, revealing an almost obsessive attention to instrumental richness and sonic mimicry, adapting with remarkable technical skill to a multitude of different musical styles. The artistic partnership between the two is perfectly balanced, to the point that what Colombo does on the instrumental side, Ruggiero does on the vocal one. The Genoese singer was in fact one of the very few Italian singers of great popularity (alongside Mina and Giuni Russo) capable of technically stepping outside the ordinary, partly thanks to natural gifts, and partly through diligent study aimed at making the most of her unusual abilities. Where most of her peers could not break free from simply interpreting lyrics set to music, Antonella Ruggiero could often allow herself “the luxury” of singing plain vocalises (sometimes genuine “la la la” passages), climbing up vertiginous musical scales and stepping outside the conventions of song form, all while keeping a perfect, crystalline voice, endlessly capable of unreachable vocal feats.

From India with love

The fruit of her trips to India is the 1996 album Free, and it's clear from the start that the Ruggiero-Colombo duo mean business. Appearances aside, the record is in some ways a very risky move, a genuine gamble. It is in fact a bold attempt at a fusion between Indian and Italian music. Despite this perilous juxtaposition, the result is truly successful: from the very first listen it reveals an admirable compositional cohesion, managing at once to merge and to keep distinct the two different cultural identities. Verses cleverly rhythmed with a strongly exotic flavour alternate with airy choruses that are almost elegant romanze in the best Italian taste. This pattern repeats throughout almost the entire record without ever growing tiresome, so skilfully is it reworked each time into new variants, creating an original, unified language. Ruggiero's performance therefore has to communicate, on one hand, the sense of rhythm of Indian music, and on the other take flight in melodies specifically written to give her extended, high notes (often extremely high ones). It's obviously a tightrope act: the risk was ending up with a forced, artificial fusion, and instead it works perfectly.

There's one fundamental reason why this sleight of hand succeeds. The Ruggiero-Colombo duo don't look (only) to classical India. Don't expect from this record a hieratic, postcard version of India à la “Within You Without You” by the Beatles (with all due respect to that glorious track, which blazed the trail in rock for blending East and West). The Indian music that inspires the duo is largely also that of contemporary dance music, even that of the alternative or underground scene of today's metropolises. There is indeed spirituality in the India of Ruggiero-Colombo, but also a desire for rhythm, for dancing, for fun, for internationalism, for a blend of tradition and innovation. It's no coincidence that the album was recorded by layering Western electronic instruments over traditional Indian ones. The two authors jointly credit all the music, while the lyrics are by Daniele Fossati.

Here is the overwhelming opening of the nursery-rhyme-like “La danza”, a lively, energetic pop reinterpretation of a traditional Indian song. Right from this track, Antonella shows off the mimicking vocal talents that will define her solo career, delighting us in particular with an impersonation of the vocal style of Indian pop singers.

“Il canto dell'amore” pulls off the magic trick of uniting China and India: Ruggiero's harmonic vocalises and the sonic atmospheres used in the verses have an extreme-Eastern flavour, while the percussion accompanying them is, by contrast, typically Indian. The chorus, meanwhile, blossoms into an elegant, lyrical romanza, to the delight of bel canto lovers. “Corale Cantico” heightens the interweaving of Eastern and Western elements with the participation of the choir from the parish church of Paderno di San Gregorio, which alternates with appearances of the Indian sitar. “La filastrocca” opens and closes like a piece of Indian dance music, but in the middle gives us a beautiful new chorus “Italian style”, while “Fare, fare” pushes the sense of rhythm to its peak thanks to an almost hip-hop lyric and a virtuosic duel between voice, guitars and horns in marking out the beat.

The shadow of Peter Gabriel couldn't fail to loom over this ethno-pop album, and his music seems to surface more than once, as in the use of the bass or the sense of rhythm, but also in the ending of “Il tempo che verrà”, which echoes that of “Zaar” (from the absolute masterpiece that is “Passion”). Ruggiero's vocal virtuosity reaches great heights in “In The Name Of Love”, while “La fabbrica” (which contains one of the album's most magnificent choruses) owes a great deal to Roberto Colombo's ingenuity: it could be described as a prototype of Indian-industrial, in that march of synthetic keyboards mimicking traditional Indian sounds on one hand, and the use of “futuristic” sounds à la Kraftwerk's “Die Roboter” (!) on the other. “Il Viaggio” is perhaps the most stylistically and spiritually compelling track, but the record never has a weak moment.

