Carmen Consoli - Less Confused and Happier

From rock to singer-songwriter fare, from the most elegant pop to traditional folk, always with a unique and original style. Few Italian singer-songwriters can boast the achievements reached by Carmen Consoli over the last 25 years. The distinctiveness of her voice – a pure, deep contralto – her irresistible irony, her exuberance, but also the fragile delicacy of her songs have established her as one of the icons of the Italian scene between the late 90s and the new millennium, while her persona, always fresh and unconventional, immediately won the hearts of new generations.

Born in Catania on 4 September 1974, Carla Carmen Consoli grew up in the nearby town of San Giovanni La Punta. Thanks to her father Giuseppe, a fan of both traditional Italian artists like Domenico Modugno and of black music and blues, she was drawn to music from childhood. It was her father who encouraged her to write and perform songs during her school years. At the age of nine, Consoli also began studying guitar. Young Carmen was already a force of nature: at 13 she was performing in Catania's clubs, playing with bands like Iris Monday, with whom she played a rock repertoire inspired by the American band Rem, and Moon Dog's Party, a rock-blues cover band. It was during a Moon Dog's Party gig that she was noticed by Francesco Virlinzi, producer and owner of Cyclope Records, a label that was very popular in Catania at the time, who decided to take her career under his wing.
Meanwhile, she attended the Polivalente school in San Giovanni La Punta, where she graduated as a business technician specializing in computer programming.

After leaving Moon Dog's Party behind, Carmen moved to Rome to try to develop her songs and pitch them to record labels. That's how she came to the attention of Michele Santoro, who invited her to perform at a tribute to Mia Martini on the TV show Tempo Reale on Rai Tre. On that occasion she played "L'isola del tesoro" (which later became "Novembre '99"). Around that time she also took part in "Battiato non Battiato", a tribute to her most illustrious fellow citizen, with her own distinctive cover of the song "L'animale".

Due parole, To Start Things Off

When Carmen returns to Catania in 1994, she shows up at her producer's with the material that will end up on Due parole (1996), her debut album.
For that record, she records 22 songs for guitar and voice, immediately showcasing that natural timbre and the highly original interpretive style that would become her trademarks. The album, recorded at Cyclope Studios in Catania, was preceded by her appearance at the 1996 Sanremo Festival with "Amore di plastica", a song co-written with Mario Venuti, built around a powerful hook that made an immediate impact. What struck both the public and industry insiders wasn't just the quality of the song, or that of her performance, equally remarkable: Carmen also caught attention for her look, at once aggressive and fragile, and for an exuberant, screen-grabbing personality.

Illustrated on the cover with an image of the singer sporting short hair and a punk attitude, Due parole is a collection of intimate, stripped-back, mostly acoustic songs that, despite their immaturity, already reveal a whirlwind of emotions, heightened by the incandescent quality of performances that showcase an exceptional talent.
Venuti also co-wrote the (less than thrilling) "La semplicità", while fellow Sicilian Kaballà had a hand in writing the ethereal "Fino a quando" and the more tense "Non ti ho mai chiesto", on which Virlinzi himself also worked.
Still raw, the Consoli who emerges from the dreamy vibrations of "Questa notte una lucciola illumina la mia finestra" (another single pulled from the album), from the poignant "Sulla mia pelle" and from the acoustic litany of "La stonato" already shows an intriguing flair as both songwriter and performer.
The more impertinent and irreverent side of Carmen surfaces in the lyrics of the rocking "Vorrei dire" ("voglio un cuore cane bastardo") and the even more explicit "Lingua a sonagli", built around an insolent spoken delivery reminiscent of Ustmamò ("Perchè non parli cosicché potrò stanarti/ Lingua a sonagli sputa in bocca a tuoi fratelli").

