Ardecore - Trastevere's own hardcore

Reviving our musical traditions has always been a high-risk operation for Italian artists. Perhaps because of a strange kind of shyness, combined with an inborn love of all things foreign, which makes us inexplicably embarrassed by musical roots that are often far nobler than those of other, more remote corners of the world. The fact is that for a long time - except for the noble fathers of the Folkstudio and the school of popular song, from Giovanna Marini onward - anyone who ventured near that treasure chest of sounds was met with suspicion. Until a few years ago. When suddenly, as if liberated, Italians swept away every hesitation, throwing themselves headlong into a full-scale musical archaeology. It turned out that the taranta could get even Stewart Copeland tapping his foot, that Neapolitan song (and Southern Italian song in general) is a bottomless well of melody, and that the ballads of the old cantastorie could come in handy for more than just Angelo Branduardi.

What was still missing, though, was Rome, with its tradition of stornelli, tales of love and knives, hot-blooded working-class women and sons of bad mothers. Strong stuff, good at best for entertaining tourists in the restaurants of Trastevere or warming the hearts of nostalgics for the "little king" Claudio Villa. The undertaking accomplished by Ardecore is therefore almost titanic: exhuming that heritage without betraying its spirit, while updating it with modern arrangements.

Reading the names of the band's members, however, one discovers that the feat could hardly have been a matter of chance: behind the brilliant moniker Ardecore (which also plays on the word "hardcore" twisted into Roman dialect) lies a supergroup featuring the nu-jazz trio Zu, folk-blues singer-songwriter Giampaolo Felici, accordionist Luca Venitucci (a jazz musician who has worked in Lou Reed's entourage), vibraphonist Valerio Borgianelli (a protégé of Steve Reich) and - believe it or not - Geoff Farina, guitarist of an eminent former Chicago slowcore/post-rock band, Karate.

The project was born in 2002, when Zu and Karate shared the stage on their European tour with Blind Loving Power, Felici's blues-gospel creation: at the start and end of those shows, old Roman stornelli were performed. From there came the idea of joining forces for an operation in musical archaeology and ethnology: unearthing and "rehabilitating" the most noir songs from the Roman songbook.

The result, astonishing, is the debut album Ardecore, released by Il Manifesto in 2005. A collection of ten murder ballads that paint a dark-hued Rome, closer to the Pasolinian imagery of "Ragazzi di vita" than to the clichés of the "sun-drenched city" and of everyone loving one another. A "blues" narrative speaking the universal language of lives on the margins, with all their weight of misery and desperation.

The album is divided into three "tables", as in the tradition of the cantastorie. The first is set among prisons and the underworld, amid drama, revenge and a paganism-tinged religiosity. The second is dominated by death, flowing on the muddy waters of the Tiber. The third triptych is devoted to the "serenata", the melodic core of Roman (and Italian) song. Murky folk-blues weaves pervade the opening "Come te posso ama'", the lament of a political prisoner for his beloved and his lost freedom. "Madonna dell'Urione" and "Madonna dell'Angeli" are two invocations of divine help. The first wraps a scene of jealousy and betrayal in Calexico-like languor. The second is the heartrending parable of a man who loses his beloved and his young son, and begs the heavens to return them to him: a magnificent folk-song running over seven minutes, with horn breaks, accordion counterpoints and a free-form coda.

In the second chapter, the Tiber takes the stage, a pagan deity and altar to wasted lives, such as that of the "Lupo de fiume", who follows the fate of "…pupo verso la corente un tonfo, in fonno e poi nulla più…" (a vibrant performance by Felici, over an arrangement made eerie by Farina's touch and the piano's glimmers), or the absolute classic "Barcarolo Romano", here steered toward Balkan blues. One can almost glimpse a Pasolinian Madonna in the heroic "Popolana", who saves children from the waters of the river. Closing the album is a trio of serenades. "L'eco der core" gleams with Tex-Mex sonorities and culminates in a lovely instrumental coda. "Fiore de gioventù" is an old Petrolini tango that blooms into a slowed-down folk-blues, somewhere between Nick Cave and Black Heart Procession.

The moving "Serenata de paradiso" drowns its melancholy in a jazzy atmosphere, setting up the closing ghost-track (a 13th-century sonnet). What's striking is the balance between respecting the austerity of the originals and reinterpreting them in a "brass-band" style, built on horn explosions à la Bregovic, post-Morricone landscapes in the Calexico mold, and crooked free-jazz-inflected rhythms. The engine behind these arrangements is the fiery Zu trio, who trade phrases with Venitucci's accordion and Fender Rhodes piano and with Borgianelli's vibraphone, glockenspiel and percussion, leaving Farina's electric guitar to a meticulous job of counterpoint.