The record stands as a perfect calling card for Ruggiero's solo output: the title “Free” [Free] captures the spirit of an artist wanting to soar free of any commercial constraint or preset mould: it would later also be adopted as the name of her independent record label. We should also note the timing and the foresight of the album's release, if not indeed its “prophetic” role: just two years later Indian dance music would rise to international prominence with Panjabi MC's “Mundian To Bach Ke”, and another remarkable female voice-producer pairing, that of Madonna and Ray Orbit [William Orbit], would achieve huge success with the splendid “Ray Of Light”, where the blend of Western electronic and traditional Eastern sounds plays a certain role in shaping a syncretic dance style (compare “Frozen” with “Il Viaggio” and “La Danza” with “Shanti Aganti”). Free therefore deserved a far warmer reception than it got, having unjustly gone unnoticed.

In 1998, despite the radical stylistic shift made with Free, and perhaps as a result of the general lack of interest shown by both audience and critics towards that record, Antonella Ruggiero took a leap back into the past, releasing Registrazioni Moderne, an album on which she reinterprets old Matia Bazar songs, enlisting the help of prestigious names on the Italian scene such as Subsonica, Timoria and Bluvertigo. It is, then, a tribute paid by musicians who grew up under the influence of Matia Bazar to the band's great former voice. Artistically speaking, it's unclear whether such a move was truly necessary, yet the market would reward the choice: Registrazioni Moderne would in fact turn out to be the biggest (if not the only) commercial success of Antonella Ruggiero's solo career, both because of its link to her “glorious” past with her historic band, and thanks to the pulling power of the best-known of the unreleased songs she presented over the years at the Sanremo Festival, “Amore lontanissimo”. The Sanremo experience embodies all the contradiction at the heart of the Antonella Ruggiero phenomenon: high placings on the podium (she would again come second in 1999 with “Non Ti Dimentico”, and first in the women's category with “Echi d'Infinito” in 2005) would never translate into matching sales. Her fate seems to be that of being surrounded by great reverential respect from audiences and critics alike as a “great voice”, while receiving relatively little attention for her artistic output after Matia Bazar.

This ongoing activity, carried out somewhat in the shadows, nonetheless freed Ruggiero from feeling obliged to meet any expectations from audience or critics; indeed, it gave her that absolute freedom she had so longed for. We find her once again forcefully restating her sense of independence in the opening track of her next album, Sospesa (1999), where on “Inafferrabile” she declares she was “born free”, that she “lives outside the pack”, and firmly vows to speak in a language all her own. She had, in fact, already spoken a language that was genuinely her own, and grammatically coherent, on Free; on Sospesa, though, she seems instead to be searching for a new one, without quite having found it yet.

The opening of “Inafferrabile” stylistically picks up where Free left off, but the album as a whole explores many new territories. Its compositional level, however, generally doesn't match that of the debut: the production is excellent, the songs pleasant and engaging, but it lacks the same pulsing creative spark of Free. This new record is instead the product of a kind of formal mannerism. Colombo's ever-refined production works hard to give each track its own stylistic identity (even the Sanremo entry “Non ti dimentico”, though not among the finest songs the duo ever recorded, boasts a production quality well above the average heard at that most famous of Italian musical kermesses). But whereas on Free the composition and arrangements seemed to spring naturally from a solid inner logic at every moment of the record, on Sospesa they seem instead to stem from a calculated, craftsmanlike effort. “1999” recalls “Il video sono io” from Tango somewhat, but here it's less a matter of avant-garde and more a citation of the avant-garde, with a few lapses in taste (the message that love remains unchanged even in a hyper-technological world comes across in a rather pandering tone; the optimism that pervaded Free, rooted in lived spiritual experience, here becomes instead something of a caricature of itself).

There is, however, no shortage of noteworthy moments: “Non dirmi dove, non dirmi quando” has a well-crafted chorus delivered masterfully; “Controvento” boasts a beautiful melody and nocturnal atmospheres with its vaguely jazz-club keyboards, as well as lyrics less trite than others on the rest of the record; and finally there's the surprise of “And Will You Love Me”, written by Ennio Morricone, a track very close to another of the Maestro's compositions, “The Secret Of The Sahara”, performed in a similar vein by Amii Stewart (and there are very few Italian singers who could hold their own in such a close comparison with illustrious performers from across the Atlantic). We should also note that in the title track the chorus's vocalises anticipate “Leggero” from Pomodoro genetico, and “Ipnotica, magnetica” features interesting Kraftwerk-style arrangements.

