Piero Umiliani

"They think they're happy, that they've discovered love. But all they've discovered is sex." Filtered through the prudish lens of Italy at the time, blonde (and thoroughly naked) Swedish valkyries burst onto national screens in 1968. Rated for adults only, no less.

The device was the "mondo movie", a kind of outlandish docu-film fashionable in those years, aimed at documenting (or, more often, inventing) international customs and habits through a sensationalism straddling the shocking and the salacious. Luigi Scattini's "Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso" didn't shy away from the clichés of the genre kicked off by "Mondo Cane" (1962), though compared to Jacopetti's founding film it added a touch of disenchantment and irony that the Turin-born director had already applied to his "Sexy Magico", in which the horrifying tribal extravagances gave way to an approach closer to everyday life in Western society.

With a copy of the book of the same name by Corriere della Sera journalist Enrico Altavilla in his pocket, Scattini set off on an investigative journey through 1960s Sweden, an outpost of progress and sexual emancipation, where girls have relationships as precocious as they are casual, and where prosperity conceals an existential boredom that drives people to drug use or even the infamous suicides (one of the oldest clichés about Scandinavian peoples). Hence the double-edged portrait, Paradiso-Inferno, which was far from welcomed by the Swedish authorities of the time - so much so that the production committed to never releasing it in that market. Fate, however, had the film end up airing on Swedish national TV on Christmas Eve of all nights (!), triggering a diplomatic incident with Stockholm, which banned the director from the country for years.

In Italy, on the other hand, the film was a resounding success, grossing nearly a billion and a half lire despite the age restriction and the critics' condemnation - who were probably more willing to stomach the bigoted scolding than the racy scenes or the deeply politically incorrect quips of narrator Enrico Maria Salerno (such as: "Black, as we know, goes well with everything", accompanying the entrance of four Black men to the beat of pounding drums).

A Vermouth-fuelled trip

But while the film, for all its curious visionary streak, feels terribly dated, its soundtrack turns out to be as forward-looking as Sweden itself was compared to the little Italy of the era. And the credit is entirely down to its creator: Piero Umiliani, one of the greatest (and most underrated) geniuses of Italian soundtrack music.

The partnership between Scattini and the Florentine maestro was an ironclad one, already tested on two previous outings ("Due marines e un generale" and "Duello nel mondo") and destined to continue throughout the Turin director's filmography. Often far-from-memorable works, but as we know, genre films of the era could always count on extraordinary musical contributions. What inspired Umiliani on "Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso" was the variety of situations depicted in the film, which let him range freely from pop to bossa nova, from funk to exotica and easy listening, blending it all with his own distinctive jazz sensibility. The result is a landmark soundtrack that anticipates decades of lounge music - including its later reworkings in trip-hop, jungle and drum'n'bass guise - laying the groundwork for an entire musical saga.

To the 14 tracks on the original LP released by Omicron in 1968, all the other pieces featured in the film have since been added, now fully collected in the valuable DigiBeat reissue, bringing to light a multicoloured prism of 60s sounds and moods, a dizzying cocktail party where every sip of Vermouth (or Martini) comes with an extra dash of estrangement. Because this is truly a mental journey courtesy of Umiliani, a gentle orgy of topless mermaids and dazed hippies, elusive models dancing the shake, and midsummer dreams. A sweet psychedelic hallucination somewhere between the neon lights of Stockholm and the beach at Ipanema. And the trip isn't just a figure of speech: just drop into the 2'27'' of "Sequenza psichedelica" or the following "Violenza" and "Fotomodelle" to get an idea.

After all, it's just a tired cliché to think that easy listening and lounge music (the so-called "white man's blues") only serve to smooth things over, reassure, relax - perhaps as background music for some jet-set dinner party or a joyride in the coupé of some seasoned playboy. As maestro Bacharach teaches us, behind the most hummable of choruses or the most velvety of organ beds there can lurk a sudden orchestral crescendo or a ravishing surge of violins capable of carving out boundless depths of melancholy.

From Stockholm to the Archipelago

"Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso" is thus a Babel of sounds and moods, within which, however, one can identify a central theme: that of the opening "You Tried To Warn Me", a sumptuous orchestral melody dominated by the sweetly jazzy voice of Lydia McDonald, later reprised with a more eccentric arrangement and tighter rhythm in "Stoccolma My Dear" (a fine dialogue between Antonello Vannucchi's Hammond organ and the twang of Carlo Pes's guitar, with the acrobatic vocals of I Cantori Moderni di Alessandro e Giulia Alessandroni), then on clavinet played by Umiliani himself in "Notte di mezza estate" (a sort of baroque-bossa embellished by the trills of soprano Edda Dell'Orso) and in a more jazz-inflected form in "La signora cameriera", with Alessandroni's whistling, destined to become immortal - like Dell'Orso herself - thanks to Morricone's spaghetti-western saga.