In 1996 Carmen Consoli consolidated her success with a long tour of Italy's major cities and appearances at major events (the May Day Concert, Max Generation, Sonoria, Premio Recanati, Premio Tenco), moving audiences with the energy and passion of her performances. In some cases, she already previewed new songs, such as the unsettling "Not Tired At All", which would later appear on her second album.
1997 opened with her return to Sanremo with a new song: "Confused and Happy". It's a fresh burst of energy, driven by powerful guitar distortion, showcasing the strength and determination of the Sicilian rocker. The track, stripped-down and electric in sound, nervy and sharp, is also the best calling card for the album of the same name, Confused and Happy (1996). A title that would quickly become one of the catchphrases of the year.
The album, destined to go platinum, confirmed Carmen's talent, presenting her in a more electric and "dirty" guise than the year before. The lyrics deal with love and disillusionment (the intense "Fino all'ultimo"), but also tackle harder, more uncomfortable subjects such as the Holocaust and AIDS. "Ricordo il freddo massacrante i timidi lamenti della mia gente/ ammassati stipati dentro un treno merci" is the desolate lament of a Jewish person heading to a concentration camp in "One More Sip"; the aforementioned "Not Tired At All", steeped in acidic feedback, instead expresses all the loneliness and frustration of someone living with AIDS ("Adesso che ho sangue infetto/ nessuno vorrà piu' leccare le mie ferite"), another remarkable feat.
Overall, the whole record is pervaded by a nervous, paranoid spleen, which comes to a head in the anxieties of the restless "Uguale a ieri" and in the biting ode of "Venere", which bluntly mocks the tedium of a long romantic relationship ("Fortunatamente da giorni è finita la lenta agonia dei tuoi fiori/ sto ancora rimettendo la nostra ultima cena romantica"). A journey into darkness best represented by "Blunotte", with its torments carved into the slender acoustic frame of guitars and strings.
But what truly convinces and surprises is the overall mood of the record, as does the new Italian tour, which finally earns Carmen full consecration.
Meanwhile, more songs had taken shape, tried out during rehearsals with her band.

A Siren in Catania

So the Sicilian singer-songwriter shuts herself away for three months in a house on the outskirts of Catania, and the recording sessions move quickly. It's the prelude to the release of her new album, Mediamente isterica (1998), driven by the single "Besame Giuda", another subtle litany swept along by powerful rock guitars. "It's a title that already speaks about women," the Sicilian singer-songwriter explains, "because we women go through at least one week a month of hormonal imbalance, which causes nervous disturbances... After playing more than 100 dates with the band, most of the songs were born during the tour, thanks to the enthusiasm the audience gave me. When I saw them dancing, I wanted to write even more powerful songs, almost punk. We worked a lot on rhythms, on tempos, because I felt very fragmented, broken apart, and I felt that 4/4 time didn't fully capture my state of mind. I needed odd time signatures, ones that reflected my mood, often broken, shattered, full of things that distracted me from great joys and great sorrows".
Portrayed as a siren on the cover, Carmen Consoli unleashes a cocktail of energy, biting lyrics and crystalline melodies, in service of a bleak manifesto for the end of the millennium.
Twelve stories, twelve female snapshots in which the "Cantantessa" — as she's now nicknamed — is surrounded by a now perfectly tight-knit band, in which only the bass role is shared on rotation between Enzo Ruggiero, Salvo Cantone and Carmen herself (on the desperate "Geisha").
The record moves effortlessly from the pent-up anger of "Puramente casuale", once again built on the contrast between melodic tenderness and scornful lyrics, to the almost grunge toughness of "Contessa Miseria" (a vibrant invective against cosmetic surgery and its damage) and the tense "Sentivo l'odore" (with guitar walls venturing almost into Smashing Pumpkins territory), all the way to the honeyed "Echo of Sirens" and the successful duet with Mario Venuti on "Mai come ieri", while "Autunno dolciastro" perhaps lingers a bit too long on that same (bittersweet, indeed) formula, wrapped in fresh, scorching feedback.
Setting aside a certain repetitiveness — something many would still pin on Consoli in years to come — Mediamente isterica highlights her forceful maturation as a songwriter, one who concedes very little to commercial demands and manages to remain consistent and unshakeable in her artistic pursuit.

