Lucio Battisti

In the early Seventies, Lucio Battisti and Mogol had already redefined the very concept of Italian pop song. Their songwriting, capable of blending melodic immediacy, harmonic ambition and an everyday yet intensely evocative vocabulary, had produced a string of hits that became permanent fixtures of the national repertoire: from "Mi ritorni in mente" to "Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara", from "Emozioni" to "I giardini di marzo". Thanks to albums like "Il mio canto libero" and "Il nostro caro angelo", Battisti was no longer just a formidable hitmaker, but had elevated the Italian song into a sophisticated musical form, without sacrificing its impact on the public.
Yet just as that model seemed perfectly consolidated, Battisti felt the need to move away from it. His curiosity had never been that of a mere performer tied to a winning formula: his work as composer and arranger was a constant search for new timbres, new rhythmic architectures, new ways of using the voice. The journey he took with Mogol through Latin America, above all Brazil and Argentina, proved decisive in this respect. It wasn't a matter of importing some generic exotic veneer into Italy, but of absorbing a different relationship between music, body, rhythm and sonic environment: percussion, collective chanting, Brazilian pulse, Mediterranean warmth and a freer conception of song form. Out of this came what would go down as Lucio Battisti's "prog album".

Released in December 1974, "Anima latina" grew out of this broadening of horizons and stands as one of the most radical breaks in Battisti's entire discography. Coming off two enormously successful albums, Lucio Battisti chooses here to challenge the nationally beloved, populist image that press and public had built around him. The linear structures, the readily memorable choruses and the centrality of melody almost entirely disappear; in their place come fragmented tracks, full of instrumental detours, shifting moods, suspensions and returns.
The result could be described as a form of Mediterranean progressive: an encounter between Italian song, South American influences, jazz-rock, funk, electronic experimentation and certain構造s of British prog. It's not an album comparable to the work of the great Italian progressive bands of the era, but it shares with that movement the will to push pop language beyond its usual boundaries. Battisti treats synthesizers, horns, percussion, flutes, vibraphone and treated vocals as elements of a shifting sonic palette, relying on a large and ever-changing pool of musicians: among others, Bob Callero and Ares Tavolazzi on bass, Gianni Dell'Aglio, Franco Lo Previte and Karl Potter on percussion, Claudio Maioli on keyboards and Claudio Pascoli on horns, with choral contributions from Mario Lavezzi and Alberto Radius.

"Abbracciala abbracciali abbracciati" is already a statement of intent: it opens in a rarefied way, then unfolds into trumpets, funk bass, Latin percussion, electronics and sudden instrumental surges. "Due mondi", sung with Mara Cubeddu, instead builds a kind of warped, visionary flamenco, while "Gli uomini celesti" brings the Brazilian legacy to the fore, weaving together samba, synthesizers and a Battisti vocal made distant by studio effects. "Anonimo" alternates electronic landscapes with a pastoral dimension, letting bass, flute, drums and vibraphone turn the track into a long sonic drift. In the finale, the theme of "I giardini di marzo" resurfaces, as if in a distorted, brass-band memory: a gesture that makes clear how the new Battisti wasn't disowning his past, but subjecting it to a metamorphosis.
The title track, "Anima latina", is the emotional and musical core of the album. Its opening, built on the interplay of piano, acoustic guitar, synthesizer and percussion, sets up a fragile, oblique vocal, worlds away from the emphasis of a pop singer. The composition then gradually dissolves into a liberating, almost carioca-style dance. "Macchina del tempo", on the other hand, is perhaps the toughest track: it piles up melodic lines, constantly shifts tempo and disorients the listener, taking Battisti as far as possible from the straightforwardness of "La canzone del sole".

Even Mogol, often dismissed offhandedly as a mere sentimental lyricist, delivers on "Anima Latina" one of his boldest efforts. The lyrics keep love, desire and the couple's relationship as central themes, but approach them through more allusive and sensual imagery. Eroticism, adolescence, possession, distance and physical discovery are evoked through elliptical writing, made of broken phrases, internal rhymes and associations that aren't always immediately decipherable. It's a language that abandons traditional narrative to chase the musical flow of the compositions.
On release, "Anima latina" produced no singles comparable to Battisti's great classics and left part of the audience puzzled, yet it still stayed on the charts for sixty-five weeks. Over time it has become one of the most highly regarded works by the musician from Poggio Bustone, precisely because of its uncompromising nature: not an experimental record built to chase the trends of the day, but the outcome of a personal and deeply Italian quest.

After that leap forward, Battisti never really looked back. In the second half of the decade he would keep transforming his songwriting: the funk and disco pulse of "Ancora tu", the rhythmic solutions of "La batteria, il contrabbasso, eccetera", the pop modernity of "Una donna per amico" and the more unsettled tone of "Una giornata uggiosa" all testify to a curiosity that stayed intact even as the sound became more accessible again. The end of his partnership with Mogol in 1980 would open an even more disorienting chapter. With Pasquale Panella, Battisti abandoned the traditional song form for good, building within the so-called "white albums" a universe of abstract lyrics, synthetic rhythms, bare-bones arrangements and increasingly elusive melodies. From "Don Giovanni" all the way to "Hegel", that phase would push the lesson of "Anima latina" to its extreme: the freedom to keep shedding his skin, even at the cost of losing part of his audience.

(Contributions by Salvatore Setola)

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02/09/2026