Modena City Ramblers - Combat Folk, Emilia Style

Take the suggestions of Irish folk. Season them with a contagious, Emilian-flavored cheerfulness. Add politically committed lyrics, in "combat-rock" style, and you'll have the original recipe of Modena City Ramblers, one of the breakout acts of the latest Italian generation.

Modena City Ramblers were formed in 1991 as an Irish folk group, playing on the street or for friends and family. In 1994 they released their first album, Riportando tutto a casa, in which they stake a claim to their mixed-breed identity, Ireland and Emilia, the Resistance and the Seventies, journeys and struggles. Among their "fellow travelers" were even two Irish heavyweights: the Chieftains and Bob Geldof. Among the tracks is "In un giorno di pioggia," an account of the birth of their great love for the Emerald Isle.

Their rousing ballads sweep up the audience partly through the sheer vehemence of their lyrics. "Quarant'anni," for instance, sketches a scathing portrait of postwar politics, from the P2 lodge to bribes and unpunished massacres. There are also two "politically committed" covers: "Bella ciao" and "Contessa." The times were charged: the dawn of the Tangentopoli scandal. "Social conditions have changed today. There's less will to fight and a lot of confusion. I don't think I'd write a song like 'Quarant'anni' anymore," admits Rubbiani.

But the great utopia of Modena City Ramblers lived on in their second record, La grande famiglia (50,000 copies sold), dedicated to their audience. And above all in the verses of Terra e libertà, the third album, which moves through the dreams of redemption of Emiliano Zapata's and "Sup" Marcos's Mexico, travels among the camps of the Saharawi people, and follows the trail left by Ernesto Guevara (not yet "Che") as he discovered his own continent. The instruments range from the accordion of Italian tradition to the Celtic uilleann pipes; from old Woody Guthrie's guitar and harmonica to Latin American percussion, electric guitars and rock drums. A blend the band themselves call "Celtic patchanka." The success of Modena City Ramblers grew alongside the folk revival of the early Nineties, carried forward by bands like Mau Mau, Gang, and Yo Yo Mundi. "There's more room for the independent scene today," Rubbiani explains. "But it's still very hard to fight the dominance of commercial radio." They keep trying anyway, through jigs, combat-rock and ballads in the dialect of "an Emilia that is also imaginary."

Fuori campo (1999), on the other hand, is a record born very differently from how the Ramblers usually plan and build their work. With no guiding theme, they simply wrote songs and brought them into the studio to be arranged and finished. During pre-production in Ireland, the band gathered contributions from several excellent local musicians, which they then used in the actual recordings for the album. The result, however, wasn't always up to par. Sure, there's no shortage of driving ballads like "Danza etnica," and the imprint of Manu Chao's "Clandestino" is strong, but in the end one gets the impression the Ramblers have done better elsewhere. As on the album "Raccolti," a true compendium of their repertoire, entirely acoustic and recorded live during a pub tour. "With that record we wanted to rediscover the folk roots of our music, and calmer, almost rustic atmospheres," explains Giovanni Rubbiani (guitar, harmonica and vocals for the band).

The Emilian outfit returned in 2002 with the album Radio Rebelde, named after the station founded by Che Guevara during the fighting in the Sierra Maestra. The lead single, "Una perfecta excusa," is the musical translation of a text given to the band by Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda. "You can always find 'a perfect excuse' to keep moving forward, hoping for change," say Modena City Ramblers. But in truth, it's their rhetorical-demagogic arsenal that has lost all its innovative drive. Even the CD cover - a big red flag waved by a little black figure climbing a broadcast antenna - already feels pathetically like déjà vu. Adding to the ideological confusion (long a weak spot for the band) are the various spoken inserts, from Berlusconi to Bush, the track "La legge giusta," inspired by the G8 events, and "Pirata satellitare," the manifesto-song of their critique of the media. "There's a risk of seeing a 'letterina' wearing a burqa, or Bin Laden's face on a Buddha statuette," says "Cisco" Bellotti, the band's singer. "On Italian TV, which can't give music the proper context, even the most important messages risk getting lost. Jovanotti's message, for example, delivered among the 'letterine,' ended up being ineffective." But - setting aside the undeniable quality of some of the tracks on this record too - what Modena City Ramblers share with the infamous Jovanotti is the unmatched demagogic banality of their lyrics.

Musically, however, Radio Rebelde marks an evolution of their Celtic patchanka, where punk, electronics, dub, reggae, and African, Latin and Balkan rhythms have now been added to the original folk component.