Also worth noting are Felici's vocal performances, which spin together passion and rage with a fervor worthy of the late Gabriella Ferri.

Making the work even more enticing is the rich booklet by Alessandro "Scarful" Maida, inspired by the prison aesthetic of tattoo art. Ardecore is music three centuries old, yet it sounds as if it were written the day before yesterday. Street poetry, not ethno-chic. The heart of Rome, pulsing. And it still seduces.

After two years marked by thrilling live shows across Italy, Ardecore return with a new full-length work, Chimera (2007), which continues the "ethnological" project begun with their debut, but alternates original songs with new reinterpretations of Italian traditionals. A collection of ten tracks, where melodies rooted in the Italian tradition are paired with musical structures that, starting from homegrown folk and passing through a wide range of genres - from blues to early jazz - end up brushing against sounds ahead of their time.

The lineup remains the original one - with Zu, Farina and Venitucci - joined by a large cast of guests. The acoustic nature of their sound thus opens up to new "electric" contaminations, while the presence, in many tracks, of horn and string sections further broadens the horizons. The lyrics, meanwhile, explore another jagged microcosm, made up of folk heroes who sacrifice themselves, celebrated by the band as if in a kind of procession.

Standouts include the cover of Gabriella Ferri's "Sinnò me moro", with its slow tango, tribal rhythm and jagged horns, the title track "Chimera", with its powerful yet still romantic, Italian-style swing, and "Parole controvento", written by Felici, which also brings out the band's most authentically Zu-like side. But the opening "Miniera" (written by Bixio-Cherubini) doesn't disappoint either - a wrenching requiem for a miner who sacrifices himself to save his fellow workers - nor do the reworkings of "Quel ritmo americano", an old pre-war song, and of "M'affaccio alla finestra", a song dating all the way back to the 19th century, revisited here in a blues key, alongside the Waits-like march of "Buon Natale", which pillories old and new Italian hypocrisies.

Although it doesn't reach the heights of intensity of its predecessor, Chimera still manages to consolidate the reputation of these post-stornello revivalists, also winning the 2007 Premio Tenco for best debut work. In the meantime, the original lineup was expanded with the addition of percussion and horns, and with the inclusion of an entire group, the Roman punk-jazz trio Squartet, who alternate with Zu in the role of backing band.

In the wake of Ardecore, a genuine new Roman school has meanwhile been flourishing, boasting successful new minstrels such as Alessandro Mannarino and the ensemble Il Muro del Canto.

Relaunching the ambitions of Felici's supergroup is the third album, the double San Cadoco (2010), split evenly in two: on one side, attempts at exploring new sounds; on the other, the confidence of old-style songwriting.

The first disc remains the one that sparks the most curiosity and, to show our cards right away, it disappoints slightly; you can find almost everything here, epic rides tinged with prog ("Il nuovo giorno") or husky rock-blues ("Oggi è domenica"), raging hard-rock as well as slow ballads ("Santa Gilda", "Nessuno sa più bene"). All this new material is finely crafted, but appears slightly out of focus: the Zu members fade into secondary roles, which undermines tracks like "Meravigliosamente" or "Non si può", revealed as rather sui generis alt-rock, while pieces like the western-flavored "Gronge meraviglia" or the tight "Per quella lei ci muore" unfortunately carry a strong whiff of déjà vu.

The second part, on the other hand, follows in the footsteps of the two previous albums, erasing the partial disappointments; newcomer Sarah Dietrich, entrusted in the first part with "Tentazione", masterfully handles the martial, funereal rendition of "Io dè sospiri" taken from Puccini's "Tosca", as well as the sad lullaby of "Vola, vola" or the dancing stornello of "Te possino dà tante cortellate". It's precisely on this last track, and on the glitch-tinged dirge "I biondi capelli", that one might harbor the biggest doubts about the group's new entry; singing what once belonged to Gabriella Ferri is no simple task, it requires a passion and theatricality in the interpretation that Dietrich doesn't seem to possess, despite the impeccable vocal skill on display.

Giampaolo Felici fares better on the cover of "Nina viè giù", once sung by Lando Fiorini, and both fare better on the album's masterpiece: "La povera Cecilia", a tale told in three voices (alongside the two lead singers, David Tibet of Current 93 joins in), which stands as a perfect murder ballad, one for which we're willing to forgive even good old David's terrible accent in exchange for a track where tradition and modernity walk hand in hand as in the best moments of the self-titled album that kicked off the Ardecore adventure.

San Cadoco is the album where the gambles taken in revisiting the classic style are boldest, but it's also the work to which Farina contributes the least. In the end, the record suffers from the flaws typical of so many so-called "transitional" records, perhaps the fruit of a moment in which, not so much for the sake of the audience but out of a mere desire for professional growth, the Roman band reflects on its future and on the sound to pursue in the years to come.