A two-year pause followed, and the spirituality she had cultivated in India led her towards Western sacred music with the recording of Luna crescente (Sacrarmonia), an album that finally allowed her to engage with “academic” music. Hence the appearance on the tracklist of pieces by Bach and Gounod, and above all her reliance, for the instrumental side, on a string quartet of the highest calibre, the Arkè String Quartet, which lends the record the aura of chamber-music respectability.

A meeting with “serious” music had long been on the cards, since the days of Matia Bazar, and for an artist coming from the world of so-called “light” music it could have been an embarrassing misstep. Instead, what comes out of it is one of her most intense albums, not least because the Ruggiero-Colombo duo know exactly which direction to take, as we'll soon see. What could have been a pointless display of erudition manages instead to become purity of expression.

The album in particular rests on three pillars: the opening, with a new version of “Corale cantico”, poised between chamber music and folk, whose sweetness and gentleness is swept away by the vehemence of the following “Kyrie (Missa Luba)”; the central section boasts a sublime rendition of “Sanctus” by M. Colonna and L. Bigazzi, reaching both the mystical and emotional apex of the whole record with the Hispanic “Gloria (Misa Croila)”; and finally there's a fitting conclusion with a new version of “Il canto dell'amore”, whose modernity and melodic lightness remind any listener who hadn't already noticed that what they're hearing is, after all, still “pop music”.

Ruggiero-Colombo's success is precisely down to the fact that they didn't lose their heads: despite the evident path taken towards classical music, Luna crescente is actually a new stage in their exploration of various forms of popular music. Indeed, "Kyrie" is an African piece, "Gloria" is Argentine, and "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" is a 15th-century English traditional. The strings themselves are employed in a dual role, as both chamber-music instruments and instruments tied to folk tradition. Unfortunately, the move towards classical music forces Ruggiero's interpretation into a composed restraint, at times almost adopting an attitude of humility to avoid any embarrassing excess, and it doesn't allow her to delight us with the refined vocal inventions already heard on Free or on the future Pomodoro genetico.

This work would have a sequel in 2009's I regali di Natale, with which it would even share some of the same titles on the tracklist.

Retro Taste, What a Passion

The self-titled Antonella Ruggiero from 2003 is a new album of original material that acts as a bridge between her previous output and her future work, strongly committed to reviving a taste for Italian music of the past. It's the only album on which Ruggiero works (in collaboration with others) as a songwriter without Colombo, who nonetheless still keeps a firm hand on production throughout. It includes songs that are, on the whole, calm and unthreatening. Ruggiero's interpretation here is generally fairly restrained, save for a couple of notable exceptions (though even within this dignified restraint, she manages to soar on "Idea gentile" with delicate balancing acts that few other Italian artists could pull off with such effortless mastery). The production leans heavily on orchestration: although this is an old and persistent sin in the history of pop music, here it's fairly justified, since it's explicitly aimed at recreating the atmospheres of 1960s Italian melodic song ("E ti ritrovo", "Idea gentile"). One of the best results is "Abbracciami", whose simply sublime chorus sounds like the soundtrack to a period film and is sung by a Ruggiero who is both technically on point and emotionally invested. The overall result closely recalls the orchestral version of Hooverphonic's "Mad About You", another successful attempt at reviving the retro orchestral atmospheres of old film scores, complete with a similarly acrobatic female vocal performance. It's a track that confirms the Genoese singer's full competitiveness on an international level and marks a first tentative approach towards trip-hop style.

As we mentioned, this album acts as a hinge with Ruggiero's future work. The orchestral dimension will become the central pivot of Big Band, and the use of strings to recreate typical 1960s atmospheres in the style of Gino Paoli brings her closer to a reckoning with her own city's tradition, later carried out explicitly on Genova La Superba.

One of the most important aspects of the album, however, is the presence of one of the most beautiful love songs in the history of Italian music, "Di un amore", written by Ruggiero together with A. Volpe. Despite reaching such a remarkably high standard, the song passed almost unnoticed by critics and audiences alike (even the Sanremo crowd would give it a far more lukewarm reception than usual). Yet it's a track with a deeply incisive emotional impact, and the singer's performance is superb.

