Love, politics, Mahmood and Jovanotti in Carmen Consoli’s album
Four years after “I wanted to be a rock star” Carmen Consoli returns with a record project of unpublished songs, in three chapters: the first, “Amuri Luci”, comes out on Friday 3 October and marks the start of a trilogy that will explore different souls of his music: pop-rock and songwriting Mediterranean roots. The albums come out for Warner Music through his Narcissus Records: it is the first collaboration of the singer with Major, who had always affected universal from the beginning.
“Amuri Luci” is a record almost entirely in Sicilian – that Carmen has often used in his music – but enriched with Arabic, Latin and Greek. It is a personal and political album, because – as they said in the 70s – the staff is political. Not surprisingly, the presentation to the press that took place this morning in Milan was largely dedicated by Carmen Consoli to discuss topical issues: “It is a beautiful thing that people take in the square,” he said about the spontaneous manifestations of last night and this morning in support of the boats of boats abroad by the Israeli army in the international waters off the coast of Gaza. “Yesterday I would have had to go to bed early to make me beautiful for this meeting and instead I was standing until 4,” he said.
Private and political, Italian and Sicilian
The political dimension is already present on the disc, since “Amuri Luci”, the song that gives the title to the album and which is dedicated to Peppino and Giovanni Impastato. Consoli says: “These are two nouns without any conjunction: love, authentic, profound, true, is an extrasocial value on which governments do not invest much. It does not generate any type of profit and light is knowledge, truth, beauty. This is also not really a priority in the agenda of our rulers”.
Consoli explained that the Sicilian is the language that allows her to express the most critical and social part of her writing: “In Italian I was natural for me to tell feelings and introspection, almost whispering; the Sicilian instead brings out my blues side, because it is the language of earth, born to scream the discomfort”. In popular songs, he recalls, there were no microphones: “We had to make himself heard in the squares, almost shouting, and it is what happens today when I sing in Sicilian: it becomes a scream of disappointment”.
For consuls politics is not a militancy of particular, but daily testimony: “I am part of a community, of an polis, and I try to be useful by living in the most virtuous way possible, putting the utmost commitment in my work. This is already a political act”. He also adds a concrete example: “If I had a boat I would start to bring help to Gaza, I would take more time of the Italian government that has the means but does not act, but I would do it the same. But as my friend Elisa says, you have to hurry because people are dying. I believe that each one has to act with what they have, in the time they have. And to be clear: I am with the people of Israel, with what they are going on. Despite they are associated with Zionism “.
Return to the origins
The album intertwines mythology, history and legends with the present: the memory of Peppino Impastato, the poignant poetry of Ibn Hamdis-Sicilian-Arab poet of the exiled 11th century-, the words of the young Ignazio Buttitta Soldato, the female voices of Nina da Messina and graceful box. “I like languages and I like to search for the roots, investigate our origins from the cultural DNA. If then these songs do not pass on the radio, I will do a reason, but it is a job that makes me happy. I do this search to put together the voices over the centuries and create connections that have nothing to do with satellite and technological connections, but with a deep feeling”.
Guests and music recorded live
Three collaborations: Mahmood lends his voice to “The land of Hamdis”, where the Arab poetry of the 11th century is intertwined with the contemporary dramas of migration: “I wanted there to be some colleague to support me. On this song I thought of Mahmood and he was very passionate. Hearing a boy from Milan who sings in Sicilian was very beautiful, he has a great precision. A God, who is not the Christian or Muslim one, but is the god money, “he says.
Jovanotti appears in “Hatrru cu Tia”, a powerful hymn to the rebellion written by Buttitta and enriched by a spoken text of Lorenzo: “It is exciting the way in which he lent himself to make this madness, with humility, talent and education, writing this exhortation to take themselves in the punch”.
Finally, Leonardo Sgroi, a young tenor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, duet with consuls in “what you are thirsty”, evoking the poetic exchange between Nina da Messina and Dante da Maiano.
Musically, Consoli has built a sound landscape that in certain moments recalls the Italian World Music of De André and Pagani, with traditional and contemporary instruments. The disc, says, was recorded in 70%directly: “I found a classic guitar that belonged to my trisavola and I started writing with that. I brought the songs to my band and we shared these days on the slopes of the Etna, gaining gaining incomprehensively – cooked my mother … – and arranged the songs together, playing them. We only added a few things after this first process.”
“Amuri Luci” will be available digitally from 3 October, in a limited edition of the CD-book from 17 October (with texts and tales of the author) and in vinyl for Christmas.
For the next chapters of the trilogy it will be necessary to wait at least 2026: “The union of the three souls of the records will be literary work and the research on the language through the myth of Galatea and the cyclope in love that becomes human, and then returns to its nature. The first album tells love, while the second the tragedy: Polyphemus represents the man of power who thinks he can take everything with strength and in the second disc, Finally, Galatea is in love.
