Alberto Fortis

It's no exaggeration to say that Alberto Fortis's artistic career stands as one of the great wasted opportunities in the history of Italian pop music. Although he shaped at least half a decade of Italian music, with combined record sales topping a million copies, this Piedmontese singer-songwriter has since sunk into critical and media oblivion, save for a few fortunate, iconic singles (think above all of the invectives of "A voi romani" and "Milano e Vincenzo"). The result is that, among younger generations, his name is now largely unknown.

And yet, the Fortis who in 1981 was about to release "La grande grotta", his third album, was riding high: after upending the paradigm of the Italian folksinger with a debut suspended between (apparent) detachment and a tormented autobiographical streak (think of the dramatic catharsis of "La sedia di lillà"), all wrapped in generous doses of progressive rock in the arrangements and performances courtesy of Pfm, in 1980 he had distilled his torments into an even more progressive second effort, "Tra demonio e santità", ideally anticipating by a full twenty-five years even Battiato's "Tra sesso e castità", and driven by a fiercely dramatic theatrical charge that, at several points, verged on the downright subversive.

Managing to combine such compositional eclecticism with excellent popular and commercial success was certainly a remarkable achievement, made possible also by an Italy that, while full of contradictions and absurd ideological barricades, was culturally more inclined to let itself be surprised than it is today.

And yet, if there's one record that could be called truly "milestone" in the career of an outsider like this Piedmontese singer-songwriter, it's precisely "La grande grotta", a sort of crossroads and grand possible "what if...?" for the whole approach to Italian pop music. Because, while it's true that the scant cultural legacy left to our man has by now been relegated by the critical elite solely to his '79 debut, it's worth remembering that "La grande grotta" was actually Alberto Fortis's biggest chart hit (it stayed in the charts for nine months, often sitting in the top 10), and that the international flourishes found within these grooves are far more representative of his future career than the prog-tinged singer-songwriter fare of his early days.

What's more, the lead single is one of the composer from Domodossola's most celebrated legacies: a distant relative of Venditti's classic piano ballads (anyone who finds the comparison offensive should give a listen to some of the Roman singer-songwriter's albums from the '70s, too often unjustly maligned), but dreamier, with original gospel touches in the female backing vocals, "Settembre" paints, with melancholy delicacy, images of hope and romantic passion, through lyrics that don't seek their raison d'être in showy intellectualism – as with almost all the more "engaged" singer-songwriters of the '70s – but rather in emotion and, above all, in the phonetic grace of the words themselves. This trait is a leitmotif running through Fortis's entire career, and it allows him to express himself with rare effectiveness even in the strangeness of his tongue-in-cheek lyrics, which in other hands might come across as crude and cheap, but in his take on a fun, quirky surrealism.

One of the finest examples is "Riso", a highly elegant and genuinely hilarious slice of pop-funk (how can you not burst out laughing at lines like "riso bianco riso nero/ oggi sono più sincero/ riso bianco riso azzurro/ lo condisco con il burro") that shows striking similarities to the city pop that was taking off in Japan around the same time. It's hard, if not downright absurd, to imagine a direct influence of the Japanese movement on certain tracks, which are far more likely indebted to the American soft-rock of Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac and the like; rather, this is proof of just how fully immersed our man was in the musical context of his era, and how free he was from any kind of provincialism. A song like "Cina", meanwhile, is striking for the mathematical balance of interlocking instruments and the flair with which it manages to blend a Mediterranean-flavored melody with an Orientalist keyboard theme and a danceable, soft-funky rhythmic pulse. Funk also pops up in "Marilyn", so steeped in American pop imagery that it almost becomes a successful parody of it: it's interesting to note how, in a piece like this, which doesn't fly the flag of the most academic and arty intellectualism, one can even catch some bold meta-textual ambiguities.

In any case, there's precious little room for such intellectual self-indulgence, since the record is so solid and so full of ideas that it makes your head spin: just think of the intoxicating succession of seventh and ninth chords on the title track, or the aching piano ballad "Nuovi giorni" – which almost seems to foreshadow Suede's future "By The Sea" – where Fortis shows off all his vocal skill and power in choruses only the most gifted voices could attempt. It's worth dwelling for a moment on the Piedmontese singer-songwriter's voice: multifaceted like the music that frames it, it picks up the lesson of Edoardo Bennato, especially in the glam-inflected runs or the harsher, more piercing diaphragm-driven screams, but, unlike Bennato, it compensates for a lack of rich low tones with sweet, velvety timbres of a distinctly British flavor. It's an androgynous singing style that has almost entirely disappeared in Italy, where the brazen display of vocal virility, expressed through forced baritone registers or overwrought screaming, seems to have been crowned the undisputed winner.

On the other hand, how many Italian records of the last twenty years can boast songs as refined in harmonic construction, arrangement and performance as "La neña del Salvador"? It's a shining example of imaginative power: through a vaguely Argentine atmosphere and just a few lyrical brushstrokes ("Così non ti perderai/ e sul tuo corpo vivrò/ la Spagna è grande ma incontrerai/ il gitano che sempre cantò/ Es la neña de santa sera/ Es la neña del Salvador"), it paints the magical tenderness of falling in love, and for a little over four minutes you almost feel transported to an Iberian beach, on one of those evenings when a light breeze blows, tempering the otherwise sweltering heat.

Ultimately, these eight tracks breathe such a dazzling range of styles, contaminations and influences that it's hard not to be left stunned – a distinction that, in the Italian eighties landscape, very few artists could genuinely claim. Unfortunately, in a system increasingly allergic to nuance and increasingly poor culturally, as today's is, it seems nobody cares anymore about a record so full of different inputs, if its author never had a taste for shameless cursed-and-decadent posturing or for scandal, and if the blueprint, as in this case, remains that of pop music after all. The truth is there couldn't have been a better one to bring together Italy, America, singer-songwriter tradition, Orientalist tensions, British pop, funk and glam rock in just thirty-five minutes of music. Imagining an Italian '80s in which Fortis or "white" Battisti had triumphed would be a sterile exercise; recovering or rediscovering forgotten gems like "La grande grotta" certainly isn't.

Tesoro dimmi se un giorno mai paura dei cinesi io avrò

the dragon is ready and already moving on four wheels inside a rickshaw

and the yellow peril will drop its bomb

Attenta amore il fungo tornerà

però mangiarlo non potrai

[…]

so the blue wax violin will melt in the warm sun

la vecchia Europa del valzer un unico paese sarà

forse l'America grande per un po' resisterà

I agree we should change things a little

And happy will reign the music it makes

Din din din oh

din din din.

Ride the wave of great music

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08/10/2017