As with Free, this album received a very limited response, despite having once again played the role of trailblazer: the modern reinterpretation of Italian music of the past (delivered by a female voice) would, a few years later, bring great commercial success to the Tiziano Ferro-Giusy Ferreri pairing, and also pave the way for the emergence of fairly popular performers such as Malika Ayane and Nina Zilli.

The conversation started with Antonella Ruggiero continues in 2005 with Big Band, an album made up mainly of covers of well-known songs, from "Mi sono Innamorata di te" to "Begin The Beguine", through to "Per un ora d'amore" from the Matia Bazar repertoire. As the title suggests, the work was made with a sizeable orchestra: brass dominates the swing arrangements of "Confidati a me" and "Luna malinconica (Blue Moon)", but the typical atmospheres of 1960s melodic music, with strings taking centre stage, are once again present ("Legato ad un granello di sabbia" by Nico Fidenco, "Arrivederci"). Thanks to the repertoire explored, Antonella Ruggiero also gets the chance to "experiment" with the vocal style of 1930s singers. Her interpretation, often restrained and mannered ("Arrivederci"), comes alive wherever the arrangement allows her to show off vocal flourishes and virtuosity ("Begin The Beguine"), and she is perfectly at ease in the seductive melody of the chorus of the new "Echi di infinito". At other times she manages to be irresistibly charming ("Dissolta in te"), or deeply moving ("Mi sono innamorata di te" by Luigi Tenco). The range of interpretive versatility on display on this album is therefore considerable.

Big Band represents a work with a long echo throughout Ruggiero's output, as she would return to old Italian pop and singer-songwriter repertoire on Souvenir d'Italie and on 2007's Genova La Superba. But above all, it reveals an inevitable reckoning with jazz vocal style, which would allow the singer to make the most of the dynamic, virtuosic vocal gifts of her maturity (unsurprisingly, Mina — her usual point of comparison — also drew heavily on the jazz school, and Ruggiero closely recalls her on "Mi sono innamorata di te").

Music for Images

The musical adventure with the Arkè String Quartet resumes in 2006 with L'abitudine della luce. The title is tied to an exhibition held in Brescia on landscape painting from Turner to the Impressionists, which was promoted through a live performance of the music featured on this album. It's therefore music conceived as a soundtrack to the viewing of images, a thread that continues on the following Pomodoro genetico, where, however, the focus shifts from traditional oil paintings to futuristic video projections.

The ambitious project Pomodoro genetico arrives in 2008. It's the only record to deservedly carry the double Colombo-Ruggiero credit. Its title is, however, somewhat misleading in relation to the authors' original intentions: it was actually meant to be called "Pomodoro transgenico" ("Transgenic Tomato"). The underlying concept is in fact the one already tested at a high level on Free: making traditional acoustic instruments (represented by the natural "tomato"), including the voice, converse with contemporary electronic ones (thus producing a genetically modified vegetable, i.e. "transgenic"). However, this Pomodoro genetico is not a "clone" of the first solo album, but rather an abstraction of it. The sense of dance disappears on this record, and the song form vanishes once and for all (perhaps finally). The complementarity of opposing elements comes not only from the use of two opposite types of instruments, but also from the contribution of the two protagonists: Antonella Ruggiero relies largely on improvisation in her vocal parts, while Colombo devotes himself, as usual, to a production of pinpoint perfection. The result, a very rare occurrence on the Italian scene, is a wordless album, with words left behind like useless baggage in favour of total vocal freedom and expressive power.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a glossy, polished record that's essentially empty. On the contrary, there are plenty of melodic, instrumental and vocal inventions of real value to be magnificently seduced by. The album's masterpiece is probably "Attesa", the longest track, which even appears in two versions. It's a refined piece, but also icy, if not downright chilling, with glacial, terrifying synthesizers, and Ruggiero's voice diaphanous and transparent, soaring and gushing, now sweet, now deep, now dramatic. The experience conveyed to the listener is one of a strong sense of alienation and disorientation, and the feeling that pervades it is that of a freezing chill that wraps around the listener from outside and penetrates their very core. The track lives in perfect symbiosis with the beautiful, sterile, hypnotic video by F. M. Iacquone included with the CD. Indeed, "Attesa" was originally conceived as a soundtrack: the vocal recording actually dates back to a 2003 session made as a score for D. Griffith's 1919 silent film "Broken Blossoms".