Consecration (Including on the International Stage)

Starting in January 1999, Carmen Consoli went back on tour with her inseparable band, made up of Massimo Roccaforte on guitar, Leif Searcy on drums, Enzo Ruggiero on bass, and Santi Pulvirenti on guitar. At the end of that tour, she shut herself in the studio again to record her album, Stato di necessità (2000), as well as a song to present at Sanremo, titled "In bianco e nero". An autobiographical streak always comes through in her songs: "There's also an element I call 'identification', in the sense that I try to identify with the realities around me, filtering them and making them my own," Carmen explains. There's also a shift in the music, now calmer and more orderly: "At a certain point it seemed like I was playing a character, the artist who only and always does rock, so I tried to change. I realized I'd reached the limit with the previous record, and I wanted to give the new album different sounds".
So you might even stumble upon a tender bossa nova like "Parole di burro", one of the Catania songwriter's finest melodic ideas, set here in an oasis of sweetness that also houses the record's other hit, "L'ultimo bacio", a sweeping ballad of aching nostalgia for voice and strings (the "mille violini suonati dal vento"), made famous by Gabriele Muccino's film of the same name the following year.
Consoli portrays herself as a "Bambina impertinente", borrowing the distortion and vocoder effects typical of Italian rock of those years, and admits her own inconsistency ("Novembre '99"), continuing that work of self-analysis that would characterize her for a long time to come. And while the poignant "L'epilogo" pieces back together, in her own way, the shards of a shattered love story, the closing "Non volermi male", brushed with a gorgeous piano intro, is another tender confession of vulnerability. Equally moving is her retelling of the myth of "Orfeo", where the unfortunate Euridice calls out to her lover to help her, unaware that he will never be able to. Rounding things off are the restless plea of the title track ("Saltami addosso, dottore, coraggio divorami/ Straziami, studiami a fondo"), the resentment of the vibrant "Amado señor" and the snapshot "In bianco e nero", which entrusts the story of her relationship with her mother to another fine melody.

Stato di necessità is the record of definitive success for the "Cantantessa", the one that satisfies everyone: the pickiest rock purists and the mainstream audience alike, earning her several awards and even a French edition ("État de necessité"), which includes two songs in French and a cover of Serge Gainsbourg produced by Henri Salvador.
Always extremely mindful of her image, Carmen Consoli becomes the female icon of the new Italian rock scene, amid TV appearances, successful tours and notable collaborations, above all with fellow Catania native Franco Battiato, her longtime mentor. Her role models are the cult singer-songwriters of the Nineties, PJ Harvey, Bjork and Tori Amos, but also the hard rock of Led Zeppelin. "I'm someone who likes life and likes living, I like laughing and smiling, even at myself," she says. "And the future doesn't scare me. I live and see what happens. Meanwhile I enjoy playing and making people have fun. Without taking myself too seriously".

In 2001 she returned with L'anfiteatro e la bambina impertinente, a live album recorded at the Greek amphitheatre in Taormina, together with a fifty-piece orchestra — the symphonic orchestra of the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele in Messina — conducted by Paolo Buonvino.
With this work, Consoli positions herself halfway between the Italian melodic tradition and rock'n'roll. The record's greatest strength — it features 15 of the 25 songs played that evening — lies precisely in the balance between the orchestral arrangements and the raw rock settings carried by the Catania singer's voice and guitar, confirming a maturity that has now been fully reached.

