VINICIO CAPOSSELA - Canzoni della Cupa

First off, a word of advice: be wary of reviews published just hours after an album's release. "Canzoni della Cupa" is a work that demands attention and patience. It needs to be savored, digested. On agricultural time, as Vinicio Capossela himself puts it, because "you have to sow, let things grow, and then bring in the harvest." Fitting, after all, for an album that springs from the earth. A dark, ancestral earth, steeped in myths lost in the mists of time. Namely Alta Irpinia, his father's homeland, already staged by Capossela in the book and film "Il Paese dei Coppoloni" and in his Sponz Fest festival, and which now becomes the lifeblood of this album split into two chapters, "Polvere" and "Ombra", the first largely recorded in 2003, the second between 2014 and 2015.

As a tireless archaeologist of folk song, the artist born in Hannover has unearthed the oral heritage of stories, proverbs and sonnets from those lands (the town of Calitri and its surroundings, in particular). From it he has drawn a complex, multifaceted work, despite its apparent monochrome surface. A folkloric epic with nothing reassuring about it, because - as Bob Dylan once claimed - "traditional music is full of thorns, nocturnal creatures, blood, mysterious things." A concept that fits the Cupa ("the dark district") perfectly, that part of southern Italy where the sun almost never shines and where the folk bestiary feeds on diabolical spirits and mysterious apparitions. Like the midday demon of "La bestia nel grano", which appears at noon to warn us that the point of brightest light is in fact a slit onto the world of shadow (just as white became the most terrifying color on "Sailors, prophets and whales"). Or else it's animals that embody the face of the unfathomable, the sacred, perhaps disguised under the monstrous features of the "Pumminale", the shady werewolf of the caves that Capossela uses to probe the chasms of the human soul.

But as tradition dictates in folk song, class conflict demands its share, with women often taking center stage: from peasant girls born "wild" to the "Femmine" who go to harvest tobacco in the fields ("left in twos and came back in fours"), from the devout "Maddalena la castellana" to the more easygoing "Franceschina la calitrana", who carries on with the railway foreman, from the lady of the farmstead ("La padrona mia"), an unattainable object of desire ("once I saw her alone, just as nature made her, lying there lost in thought, and ever since my heart has found no rest") to the ineffable "Pettarossa la puttanazza", a latter-day Bocca di Rosa who "does good by her fellow villagers".

A two-part album, as mentioned. The first half, "Polvere", is a long journey that sets out from Cabras, in a Sardinia straight out of a western, and passes through the encounter with the Apulian minstrel Matteo Salvatore and his razor-sharp language, a teller of tales of humanity in all its forms, of abuses and injustices, but also of an unnamed heritage of everyday songs: sonnets, ballads, serenades and military choruses. Sixteen tracks recorded in 2003 with a stripped-down lineup (two violins, a dulcimer, a double bass, voice and guitar) for a dry, bare sound, faithful to the folk orthodoxy of Cantacronache and Dischi del Sole, though enriched here by a jumble of ethnic instruments (accordion, mariachi trumpets, cubba cubba, vihuela, drums, etc.).

The Cupa, here, is still a distant dimension, even if evoked by the deathly ode of "Il lamento dei mendicanti" (“Fate la carità a questi pezzenti / che quello che ci date noi prendiamo / quello che date a noi va per i morti / rinfrescate le anime del purgatorio”). But most of the stories play out under the sun of the southern Italian latifundium, among plantations and railways, in a boundless village festival that will certainly put off many listeners, but not fans of the recent Capossela, long devoted to rediscovering this rural-folk epic.

Lightening the crossing is his usual biting irony and the ever-sardonic timbre of the former Vic Damone (it's impossible not to smile hearing his gravelly voice intone "Non cantate a Dagarola senno' vi sparo con la pistola" or "se ne andava, a messa cantata, come una vacca scampanata"). And ultimately it's his mark as an interpreter that makes this miscellany distinctive, from old-time zumpa-zumpa numbers ("Faccia di corno", "Zompa la rondinella", "Rapatatumpa"), to universal traditionals (how many times have we already heard the tune of "L'acqua chiara alla fontana"?), to intoxicating village dances, like the irreverent "Pettarossa" or the picaresque "Nachecici", with its plainly fatalistic message: “Chi muore muore/ chi campa campa/ e nu piatto di maccaruni cu’ la carna”.

The two nocturnal, intimate ballads that close the first part ("La lontananza" and "La notte è bella da soli", in which the werewolf's howl can already be heard) form the ideal bridge into the magical darkness of "Ombra", the album's second half. Here is where the more singer-songwriter-oriented tracks sit, recorded in a mobile studio that welcomed guests such as Giovanna Marini, Calexico, Howe Gelb, Los Lobos and Flaco Jimenez. This is the part of the album closest to the recent Capossela, the one behind "Sailors, prophets and whales". And, truth be told, some tracks sound like outtakes from that other sprawling collection (the frayed blues of "Scorza di mulo", the dreamlike litany of "Le creature della Cupa", the secular prayer of "L'angelo della luce"), but some of his classic melodies also resurface, like that of "Canzoni a manovella", updated in an Irpinia flavor on the new "Maddalena la castellana".

The desert-like openings of "La notte di San Giovanni" and the mournful Morricone-style western of the closing "Il treno" are striking, ideally carrying off all the characters, as is the mariachi mirage of "Componidori", a corner of Mexico carved out in Cabras, deep inland Sardinia, for a sort of Dionysian ritual in which a man, surrounded by women, realizes that "it's better to screw than to command". But the candlelit (or rather, moonlit) ballad "Il Pumminale" also works well, the first single released, already previewed in recent live shows. And speaking of concerts, the double album will be matched by a double tour: outdoors, in the warm season, "Polvere"; indoors in theaters, come autumn, the "Ombra" session.

You reach the finish line a little worn out, but happily intoxicated, just like after the collective bender of "Lo sposalizio di Maloservizio". An adventure that is literary and theatrical as much as musical. Though there's no doubt about Capossela's effort to transfigure folkloric material through his flair as a revered master storyteller. From a compositional standpoint, the twenty-eight tracks don't add a great deal to his musical arsenal, which has settled for some years now into a kind of global folk-recital mode. It's been said around that the first part of the tracklist is less interesting: quite the opposite, if anything it's the most original and disorienting, with its bold recovery of an Italian heritage buried for decades, even if diehard Capossela fans will prefer the nocturnal, deconstructed blues of "Ombra".

In any case, it's unlikely that "Canzoni della Cupa" will win him new fans, let alone satisfy those calling for a return to the more classic singer-songwriter style of his early days. But that's Capossela today: take it or leave it. And once again, we happily take it.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

13/05/2016