In March 2015, Vecchia Roma was released, seven reinterpretations of songs dating back to the tradition spanning the two world wars, except for the title track, composed in 1947. These are seven little-known episodes of Rome's musical culture, rendered with an approach that aims to bring the sounds of the past into the new millennium through a philologically impeccable work. Alongside each song, the booklet features an image depicting marvelous spots of the eternal city, like vintage postcards. Felici's voice is, as ever, perfect in conveying the drama and desperation of these small tales from times gone by, without skimping on the right doses of passion and hope. Joining him in the lineup is, once again, former Karate guitarist Geoff Farina, alongside Giulio Caneponi (drums), Riccardo Del Monaco (piano) and Sarah Dietrich, who appears in a few cameos that add extra shine to the album.

Four years after the acclaimed San Cadoco, and ten after their self-titled debut, Ardecore are today the most credible interpreters and torchbearers of a folk tradition that must not be lost. Their nationwide success shows that the phenomenon is no longer confined to small Trastevere restaurants or unlucky street musicians chasing spare change at metro stops: old Roman folk has every right to exist and carve out its own living space with the same authority as Balkan brass bands or Irish folk dances.

Questo matrimonio s'ha da fare. Ardecore, illustrious Roman folk singers, after telling the story of Vecchia Roma, continue their journey into the roots of Roman identity. A journey that leads to the presence of Giuseppe Gioachino Belli. "The voice of the people of Rome", in his dialect sonnets, told the story of the lives of the poor, of the corruption of power and of the Church: aspects still present today in countless Roman songwriting tracks, and beyond... A Rome caught between sacredness and sex, Mastro Titta and final judgments, ready to come back to life in the lyrics chosen by the group and set to music for 996 – Le canzoni di G.G. Belli – Vol. 1 (2022).

996, that is, the poet's "anonymous numerical signature", meant to represent his initials in cursive. Sixteen adaptations in which the band's leader Giampaolo Felici is joined by Gianluca Ferrante and Adriano Viterbini of Bud Spencer Blues Explosion and I Hate My Village, along with a long line of illustrious guests, among whom we should mention Davide Toffolo, back in Rome after Meme K Ultra with Cor Veleno.

The sonnets are sung in full, verse by verse, by Felici, without being distorted to fit a song format, supported by a predominantly acoustic musical framework in which more animated scenes alternate (the cycle of three compositions "Er zagrifizzio d'Abbramo"), distortions ("Er decoro", "La carità") and folk processions through the alleys of Trastevere ("L'aribbartato", "Uno mejo dell'antro").

Yet another testament to the enduring relevance of Belli's work, 996 – Le canzoni di G.G. Belli – Vol. 1 will allow listeners to delve deeper into, revisit, or perhaps discover this great poetry in the faithful, living form given to it by Ardecore, who are already set to release the second part of the work soon.

A few months after the first volume, the second chapter is released, 996 – Le canzoni di G.G. Belli – Vol.2, with which the Roman band concludes its tribute to the poet born in the Sant'Eustachio district. A visceral tribute in which the voice and existence of the common people of Rome, and of their narrator par excellence, resound loudly through the group's instruments and voice. Overall, out of Belli's 2,279 sonnets, the band selects twenty-eight, offering an anthological synthesis of the great themes covered in the Bellian opus.

It falls to "Caino", lost in a mournful atmosphere from which a fine electric guitar solo will later emerge, to open the concluding half-hour journey through the Vecchia Roma documented in such vivid detail by Belli. All the protagonists are here, accompanied by a wide range of instruments, from winds to strings, including fado, mandolin, and afro guitar. And so, after the biblical character, it's naturally the turn of "Er biastimatore", outlined by an intense, almost theatrical vocal performance from Felici. The philological faithfulness of the project (let's remember: the sonnets aren't adapted or reshaped into a song format, but rather presented line by line in their original, complete form) never makes for a monotonous listen, which, between the march of "La providenza", the Spanish-tinged colors of "Er coronaro" and the off-the-rails homage of "Er vino", knows exactly how to keep the listener entertained.

Perfectly rounding out the listening experience of 996 – Le canzoni di G.G. Belli is the companion book of the same name, published by Squilibri editore, where you can find the sonnets selected by Ardecore accompanied by illustrations, sheet music, and the chance to track down the songs in question via QR code.

Contributions by Alessio Belli (“996 – Le Canzoni Di G.G. Belli – Vol. 1 e Vol.2”), Claudio Lancia (“Vecchia Roma”) and Franz Bungaro

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