The Exception (2002) presents twelve new songs steeped in "Sicilian humour, tinged with sadness, that makes you smile even though there's drama lurking behind it". Because, as she herself explains, "when I have reason for great joy, I immediately feel nostalgia, an awareness of the precariousness and transience of things. In every happiness I already sense melancholy". A feeling that gave rise, on the album, to two solitary figures: Matilde from "Matilde odiava i gatti", who, prey to her own neuroses, ends up killing a cat and then herself, and the professor of "Moderato in re minore", alone and unsatisfied on Christmas Eve. Counterbalancing this is the radiant melody of "Pioggia d'aprile", a descriptive yet still vividly imaginative song, which would also be released in English for the international market under the title "April Showers", accompanied by a sophisticated music video.
From solitude we move to the fear of abandonment in "Fiori d'arancio", the melancholy of "Uva acerba", the urge to rebel in "L'alleanza" and in the first single, the title track "The Exception", all the way to the criticism of the Church voiced in "Eppur si muove".
Standing apart are two experiments: the jazz instrumental "Carmen" and "Masino", a techno nursery rhyme in Catania dialect, inspired by an episode that occurred during the making of the record, in a 19th-century farmhouse in Sant'Alfio, on the slopes of Mount Etna.
It's an uneven album overall, one that doesn't always manage to bring out the Sicilian songwriter's best qualities, but when it does, it does so with extraordinary clarity and authenticity.

In 2006 the release of Eva contro Eva marked the "Cantantessa"'s return to the rock and Mediterranean sounds of her origins. Duduk, mandocellos, bouzouki build a warm, passionate sound. The single "Signor Tentenna" paints a picture of everyday human meanness, while "Maria Catena" is a fable about small-town gossip, and "Una preghiera in gola" tells of the anguish of a mother who has waited twenty years for her son to return from the front, "with the rosary on her chest".
Stories of pulsing everyday life that lend a sense of sincerity, unlike other, more "constructed" and ultimately pretentious passages (the Africanisms of "Madre Terra", the mawkishness of "Il sorriso di Atlantide"). Sharper, by contrast, is the collaboration with Goran Bregovic, who wrote the music for "Il pendio dell'abbandono", a track released as a single the year before and later included on the album's tracklist, which would be reinterpreted in English as "On A Leash" by Selina O'Leary (on Bregovic's album "Champagne For Gypsies") and also by Croatian singer and actress Severina Vučković under the title "Gade" (it would also serve as the theme for Roberto Faenza's film "I giorni dell'abbandono", starring Margherita Buy and Luca Zingaretti, with a cameo from Bregovic himself).
Here Consoli still appears to be searching for a fully rounded expressive maturity, torn between the rock urgency of her early days and the composed melancholy of her more recent work, but even this time around there's certainly no shortage of gems.

Elettra, Muse of the Tenco

In some ways Elettra (2009) continues this new acoustic phase inaugurated by the previous album. But here the ethnic or experimental detours of before are set aside; drawing ever closer to the roots of her native Sicily, Elettra presents a mature, melancholy Carmen who deploys a host of guitars and mandolins to pluck the ten new compositions with almost baroque grace.
Despite the calmer atmospheres, though, this isn't necessarily a more relaxed album than its predecessors; it opens, in fact, with one of the most personal lyrics of her career, "Mandaci una cartolina", dedicated to her late father, in which Carmen — with the deft skill of a true songwriter — blends personal memories with a look at Italian society, creating a decidedly nostalgic sketch that never wallows in private grief. But that's not all: the thrilling sizzle of the violins in the chorus of "Col nome giusto" sends shivers of sweet sorrow, the chorus of "Elettra" practically touches the sky, and two tracks like "Perturbazione atlantica" and "Non molto lontano da here" lull the listener with drowsy grace.
Surprisingly, it's the presence of Maestro Battiato that feels slightly out of step with the rest of the record's mood ("Marie ti amiamo"), while the calm is sharply disrupted by the horrifying tale of a paedophile uncle ("Mio zio") and by the biting parade, in Catania dialect, of grotesque characters in "A finestra".
It's undeniable that on first listen Elettra doesn't grab you the way the Carmen of old used to, but with repeated listens its substance soon reveals itself; this is the album of an artist who, well into her career, is still exploring the evolution of her own sound and, in spite of the national popularity she's by now achieved, allows herself the luxury of not bending to the hunt for a radio-ready chorus.
Critics would recognize its worth, awarding her the Targa Tenco for Best Album of the Year (the first woman to win in the long history of the prestigious Club Tenco). Even more prestigious was the review the New York Times devoted to her performances in the Big Apple: "Carmen Consoli is a magnificent combination of rocker and intellectual... a voice full of pain, compassion and strength".
A milestone that adds to the many others already achieved by the Catania-born artist, the first Italian artist to take the stage at Rome's Stadio Olimpico, the only Italian to take part in Ethiopia's celebrations marking the anniversary of Bob Marley's death, as well as a headliner at Central Park and the author of three sold-out nights in a row in New York.