Alongside their live shows and studio work, following in the footsteps of Cisco's production experience with "La Casa del Vento," the band also launched their own record label, Modena City Records, to produce a series of emerging folk bands and side projects.

In June 2003, the mini-CD Modena City Remix was released, featuring remixes of their songs by various artists and DJs, including the British acts Transglobal Underground and Feel Good Productions.

Toward the end of the year, Modena City Ramblers also began a collaboration with Coop, who chose them as ambassadors for their international solidarity campaign "Acqua per la Pace." Exclusively for the cooperative's supermarkets, the mini-CD Gocce was released in December 2003, with proceeds going to fund the projects backed by the campaign.

¡Viva la Vida, Muera la Muerte! came out in 2004, with Max Casacci of Subsonica at the production helm. MCR keep taking themselves damnably seriously: the genuine, free-wheeling Pogues-like spirit of their early records has evaporated, and what's left is neither "committed" enough to earn social credentials, nor catchy enough to win musical praise.

The inevitable product of a trip to Chiapas following in the footsteps of Comandante Marcos, the record bears the mark of the band's new Latin infatuation, evident right from the powerful title track, with its strong Mexican flavor thanks to the trumpet-and-percussion combo. "Il Presidente" is the usual anti-Berlusconi litany, short on irony but with a few well-chosen musical touches (the gypsy violin). "I Cento Passi" is practically a photocopy of "La Banda del Sogno Interrotto," and the clips from the film of the same name aren't enough to give it any real point. Limp ballads like "Ramblers Blues" and "Ebano" fall flat too. In the end, what saves the record are simple dialect songs like "Stella Del Mare," "Al Fiòmm," and "La Fòla ed La Sira." Naturally, there's no shortage of the obligatory De André cover, and once again the choice is hardly original ("Il Testamento di Tito").

Their next record, Appunti Partigiani, grew out of a "body" of songs inspired by the Second World War and the Resistance. They were joined by a number of prominent guests: Francesco Guccini revisiting his own "Auschwitz," Moni Ovadia on Italo Calvino's song "Oltre il ponte," Piero Pelù on Fabrizio De André's "La guerra di Piero," Goran Bregovic and the Wedding and Funeral Band on "Bella ciao," and British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg on "All You Fascists," written by Woody Guthrie.

Appunti Partigiani was released in April 2005, coinciding with the sixtieth anniversary of the Liberation, and is the band's first official release on Mescal.

In November 2005, during a break in the band's activity, came the news that singer Stefano "Cisco" Bellotti was leaving.

The band is thrown off balance, but decides to get back to playing live as soon as possible, relying on a lineup with two vocalists, as in the early days. Joining the ranks are Davide "Dudu" Morandi from Sassuolo, singer of the "Mocogno Rovers", and singer and actress Betty Vezzani from Correggio, already active in various folk and rock musical collaborations.

In 2006 the new album comes out, produced by Englishman Peter Walsh, who had previously worked with, among others, Simple Minds and Peter Gabriel. Among the notable guests are Luca "Rude" Lombardo, a rapper from Bologna transplanted to Barcelona who had previously worked with Manu Chao, Fermin Muguruza and La Kinky Beat, the Macedonian brass band Kocani Orkestar, and the celebrated Irish musician Terry Woods, former Pogues member and one of the leading figures of Irish folk from the 1970s to the present day.

Dopo il lungo inverno (Mescal) hits the shops at the end of 2006, and contains a few significant new developments. A track like "Mia dolce rivoluzionaria", for instance, despite the usual premises (including the "Alza il pugno!" exhortation found in the booklet), signals that "ora servono nuove parole", because "la risposta è più complicata". Something's already changing... "Quel giorno a primavera" and "Mama Africa" finally go back to having some bite, steering clear of the usual third-worldist clichés, just as "Mala Sirena" is a foray into Bosnia marked by a secular, descriptive realism. "Western Union" and "Oltre la guerra e la paura" are enhanced by the intense performances of the new vocalist, Betty Vezzani, who brings a breath of fresh air to the ensemble. In truth, though, the tired clichés are hard to shake off, as confirmed by tracks steeped in hollow rhetoric ("Il paese delle meraviglie") or yet another rehash of over-exploited themes like that of the journey ("Il treno dei folli").

While not entirely escaping the creative rut of recent years, Modena City Ramblers at least show a willingness to overcome the impasse they've gotten themselves into and to chase a second (however unlikely) artistic youth.

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