Osanna

Osanna are the leading group of the diverse Neapolitan scene that, in the early Italian Seventies, created an alternative way of understanding progressive music. Formed in 1970 from the union of musicians coming from Volti di Pietra and Città Frontale, the band was made up of singer and guitarist Lino Vairetti, guitarist Danilo Rustici (brother of Corrado of Cervello), bassist Lello Brandi and drummer Massimo Guarino. Joining them was saxophonist and flautist Elio D'Anna, who came from Showmen and was a disciple and admirer of David Jackson of Van Der Graaf Generator.

For several reasons, Osanna deserve special attention within the Italian prog scene: they were the first to enrich Italian pop-rock with a strong theatrical element, something that at the time, on the British scene, groups like Genesis or Arthur Brown's Crazy World were also doing, to name just a few. In doing so, they were by no means derivative — in fact, it was probably Genesis who altered their own stage presence and approach to live performance after encountering Osanna during their Italian tour in 1971. Their concerts in the early Seventies were a splendid fusion of music and theatrical spectacle that represented a unique chapter in the Italian underground scene; among their notable appearances were the Caracalla Festival (1971), the Viareggio Festival of Avant-Garde Music and New Trends (1971), and the Villa Pamphili Pop Festival (1972).

But setting aside the visual spectacle, one cannot help but note how strikingly original Osanna's music is. Combining Crimson-esque musical experiences, Fripp's mellotron, the twilight atmospheres of Van Der Graaf Generator, the colours of Genesis, and folk touches from Jethro Tull — all elements that developed in cultural contexts far removed from Osanna's own origins — with the folk tradition of Southern Italy was perhaps unimaginable in the early Seventies. The idea was, then, pioneering, marking the birth of an Italian prog-rock contaminated by ethnic-Mediterranean sounds, with flavours and scents light-years away from cold England, culminating in "Palepoli" as the endpoint of a journey that began in 1971 with "L'uomo". But even this doesn't fully explain the Osanna phenomenon. Despite the complexity of the sounds and influences far removed from tradition, despite the ambition to draw on the more "cultured" side of British pop — closer to a kind of cultural "elite" far from mass tastes — Osanna always tried to avoid that excessively intellectual approach that places the musician on a pedestal unreachable by the listener. This is an element typical of a certain kind of progressive rock, played by a musician so technical, so masterful with their instrument, as to take on almost "divine" connotations. Osanna's music is far removed from all of this; besides being Mediterranean, it could even be called popular, since its lyrics and settings celebrate the most sincere, humble and authentic aspects of the Neapolitan people.

"Palepoli" is also this: a sincere and nostalgic hymn to a society about to be supplanted by the "new" man described by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Man as the offspring of modern capitalist society's hedonism, by now detached from the very concept of society, transformed into a single individualist atom in exclusive pursuit of his own personal pleasure. We might call him the lonely man, without community, who sees self-fulfilment only in his own bloated ego.

"Palepoli" is the description of the ideal city, the only place where man can truly be happy, the place where the "anthropological mutation" described by Pasolini has not yet occurred. A city where man is still man, where his virtues are not yet measured in money, a human being not yet transformed into a mere "consumer" by the new prevailing ideology.

Osanna's progressive rock thus looks to the past. The same genre that in other contexts had been a futuristic impulse, an attempt to push beyond the limits of one's own present, becomes with Osanna a nostalgic and resigned memory of an era now vanished, perhaps one that never even existed. In this way, Osanna manage to unite innovation and tradition: the music is innovative, but the lyrics tell of a return to old values still alive in an ancient, imaginary city where friendship, equality and respect for others have not been lost.

The choice of format is typical of the golden age of international progressive rock: two long suites, one for each side of the vinyl — "Oro caldo" and "Animale senza respiro" — with a very brief interlude, "Stanza città", in between. "Oro caldo" (eighteen minutes) is marked by a constant alternation of styles and rhythms; it initially gives the immediate impression of being in a Neapolitan market, before moving through Crimson-esque passages, melodic spaces, bluesy interludes with a superb Elio D'Anna switching between flute and saxophone, right up to moments reminiscent of Wakeman's keyboard work. Osanna manage to play virtually everything without ever faltering. Nothing like it had ever been heard in Italy.

After a brief interlude ("Stanza città") we arrive at the second suite, "Animale senza respiro" (21 minutes). Here the influence of early King Crimson is more evident, but the whole piece is an ambitious and complex collage of jazz-rock, unexpected glimpses of electronic experimentation, acoustic moments, poetic concessions and furious episodes veering between blues and hard rock. Within this richly varied context, Osanna depict the breathless animal. He stands in total opposition to the ideal man who inhabits the imaginary city of Palepoli — he is man fully integrated into consumer society, concerned only with his own personal gain.

A great hymn to modernity (in its music) and, at the same time, to hopeless nostalgia (in its lyrics), "Palepoli" remains an unmatched chapter in Italian and European progressive rock, one that rightfully places Osanna on an imaginary podium alongside Pfm and Banco as one of the three most representative historic groups of Italian prog.

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10/04/2016