Her first official compilation, Not Tired At All (2010), is a fine way to retrace her career far and wide. Among other things, it features the previously unreleased "Guarda l'alba", a song co-written with Tiziano Ferro (a choice that many of her fans would criticize more out of principle than anything else, given that the track is simply gorgeous).
Meanwhile, the Catania songwriter cemented her reputation as a phenomenal live performer with consistently well-crafted concerts, in which covers of an illustrious fellow Sicilian and idol of hers would sometimes make an appearance, namely Rosa Balistreri, one of the most authentic and original voices in the whole of Italian folk song (here is a masterful rendition of "Cu ti lu dissi").

It would then take a full five years for a new album of original material to arrive — a long pause during which Carmen took the opportunity to have a son in London via artificial insemination (Carlo Giuseppe) and to "watch a lot of television," which, cynicism aside, came almost as a cold shower for that portion of the audience who had learned to love her for the restlessness and energy of her fiery spirit (as we know, diehard fans are the hardest to please).
But the Cantantessa hasn't exactly mellowed; she's simply following her natural evolution as an artist and as a woman. She has set aside, almost entirely, the art of telling her own story, and has instead given voice to the instinct of a mother who is wondering — almost fearfully — just what kind of world she has brought her child into.

The ten tracks on The Habit of Coming Back (2015) portray Italy as seen through the eyes of a woman who observes and draws inspiration from other people's stories, almost like a journalist gifted with remarkable empathy.
So we hear about the anguished secret love between two women in "Ottobre," the code of silence of the Sicilian people marching as a "Esercito silente," the tragicomic femicidal violence against "La signora del quinto piano," a family brought to ruin waiting for better times that will never come ("E forse un giorno"), and the hopeful journey of migrants who entrust themselves to the sea knowing they might not survive "La notte più lunga" of their lives.
Some glimmers of a possibly autobiographical Carmen can be felt in the unsparing portrait of a couple worn dry of all passion, painted with a few stark images that perfectly capture the idea of a "Sintonia imperfetta," while the title track is a true heartbreaker, with its bittersweet story of an eternal lover ensnared by a man who has the terrible habit of coming back, every single time. Naturally, there's also a welcome for her own child, celebrated in "Questa piccola magia," which closes the album.

Some will always feel nostalgic for the old Carmen — the one who used to howl at the wind like a madwoman in "Confused and Happy," the one who limped through "Mediamente isterica" across odd time signatures and anguished electric distortion, or the one who, at the mere sight of a white coat, fell prey to a fluctuating hormonal "Stato di necessità." But time still hasn't worn her down all that much; steering clear of both the tired neomelodic sound of the Ariston stage and a certain strand of Italian indie, Carmen Consoli sails her own waters. These bittersweet Neapolitan-flavored folk-pop songs, steeped in electro-acoustic textures and marked as ever by a voice unmistakable among thousands, make her a rare figure on the Italian scene: a singer widely known to the general public who has nonetheless kept her artistic identity intact. And she does it with a grace that at times brings her close to peers like Nada, Max Gazzè and Paola Turci — artists she has indeed often crossed paths and collaborated with in the past.