In "Attesa II", the Genoese singer suddenly treats us to another of her impossible upward scales, counterbalanced by the descending instrumental line that opens the following track, "Assurdo", the only one not to carry the double credit: it's in fact a new version of Colombo's 1976 composition "Sfogatevi bestie". It is, admittedly, radically different from the original, and had there been more emphasis on the new elements rather than on the melodic reworking of the old piece, another masterpiece might have resulted.

Other important tracks include "Leggero" (with its superb vocal "fluctuations") and "Europeo", while "Lontano", which opens the album, revisits the East-West juxtaposition proposed on Free, almost as if deliberately linking back to the work of twelve years earlier, of which it probably represents the culmination. The continued connection with academic music is this time ensured by the participation of musicians from the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

This work has been described as trip-hop, and indeed the Ruggiero-Colombo pairing can well recall the female voice/electronic experimentation combination embodied by the Gibbons-Barrow duo of Portishead. It's also worth noting that the album turned into a magnificent visual work when performed live in Piazza del Duomo in Milan, thanks to the projection of purpose-made videos created by Iacquone, turning the whole work into a truly magnificent soundtrack.

Her musical exploration then continued through a constant practice of revisiting and reworking the past, as in the already mentioned Souvenir d'Italie and Genova La Superba. Worth mentioning for the originality of the choice is the recording of a live album in the Ladin and Friulian languages, Cjanta Vilotis, which even contains a version of "Il viaggio" from Free, duly translated. We should also note her participation in the 2012 collective project Anestesia totale: Ruggiero's contribution takes the form of "Come due spie", a wonderful piece by M. Travaglio and V. Corvino (perhaps the peak of her career in terms of pairing voice with a string ensemble), as well as one of her most emotionally intense performances of all.

The Ruggiero-Colombo discography is quite substantial. The main projects, essentially those made up of new material, are Free, Sospesa, Antonella Ruggiero, L'Abitudine della luce and Pomodoro genetico. The other albums recorded are mostly live performances or reinterpretations of other artists' songs. Within this second group, a special mention goes to Luna crescente, for having so strongly shaped the artist's image (so much so that it would be revisited live for several years).

The most successful album in terms of stylistic cohesion and vigorous creative vitality is probably the debut, Free, from 1996, followed by Pomodoro Genetico. It's no coincidence that the titles of these two albums wonderfully sum up the duo's artistic project. But Ruggiero's body of work should also be considered as a whole, as a continuous wandering between different genres, exploring the various dimensions of music, aided by an incredible gift for mimicry. In this shrewd exploration and blending of styles, Ruggiero finds in Colombo a perfect partner who always guarantees a confident outcome, thanks to matching mimetic abilities. Conversely, it is sometimes Ruggiero herself who puts herself at Colombo's service, allowing him to use her voice as just another instrument within the sound design shaped by the producer's kaleidoscopic mind.

After all, other similar partnerships that have dotted the pop music scene bear witness to the magical alchemy that can arise between a female singer of great personality and a skilled sound engineer: Madonna made it practically the cornerstone of her own career, we've already mentioned Portishead, and of course we must mention the early Eurythmics. This kind of pairing was even simulated (in the very year Free came out) by Carlo Verdone and Claudia Gerini in the film "Sono pazzo di Iris Blond", which produced a splendid soundtrack by the sophisticated composer Lele Marchitelli and performed by Gerini, with icy nocturnal atmospheres that recall those achieved by the Ruggiero-Colombo duo in "Controvento" or "Attesa".

The genetically modified (or rather, transgenic) tomato that has grown over the years out of this collaboration is, however, not only the fruit of this successful symbiosis between a male and a female sensibility, but also between tradition and modernity, East and West, sacred and profane, high and popular culture, acoustic and electronic, rhythmic and melodic, in a constant search for a unifying synthesis based on the balance of opposites. The meditative pilgrimages made in the East gave the former Matia Bazar frontwoman not only the sounds of Free, but more broadly the entire philosophical project carried out across the whole of her artistic output.

In 2014, after her appearance at the Sanremo Festival, the new album L'impossibile è certo was released, which fits ideally alongside Sospesa (1999) and the self-titled Antonella Ruggiero (2003) as the third installment of "collection-albums" of new material that are not strictly connected to one another stylistically or thematically. We are therefore not dealing with the classic "concept album" that characterizes most of the artist's output, or rather that of the Ruggiero-Colombo duo.

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