Lucio Battisti

It's 1974. Lucio Battisti is coming off the back of two of the most important albums of his career, "Il mio canto libero" from 1972 and "Il nostro caro angelo" from 1973, home to classics of Italian music such as "Io vorrei... non vorrei... ma se vuoi" and "La collina dei ciliegi", along with their respective title tracks, songs that were hugely popular at the time and are still beloved today, even among younger listeners. But the Battisti of that year is a new, unprecedented artist, intent on shattering the image that part of the public and critics had formed of him. In "Anima latina", in fact, all trace of the nation's-favourite Battisti disappears, replaced by a musician determined to steer clear of the simple, immediate melodies that had defined his earlier work and made him one of Italy's most beloved singers - while also making him a target for the more extremist fringes of politically committed critics, who read the simplicity of the love songs penned by Mogol-Battisti as a reactionary disengagement from the protest songs and social commentary put forward by "committed" singer-songwriters. All nonsense, of course, spouted by those who back then insisted on politicising music: every great artist has their own particular traits, and while the anarchic poetry of Fabrizio De André and Claudio Lolli still retains its rebellious charm, the "little songs" of Lucio Battisti and Mogol have the power to touch the most sensitive chords of the common man. In "Anima latina", however, the melodies grow more complex and less immediate, the rhythms become more intricate (occasionally even venturing into odd time signatures), and the layered arrangements allow Battisti and his band to repeatedly move in and out of the standard song format. Practically a revolution for Italian pop at the time. A revolution that also extends to Mogol's lyrics, which, in this writer's opinion, reach their peak intensity here: already on previous albums Giulio Rapetti (the lyricist's real name) had managed to rein in the stylistic missteps and clichés he often fell into, but it's on "Anima latina" that his lyrical compositions truly shine in all their evocative, imaginative, vivid splendour.

"Anima latina" thus reveals another side of Lucio Battisti, that of the experimenter who, after a trip to Brazil and Argentina, absorbs the influences of traditional South American music and channels them not only into the singer-songwriter tradition but also into Italian prog. A Mediterranean route to progressive rock: this is the ultimate musical meaning behind the title "Anima latina".

Numerous musicians took part in the project: Bob Callero and Ares Tavolazzi alternating on bass; Gianni Dell'Aglio, Franco Lo Previte and Karl Potter switching between drums and percussion; Claudio Maioli on keyboards and Claudio Pascoli on wind instruments; with cameo backing vocals from Mario Lavezzi and Alberto Radius. Essentially, a sort of expanded band supporting the most instrumentally rich record of Battisti's career.

A first taste of Latin prog comes straight away with the enchanting "Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati", which opens drowsily with drums and rarefied electronics, bursts into a joyous fanfare of trumpets, and then morphs into a gluttonous jam that blends everything together (lively funk bass, Latin percussion, synthetic noise, a filtered flute and even a brief sax solo!). "Due mondi", sung as a duet with Mara Cubeddu of Flora Fauna Cemento, and "Gli uomini celesti" are the tracks where the influence of Latin American music is most evident: the former is a kind of impure flamenco, enriched by a stratospheric horn section and orgasmic keyboard flourishes; the latter is a samba wrapped in dreamlike synthesizer textures and cut through by a brief, almost "concrete" percussive interlude. Here Battisti's voice is processed with effects, reaching the listener as if from a distance - a device the musician from Poggio Bustone often resorts to on the record in order to keep the listener's attention engaged.

The incipit of "Anonimo" dissolves into a hushed shimmer of synthesized sounds, accompanied by the bucolic melody sung by Battisti. Soon, however, the track unravels into a new pastoral jam for bass, drums, flute and vibraphone, to which Battisti's vocals are then added. In the finale the song first turns into a sinister fandango, then fades into an ironic coda that reprises the theme of "I giardini di marzo" in a brass-band arrangement.

After the brief reprises of "Gli uomini celesti" and "Due mondi", comes the masterpiece "Anima latina", which opens with an instrumental introduction (entrusted to an enchanted interplay of synthesizer, piano, acoustic guitar and percussion) that sets up Battisti's melodic entrance, his voice becoming the supreme instrument: faint, twisting to the very edge of being out of tune, with its thin, unusual yet familiar and elegant timbre. The track finally evolves into an unbridled, liberating carioca dance.

The most complex song of the bunch is "Macchina del tempo", a track in which the band seems to work by piling up musical material: it strings together different melodic lines, stubbornly varies the rhythm, and blurs registers. Battisti could hardly have written anything further removed from the simplicity (which remains magnificent, to be clear) of "La canzone del sole", so maligned by his detractors.

Some aspects of the lyrics still deserve closer attention, given that their main theme is eroticism: on one hand there are songs that recount, delicately and sensuously, the discovery of sex during puberty ("Anonimo", "Il salame"); on the other, those that celebrate the moment of carnal union as a triumph of the senses ("Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati", "Due mondi"). Mogol's poetic choices, moreover, seem to draw on both crepuscular poetry (in the adoption of a colloquial, everyday language) and hermetic poetry (in the syntactic simplification and the cryptic elusiveness of meaning).

The types of rhyme employed by the king of Italian lyricists are equally varied; not just rhyming couplets, but also internal rhyme ("se tu confondi i mondi: amore e proprietà" from "Macchina del tempo"), inclusive rhyme ("Allontaniamoci verso/ il centro dell'universo" from "Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati"), and consonance ("L'universo che respira/ e sospinge la tua sfera/ e la luce che ti sfiora" from "Due mondi").

Despite its uncompromising nature, especially for fans who were probably expecting yet another hit from Battisti, "Anima latina" stayed on the charts for a full sixty-five weeks, even though to this day almost none of the songs on the tracklist are known to the general public.

References and further reading:

Renzo Stefanel – Anima latina (No Reply)

Gianfranco Salvatore – Mogol-Battisti, l'alchimia del verso cantato (Castelvecchi)

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27/12/2009