A lucid trip down memory lane

Six years would pass before the release of the eagerly awaited follow-up, I Wanted to Be a Rockstar (2021). An extremely long gap by the standards of the contemporary music market, but one that allowed the Sicilian Cantantessa to remain suspended in a kind of bubble, outside the game, before re-emerging with renewed vigor and creativity. As she told us in a lengthy interview, she felt a strong need to stop time, to dwell on her thoughts, reflections and reasoning, steering clear of the pitfalls of today's bulimic frenzy. I Wanted to Be a Rockstar, then, took on above all the tone of a mature reflection, moving between the intimate and the political, between nostalgia and hope for a different, less violent and dehumanizing tomorrow. In short, that invitation to "breathe with your heart" and "rekindle dreams and the lights of reason" found in the lovely single that preceded the album ("Una domenica al mare").

Branded with a fitting vintage cover portraying Carmen with a bow and apron, chewing on a pencil ("from the anxiety of being forced to write with my right hand, when I was actually left-handed"), the album doesn't set out to provoke or shock but, in keeping with her "mature" output, seduces slowly and inexorably. Diving into the album's 44 minutes, it's impossible not to be swept up by its melodic harmoniousness: from the graceful Motown-style bass riffs of "Sta succedendo" to the eccentric, vaguely surf-like gait of "Mago magone," from the 1930s-style bolero and 1950s small-orchestra arrangements of "Le cose di sempre" to the Caribbean sounds married to a folksinger approach in "Armonie numeriche," complete with an almost prog-rock instrumental coda as a tribute to her father Giuseppe, to whom the song is dedicated.
It's also hard to remain unmoved by the tenderness with which Consoli opens up her trunk of memories, between fairy-tale fragments and concrete images of a reassuring family dimension, in which the memory of her father — who passed away in 2009 and is also evoked in a dream (“Ed avrei voluto chiederti/ Sarai sempre orgoglioso di me?/ Ed è così che sеi tornato a salutarmi/ Un bouquet di rose bianche е il sorriso di sempre”) — resurfaces, while her son Carlo Giuseppe is granted the story's most radiant moments (but also its fears), as in the exotic lullaby of "Le cose di sempre."
And yet, within this whirl of memories, yellowed postcards and intimate emotions, sublimated by the autobiographical close of the poignant title track, the Cantantessa's usual ironic, disenchanted gaze on politics and national miseries is not missing, well represented by the uptempo nursery-rhyme cadence of "Mago Magone," dedicated to the circus of illusionists, shamans and tricksters that pollutes everyday reality, in the face of which all that's left is to trust in nature and perhaps "start over, learn from the trees how to walk without trampling" ("Imparare dagli alberi a camminare"). Paradoxically, the track most deliberately built as an out-and-out invective ("L'uomo nero") is the one that ends up sounding flattest, despite its good intentions: a verbal assault on sovereignist politics and a parody of today's and yesterday's fascist rhetoric.
Musically, an analog sound dominates, with walls of amplifiers and valve gear overseen by sound engineer Toni Carbone, who produced the record alongside Roccaforte and Consoli herself. It's a crystalline sound, helped along by the 12-string Rickenbacker which, paired with the Catania-born singer-songwriter's acoustic guitar, delivers a successful blend of retro and contemporary textures, while the mixing by Pino Pischetola (Battiato's longtime keyboardist) lends a refined digital touch that makes the atmospheres even more enveloping.

Anyone asking Carmen Consoli to reinvent herself or return to the rock of her early days will likely be disappointed, as will probably everyone who has always been wary of her (though there's always time to come around). For everyone else, though, these ten new caresses can only reinforce the sense that we're in the presence of one of the finest exponents of Italian singer-songwriting of the last 25 years — allergic by nature to the idea of selling out, and endowed, which is no small thing, with the ability to actually sing, and always in her own original way.