Another recurring theme is the airy "Solitudine", already included on the original LP in 4 arrangements (for string orchestra; in a slow-jazz vein; for the choir of I Cantori Moderni; and finally in lullaby form as "Sleep Now Little One", with words written and sung by McDonald), to which is now added the previously unreleased - and even more poignant - version featuring Gato Barbieri on tenor sax. The legendary Argentine saxophonist appears in two other tracks, likewise unreleased for a long time: "Free In Minore" - a sequence of tonal variations and high-register notes, accompanied solely by Giovanni Tommaso's double bass - and the sensual "Piano Bossa Nova", which floats lightly over the dancing cadences of Umiliani's piano.

When things heat up in the middle of "Le ragazze dell'Arcipelago" - depicted bare on the Swedish cliffs on the cover - Umiliani too steps on the gas, opening up to the big band and unleashing the full orchestral power of his exotica-lounge sound. But it's an exception, since all the other arrangements rest solely on the Marc 4 quartet (alongside Vannucchi and Pes, Maurizio Majorana on bass and Roberto Podio on drums). It's up to them and I Cantori Moderni to perform tracks like "Fotomodelle", "L'uomo integrato" and "Topless party" (which reprise the theme of "Le ragazze dell'arcipelago"), "Essere donna" - set to a swing beat, complete with finger snaps and vocalizing from the Alessandronis and Dell'Orso - "Sequenza psichedelica", "Violenza", "Nel cosmo" (a bold experiment in alien proto-electronica), "Eva svedese" - with a Hammond solo and funk groove - the virtuosic "Hippies #1 e #2", "Organo e chitarroni" and "Beer, Vermouth e Gin": all tracks that juggle beat/shake influences with jazz-pop execution.

Viva la sauna svedese

A chapter of its own is deserved by the story of the famous “Mah-nà mah-nà”, added almost as a joke and unexpectedly turned into the record's true hit. There was still some tape left over for the (s)cult scene of Swedish girls stepping out of an 80-degree sauna wearing nothing but their own sweat, to roll around in the snow. Umiliani tries improvising a breezy theme on piano, barely three notes. The Mac 4 fall in behind him, and Alessandroni comes up with a silly little tune, singing in a guttural, cartoonish voice. It's ironically titled “Viva la sauna svedese” and looks like a mere divertissement. Instead, it's a triumph.

Initially left off the original LP, the track resurfaces in the US edition, where the label insists it also serve as the lead single, pressing it onto a 45. All it needs is a snappier title, so the catchiest possible rendering is settled on: “Mah-nà mah-nà”. It takes just a few radio spins to spark absolute pandemonium: hundreds of listeners jam FM stations' switchboards asking for the title of the song. The track quickly rises to the status of a universal nonsense earworm, perfect for comedy sketches, jingles, commercials. It even charts. Until, on the evening of November 27, 1969, it ends up in the mouth of one of the Muppets, actually named Mahna Mahna. From that point on, everlasting fame follows, through covers, reworkings and tributes of every kind. On the album, the song is revisited with a Brazilian arrangement as “Samba Mah Na”.

The DigiBeat edition will also include two previously unreleased tracks, variations on the main theme: the hypnotic “Viaggio nell'inconscio”, featuring the Marc 4 and Dell'Orso's vocals, and “Contestazione”, set to a shake rhythm, with Pes's fuzz guitar up front.

Visionary, disorienting, yet remarkably cohesive, “Svezia, Inferno e Paradiso” stands as Piero Umiliani's definitive lounge monolith, the most fascinating testament to his genius as a composer and arranger, but also as a daring musician: on the record, besides playing piano and clavinet, he experiments with a kind of homemade string synthesizer, built from a 16-track Ampex recorder fitted with its own keyboard. “The violins were recorded on each channel,” Umiliani would later recall. “It was a brand-new instrument and I'd called it Sarchiapone” (after the imaginary animal created by Walter Chiari in a famous TV sketch).

Countless attempts at imitation would follow, with varying degrees of success, while Umiliani never gave up his omnivorous music-lover's quest, even as he fought a stroke, until his death in 2001. But every time the sounds of this boundless Swedish Babylon spin on the stereo again, it's impossible not to be captivated. Prisoners of Stockholm syndrome, from here to eternity.

Contributions by Gianmarco Diana (ColonneSonore.net)

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25/02/2018