Franco Battiato

Franco Battiato released “Caffé De La Paix” at the end of a period in his career split between the pull of Classical music (the nineteenth-century-style lieder of “Come un cammello in una grondaia” and his second opera, “Gilgamesh”) and the allure of the Arab world, intensified after the concert he gave in Baghdad alongside I Virtuosi Italiani and the Iraqi national orchestra. Two souls that blend perfectly in this work, released in October ’93 and met with countless critical accolades, including Album of the Year in the poll of specialist press conducted by the magazine “Musica e Dischi”.

Battiato has always been in search of a "permanent centre of gravity", moving between the avant-garde of his early years (a child of kosmische musik, progressive rock and the teachings of Stockhausen) and the exploration of song form that, starting with "L'Era Del Cinghiale Bianco", took over his output. "Caffé De La Paix" shows precisely how, for the composer from Catania, the song is above all a means of expression and never a limitation. Typical rock instruments (guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, computer) intertwine with classical ones (from piano to viola, from cello to oboe) and with those of Arabic and Indian tradition (from the qanun to the tabla, from the sarod to the tampura), giving life to one of the most luminous jewels of world music ever produced in Italy — arguably even superior to Creuza De Ma by Fabrizio De André.

Far from the pop-coverist temptations that would pollute his more recent output, the Sicilian singer-songwriter paints a magical album, steeped in an entirely Eastern atmosphere, further underlined by a cover of an Arabic "traditional" piece, "Fogh In Nakhal", here rearranged in a "grandiloquent" key with generous use of strings and choirs. It's a formula rich in evocative power, in which Mediterranean melodies form the backdrop to enchanted fables and stories suspended in time. They're almost like classical lieder, given the composure and austerity that pervade them. Often providing the counterpoint are the lyrics, sharp and ironic, in keeping with the Sicilian singer-songwriter's finest tradition.

Battiato's syncretism manages to hold together the most disparate cultural elements: from classical mythology to the epic of the Roman Empire, from Arab-Eastern meditation techniques to Buddhist philosophy, from the dialogue between Christianity and Islam to Japanese poetry. All of it transferred onto the stave with symphonic arrangements of rarefied elegance (thanks in part to the production of Saro Cosentino).

The vibrant title track is a ballad dizzying enough to make even a Dervish spin, gleaming with unmistakable Arabic textures and sharp reflections on the theme of reincarnation, one of Battiato-the-philosopher's pet obsessions ("Ci si risveglia ancora in questo corpo attuale/ dopo aver viaggiato dentro il sonno/ L'inconscio ci comunica coi sogni/ frammenti di verità sepolte: quando fui donna o prete di campagna/ un mercenario o un padre di famiglia"). The solemn "Atlantide" does even better, another head-spinning ballad, with a hypnotic rhythm, an enveloping melody, the pompous accompaniment of strings and the sinuous progress of the keyboards creating a magically dreamlike mood.

"Sui Giardini Della Preesistenza" is an almost arrhythmic evocation by Battiato of humanity's primordial Eden ("prima della caduta sulla Terra/ prima della rivolta nel dolore"), sustained by a striking keyboard expansion and tender woodwind embroidery. "Delenda Carthago" is another nostalgic litany, on the splendours (but also the corruption) of the Roman Empire, culminating in a final declamation in Latin ("...Conferendis pecuniis ergo sollicitae tu causa, pecunia, vitae!/ per te immaturum mortis adimus iter/ tu vitiis hominum crudelia pabula praebes/ semina curarum de capite orta tuo"). In "Ricerca Sul Terzo", by contrast, Battiato's gaze turns even further back, to the meditation techniques of the ancient Egyptians ("Mi siedo alla maniera degli antichi Egizi/ coi palmi delle mani dolcemente stesi sulle gambe/ e il busto eretto e naturale/ un minareto verso il cielo"), with the orchestration pared down to a minimum, ever more sober and transcendent.

At the peak of his spiritual yearning, Battiato raises his "Lode All'Inviolato" into a poignant elegy, wreathed in string riffs and almost unsettled, in its closing moments, by a "demonic" violin solo ("il diavolo è mancino e subdolo/ e suona il violino"). The record fades out, drowning in the slow oscillations of "Haiku", in which the Japanese literary form frames verses of aching lyricism, which are then sublimated in the Persian poem "L'Uomo dell'Isola dei Giardini", performed by Pouran Ghaffarpour.

It's just eight tracks, but they leave a mark. Multifaceted, syncretic, multicultural (in the noble, non-stereotyped sense of the word), capable of blending Arabic spices with (neo)classical ambitions, "Caffé De La Paix" proves to be a strikingly flawless album. A formal high point for Battiato's brand of ethno-flavoured singer-songwriter music, one that would leave its mark on the entire Italian Nineties while remaining, at the same time, an unreachable one-off.

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

26/10/2006