In 2025 Carmen Consoli announced the release of a trilogy of albums, each profoundly different from the others, aimed at covering and summing up every facet of her career: Amuri luci (2025) is the first chapter of this project and is dedicated to the folk music of Sicily (the other two records will focus respectively on rock and on singer-songwriter fare, and will be sung — one in English, Spanish and French, the other in Italian).
This isn't the first time Consoli has engaged with the folk music of her homeland: in 2024 she released the live album Terra ca nun senti — which included, among other things, a couple of reworkings of Rosa Balistreri (the title track and "Buttana di to mà") — and, in May of this year, "L'amuri ca v'haju," the soundtrack to the film "L'amore che ho," a biopic about the life of Balistreri herself, built accordingly around reworkings of her songbook.
This time, however, the tracks are all new, at least musically, while the lyrics allow themselves a few borrowings from the dialect poets Ignazio Buttitta ("Mamma tedesca," "Parru cu tia") and Graziosa Casella ("Nimici di l'arma mia"), as well as from ancient names such as Ovid ("Bonsai #3") and Theocritus ("Galáteia"), whose writings on the myth of Polyphemus and Galatea are sung in Latin and Greek, without adaptation.
The splendid track that opens and gives the album its title is a dedication to Giovanni Impastato, who spent his life keeping alive the memory of his brother Peppino, a victim of the mafia. Given that the Sicily portrayed on the album boasts a thousand-year-old cultural tradition, the sources of inspiration can reach far back in time: "La terra di Hamdis," for instance, is inspired by the Siculo-Arab poet Ibn Hamdis, who in 1078, at the age of twenty-two, left Sicily to escape the Norman conquest: although he found protection and hospitality at the courts of the greatest Arab princes of the Mediterranean, he would mourn his native land for the rest of his life.
These are the finest lyrics Consoli has written in her own hand. Equally rich is the musical research at play, aided also by the participation of Giacomo Calà Scattiglia, known as Gemino, a longtime scholar — and builder — of traditional Sicilian instruments.
"Amuri luci" thus unfolds over a cyclical, obsessive guitar line, recalling the aforementioned "Buttana di to mà," before unveiling an arrangement featuring mandolin, jaw harp (marranzanu in Sicilian) and a reed flute (friscalettu in Sicilian, a typical wooden cane flute, likely a legacy of the Greek colonies).
"Unni t'ha fattu 'a stati" has shades reminiscent of the soundtracks of great Greek masters such as Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hadjidakis. "La terra di Hamdis" boasts a string section influenced by classical Arab music and stands out for the presence of Mahmood, who takes up the challenge of singing in Sicilian, with thoroughly respectable results. "Mamma tedesca" sits somewhere between Sicilian tradition, jazzy chamber folk and modern singer-songwriter fare (the melody recalls nothing less than Francesco Guccini's "Il vecchio e il bambino"). "3 oru 3 oru" mixes tex-mex guitars with a samba groove, managing not to make them feel out of place, while "Galáteia" makes use of the piercing sound of the zammara (an ancient form of clarinet dating back to the Arab domination).
Jovanotti's appearance on "Parru cu tia" is a fish out of water that nonetheless doesn't spoil the mood, lasting barely a minute and a half. Far more successful is the contribution of tenor Leonardo Sgroi, of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, with whom Consoli duets on "Qual sete voi?," sung in 13th-century vernacular Italian on verses drawn from an epistolary exchange between the poet Nina Siciliana and the Tuscan poet Dante da Maiano.
In the end, though, in such a layered work dense with references, the most surprising element is Consoli's own voice, whose vibrations and dissonances fit this kind of ancestral singing perfectly, showing just how far her passion for Balistreri's art is from being a mere pose.

Contributions by Damiano Pandolfini ("Elettra," "The Habit of Coming Back"), Federico Romagnoli ("Amuri luci")

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