Enzo Jannacci

Doctor, musician, songwriter, TV personality, actor: Enzo Jannacci always found in the values of the Resistance and anti-fascism the decisive key to his artistic experiences, developing a knack for irreverence that would find few equals in the Italian music scene. After graduating in harmony from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, as a teenager he discovered jazz, becoming passionate about the exploits of Errol Garner, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Horace Silver and Bud Powell. Swept up, like so many others, by rock 'n' roll, from the mid-1950s he began a close friendship with Giorgio Gaber. Split between collaborations of varying prestige, Jannacci first played piano for Sergio Endrigo, then within an ensemble called the "Rock Boys", which included - alongside the aforementioned Gaber - the irrepressible "molleggiato" Adriano Celentano.

These were years of great cultural and economic ferment for Italy, while everything arriving from the United States took on mythical proportions. Elvis Presley impersonators were everywhere, but just as quickly the Sixties arrived and rapidly changed the historical landscape. Jannacci, meanwhile, decided to go solo. 1961 marked the start of his solo career, and the 45s of that period sealed his partnership with Nanni Ricordi.

But another event was about to upend the singer-songwriter's plans: the iridescent, complex intelligence of Dario Fo entered Jannacci's life, and the two quickly struck up a close friendship steeped in nonsense that would last virtually their whole lives. At the same time, at Via Monte Rosa 84, the Intra's Derby Club was born - a project that would leave deep marks on Milan's intelligentsia. Conceived by Enrico Intra, it initially took the shape of a jazz club, but it would soon unleash its true ambitions as a kind of open-air vernacular theatre, a place that became a cornerstone of a cultural innovation centred on Milan and its distinctive character. Among the ranks of this club appeared some of Jannacci's most loyal collaborators, including journalist Beppe Viola and the comic duo Cochi e Renato.

In April 1963, Jannacci also found a place on the airwaves, thanks to a sudden phone call from Mike Bongiorno: the show was called "La fiera dei sogni", a prime-time variety show broadcast by the newly launched Rai 2. It was a golden opportunity to get noticed by the public, and Jannacci seized the moment, singing his first manifesto song, "El portava i scarp de tennis".

By now the time had come to strengthen his songbook, and it would fall to "La Milano di Enzo Jannacci" (1964) to profitably channel all the energies of the period. The record is a neorealist portrait made up of twelve songs, capable of viscerally dissecting some of the songwriter's dearest themes: the precariousness of existence ("Quella cosa in Lombardia"), the revenge of society's outcasts ("El portav i scarp de tennis") and the manifold shades of love ("Per un basin") all become shadows to sway to, and perhaps to be moved by in private, between a glass of wine and a ride on a Lambretta. The album was produced by Nanni Ricordi, with arrangements by the renowned Fiorenzo Carpi.

If the record can be considered a theatrical pièce in every sense, that's also thanks to Jannacci's voice: his vocal timbre ranges from melodramatic peaks to more festive, easygoing registers, occasionally even frantic ones, but always interpreted authentically, never overdone.

The decade continued between theatre and now-forgotten TV appearances: 1965 saw him collaborate with the "animated" genius Bruno Bozzetto, for whom he composed electrifying TV theme tunes adapted for the mini-spots of the iconic "Carosello".

Jannacci entered the Seventies at the peak of his personal success as a singer-songwriter: his 1968 album "Vengo anch'io. No, tu no" reached number one on the charts on two separate occasions, at a time when the charts were still compiled monthly rather than weekly. The title track, written with Dario Fo and Fiorenzo Fiorentini, features layers of guitars with a psychedelic effect kept low in the mix; thanks to its flamboyant delivery and its amusing, seemingly carefree lyrics, it became a hit that also worked well for TV ad spots.

However, disappointment and disillusionment with a frivolous scene incapable of fully appreciating the depth of his songwriting led a piqued Jannacci to withdraw from the music world for a while. The break wasn't total, but it did mean an eclipse from the charts, during which he rekindled his passion for medicine and discovered a vocation for acting, immortalized above all in the film "L'udienza" by Marco Ferreri, a surreal Vatican-set transposition of Kafka's "The Castle".

Midway through the decade, the desire to seriously return to his own material resurfaced: his trusted friend Nanni Ricordi founded with him the independent label L'Ultima Spiaggia, an ironically named vehicle for what would become his definitive artistic statement.

"Quelli che..." came out in March 1975 and marked the first time Jannacci alternated proper songs with short sketches. As well as proving hilarious moments in their own right, these spoken pieces captured on record, more markedly than before, the cabaret and theatre-song vein of which Jannacci was one of the most important Italian exponents, alongside his friend and collaborator Giorgio Gaber.

The album opens with a spoken track titled "La televisiun", an explicit denunciation of small-screen culture and the show business tied to the television industry. The opening piece was written the previous year with Beppe Viola, a great friend and often uncredited collaborator on his lyrics, and it customarily opened his live shows from that period. A few years later, during the filming of a concert in Verona, Rai decided to censor the line "La televisione forte, senza paura, che ti riduce a un coglione" ("Television, bold, unafraid, that reduces you to an idiot"), covering the songwriter's impassioned spoken words with bursts of pre-recorded applause and assorted background noise (note). A case of the snake eating its own tail, one might say.

