by Jori Diego Cherubini
Folk Theatres (Ianva)
I don’t know if the public used to reading these lines has ever listened to Ianva, a neofolk group with a martial pace able to refer now to Morricone’s soundtracks, now to big names such as De Andrè, Battisti, Mina and Gabriella Ferri, or to international crooners such as Scott Walker and Jacques Brel, always maintaining their own very personal and distinguishable canon. Without fear of contradiction, they are among the best Italian groups of our time. With them there is always a line-up, although not very dense, of faithful admirers. The same people, including us (eureka), who on the evening of November 4 – National Day of the Armed Forces – were among the few bystanders inside the ineffable Farnese Theatre in Parma. A spectacular setting, which even after the bombs of the Second World War preserves the sumptuous memory of the court life of the dukes of the same name. The occasion was golden, unmissable and perhaps unrepeatable: to admire the daring team performing – again, after a long time – live within the festival ‘Il rumore del lutto’ (now in its seventeenth edition) whose motto is “Live intensely, embrace every moment”. And in an instant the lights go down, and it’s night. And it’s immediately light. From the high stages lit up with magenta, the silhouettes of the musicians dressed in black appear. A few moments and you are immersed in the early-twentieth-century atmosphere of the concert, a show defined by Il Foglio: “The most aesthetic ever”. It starts with “Bearers of Fire” and “The Beauty of the Challenge”, taken from “The Hand of Glory” (2012). It continues with Renato Mercy Carpaneto and Stefania T. D’Alterio – souls in daring harmony – perfectly assisted by the musicians, a trumpet and a rhythmic session calibrated in a martial and proud rigour, up to the feat of Fiume told by «Disobbedisco!», the masterpiece of 2006. In between, songs such as “Muri d’assenzio”, “Luisa Ferida” (Autarchica Diva), “La Ballata dell’Ardito”, “L’Occidente”, and the conclusion entrusted to the (rhetorical) question “Where were you that day?”. Leaving the Monumental Complex of Pillotta we are electric and proud and ready to take the night in Parma, and perhaps also that of Fiume.
Punk Theatres (CCCP)
From Parma to Reggio the distance is short. So here we are to tell another historical event in the space of a few days and kilometres, inside an Italian-style theatre of unusual nineteenth-century splendour, the Municipale Romolo Valli in Reggio Emilia. We are in the front row at the Cccp’s Grand Punk Gala. And you can’t believe it. The audience, moved by the simple fact of being there, waits for the CCCP (Faithful to the Line), although no one knows exactly what to expect from the evening, concert or simple interview? After crossing the foyer we are cordially directed to the seats in the stalls. After a few minutes, the bull’s-eye illuminates the guitarist Massimo Zamboni – dressed in a tailcoat -; the notes of “Annarella” start from the guitar and Giovanni Lindo Ferretti and Annarella Giudici emerge from the audience arm in arm, as if time had never passed, in an unconditional eternalization of past and present: “Leave me here, leave me alone, leave me like this/ Don’t say a word that isn’t of love.” It is clear that this is not an interview but a concert, the dream then materializes and the rest is history, albeit very recent. At the end – great jubilation – there will be as many as ten pieces with a GLF in dust, where on all the proposed songs stands out an “Emilia Paranoica” played with two drums “as it should have been”. Fatur (artist of the people) and Annarella (praiseworthy soubrettes) ennoble the moment with inventions worthy of the best avant-garde theatre. There is also a “living room moment” where the musicians are interviewed by a trained Daria Bignardi. During the show, the alternating feelings are joy and disbelief. The end is entrusted to “Amandoti”: “What do you want to do with us is life/ It’s life, mine.” Curtain. Tears.
