Cesare Cremonini and his “Santa pennicanza”
Cesare Cremonini returns unexpectedly with a surprising song dedicated to Fiorello’s new broadcast with a swing rhythm, from the surreal and conceptual text, reexploring sounds that link Renato Carosone to Renzo Arbore, tradition with popular culture. The Bolognese singer-songwriter presented the song with an unprecedented performance on the roofs of the Rai studios in Via Asiago in Rome, as a guest on Fiorello’s radio program “La Pennicanza”.
“It’s an “Arbore” song – he says Cremonini – like the ones everyone knows about “Back all” and “Quelli della notte”. Songs born freely, which really reached everyone with simplicity and sharp ironydescribing an Italy that was changing. Dedicating a song to the return of the greatest Italian showman was for me an honor and a challenge, an experiment and an inspiration. I have always wanted to recover the tradition of Italian avant-garde theatre, from which extraordinary singer-songwriters such as Enzo Jannacci, Giorgio Gaber, Rino Gaetano and Dalla himself were born, who managed to link entertainment to popular culture. I believe the time has come, I feel it as a necessity, to recover and enhance that musical style that characterized one of the brightest eras of Italian entertainment culture. And this can only happen through the television and artistic genius of Fiorello who, with his return to the radio, inspired the song and brought me back to when I was a child. and I realized that everyone, really everyone, sang the same songs.”
The song pays homage to an Italy of other times, made of irony, lightness and everyday poetry. It recalls the refined and playful atmospheres of the swing school of southern Italy, which describe the pleasure of small breaks, transforming the “nap” into an entirely Italian poetic act. Fiorello underlined how “a song is born from the idea of a program”, transforming the moment into a creative experiment shared with Cremonini, between irony, rhythm and spontaneity. With “La Santa Pennicanza”, Cesare Cremonini once again confirms his versatility and a rare ability to mix musical passion and showmanship, irony and human warmth, exiting and re-entering the record radar with extreme freedom, without ever homogenizing himself but recovering the line of Italian music with clarity. “La Santa Pennicanza” is written with music and lyrics by Cesare Cremonini. The production is by Cremonini and Alessandro De Crescenzo. The song was recorded in the Fonoprint studios in Bologna together with a band: Daniele D’alessandro (Clarinet), Gabriele Polimeni (Trumpet), Federico Pierantoni (Trombone), Alessia Tondo (one of the most important voices on the Italian world music scene), Salvatore Cauteruccio (Accordion), Matteo (Sax), Ballo Balestri (bass), Andrea Fontana (drums), Alessandro de Crescenzo (producer and guitar).