"Vincenzina e la fabbrica" is one of the key tracks on the record and in the Milanese songwriter's entire body of work. Originally composed as part of the soundtrack to the classic film "Romanzo popolare" and released in 1974, on this album it actually undergoes a substantial reworking in its arrangement. The original blend of singer-songwriter folk and bossa nova, pleasant as it was, sounds like little more than a demo when compared to this later reinterpretation. The introduction brushes up against progressive rock and fusion territory, in a kind of small jam session resting on a suspended harmony from the Fender Rhodes played by Jannacci himself, over which an acoustic guitar with a flamenco flavour and a drum kit built mainly around hi-hat and cymbals, with sporadic snare and tom fills, can trade virtuosic phrases. After just under a minute, everything fades and, in the silence, the songwriter's frail but heartfelt voice comes in, revealing a chord progression that is anything but ordinary, closer to jazz than to the classic Italian singer-songwriter tradition (think in particular of the passages that exploit seventh and flat-ninth tensions to resolve the harmonic phrases at the end of each verse), while the arrangement of the introduction follows the same blueprint through to the closing notes.

The lyrical content is tragic and hazy, while the giant shoes printed across the middle of the cover deflate to the point where they could be worn by any one of us. The song rises to the status of a universal metaphor for human precariousness, but also stands as a warning both romantic and nihilistic about the fleetingness/volatility of time. Vincenzina's face emerges through a wonderful digression between the present ("'sto Rivera che non gioca più" - "this Rivera who doesn't play anymore") and the remembered image of the champion who, his best days behind him, has definitively hung up his boots. The champion thus turns into a dream, yet remains indelible, like a scar etched into the skin.

This and other songs are the perfect demonstration of the technical calibre of the band that took part in the album's recording sessions: Tullio De Piscopo on drums and Bruno De Filippi, a historic link between jazz and rock in Italy, on guitar were the main collaborators, capable of giving shape to - and reining in - Enzo Jannacci's tendency to endlessly rewrite his own material.

The typical sound of Italian rock singer-songwriters of the Seventies emerges in tracks like "Il monumento", where a lead synth sound stands out, almost like a synthesized imitation of an accordion, alongside a dynamic, massive rhythm section, and low piano notes that add density to the low end of the sonic spectrum.

Echoes of the Sixties surface in numbers such as "L'arcobaleno", a samba in which Silvia Annichiarico and Paola Orlandi - backing vocalists elsewhere on the album - are "promoted" to lead singers, lending it a lounge atmosphere reminiscent of a Piero Umiliani soundtrack, and "9 di sera", a cover of "A televisāo" by bossa nova veteran Chico Buarque.

Closer to blue-eyed soul territory is "El marognero". It's essentially a jam marked by a relentless rhythm section and criss-crossed by frequent horn interjections, with Jannacci offering his own version of the guttural vocal style typical of many African-American southern soul singers - deliberately caricatured and grotesque, not least given his own technical limitations as a vocalist.

"Il bonzo" is another pivotal track: written by Cochi and Dario Fo and first recorded in 1974 on Cochi and Renato's album "E la vita, la vita", it turns out to be a natural vehicle for Jannacci's own artistic sensibility. The rhythmic feel, with the snare hit on the backbeat borrowed from countless classic country and soul records, and the restraint of the arrangement, create an insistent forward drive - the perfect Italian answer to the satirical beat rock that made the fortune of France's Jacques Dutronc (think in particular of tracks like "Et moi, et moi, et moi"). The lyrics paint, with a heavy dose of grotesque black humour ("M'han detto che un bonzo"... "si è cosparso di benzina"... "Perché vuole la libertà/ la libertà de brusà/ de brusà per pudè campá" - "They told me a monk"... "doused himself in petrol"... "Because he wants freedom/ the freedom to burn/ to burn in order to live"), the precarious and oppressive conditions endured by the common man, crushed by working and social dynamics he cannot cope with. The verses, however, offer no absolution, and don't spare harsh blows aimed at the selfishness that all too often leads people to look out only for their own personal gain.

"El me indiriss" is an intense ballad sung in Milanese dialect, built from sequences of childhood flashbacks conjured by spare, delicate guitar chords; the lyrics are vivid, the gestures genuine and moving. It's a portrait of a poor Milan, one whose spirit of solidarity is, for the songwriter, a source of both great pride and natural emotion.

Finally, it's worth dwelling on the song that opens the album and gives it its title. Riding a slightly swung rhythm - yet another sign of the songwriter's jazz background - "Quelli che..." draws its strength from an endlessly suspended chord progression, familiar enough not to undermine its catchiness, yet never so predictable as to lose its interest even after countless listens. The delicate bed of organ, the frequent drum fills, the bluesy electric guitar interjections, the sax phrases drenched in a pronounced delay effect: all provide the ideal foundation for this sprawling example of song-as-theatre. The lyrics become a jumble of quotations, a warning sign of the mass conformism embedded - and thriving - in Italian and Western society tout court. For the song's lyrical construction, Jannacci drew inspiration from a poem by Jacques Prévert titled, fittingly, "Ceux Qui..."; like Jannacci and Viola's verses, the French poet's lines depict squalid, grotesque situations reflecting the deadly sins of contemporary society. "Quelli che..." has an original text, an abrasive style of writing, constantly reworked during live performances. A recursive structure, deliberately left open, ready to undergo sudden variations and additions, yet one that, across the many versions released over the years, has never lost an ounce of its ruthless intelligence.

Needless to say, the song was quickly banned by Rai, while it became a generational anthem for the devoted listeners of the emerging free radio stations.

Despite its status as a classic not just of the song itself but of Italian culture tout court, at the time of its release "Quelli che..." met with little public success, failing even to crack the top thirty-five on the Tv, Sorrisi e Canzoni chart. Perhaps this was the price to pay for turning its back on lighter entertainment, or perhaps the material was simply too complex to win immediate favor; Jannacci would have to wait until the 1980s before climbing back up the charts, thanks to the album "Ci vuole orecchio".

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04/06/2023