The 40 years of “Crêuza de mä”. All songs: “Crêuza de mä”

The song “Creûza de mä” talks about a group of hungry and thirsty fishermen who, after having disembarked, head to Dria's (Andrea) house to “sciugà e bones”, drink and eat.

The attack is epic, with that voice even more shamanic than usual and an oblique cadence that discounts the pitch even on land: “Umbre de muri muri de mainé / dunde ne vegnì duve l'è ch'ané? / da 'n scitu duve a l'ûn-a a se mustra nûa / ea neutte a n'à puntou u cutellu ä gua” (“Shadows of faces faces of sailors / where do you come from, where are you going? / from a place where the moon shows itself naked / and the night has put a knife to our throats”). The risk is to find from Dria, “that a nu l'è mainà” (that is not a sailor) “people from Lûgan faces da mandillä” (people from Lugano, that is, from the lake and not from the sea, faces like cutpurses), “ qui che du luassu privilegiscan l'ä” (who prefer wing to sea bass) and “figge da famiggia udù de bun / che ti peu ammiàle senza u gundun” (“daughters of good families who smell good / that you can also look at them without condom”). The menu, however, is not bad and recalls Ligurian traditions: “Frittûa de pigneu, giancu de Purtufin / cervelle de bæ 'nt u meximu vin / lasagne de fiddià ai quattru tucchi / paciugu in ægruduse de lévre de cuppi” (“fried small fish, Portofino white wine, lamb brains cooked in the same wine / lasagne to be cut with four sauces / sweet and sour hare pie from the tiles”, which would be the cat).

The lyrical power, which harks back to Rimbaud's “Le bateau ivre” and would also be very popular with the Genoese Montale, who died three years earlier, explodes in the final verse: “E 'nt'a boat du vin ghe navighiemu 'nsc'i scheuggi / emigrants du rie cu'i cioi nti euggi / until a morning grows from puéilu rechéugge / frè of ganeuffeni and de ̀figge / bacan d'acorda marsa d'ægua e de sä / that a ne liga ea ne porta 'nte 'na creûza de mä” (“And in the boat of wine we will sail to the rocks / emigrants of the smile with nails stuck in their eyes / until the morning grows to the point of being able to collect it / brother of carnations and girls / master of the rope rotted by the water and the salt / that binds us and leads us to a path of the sea”). What sways the verses and closes the song is: “E anda umé umé e anda umé e anda ayo”, a surviving fragment of that Arabic imitation of the prototype proposed by Pagani. Meanwhile, along the “sea paths”, music takes new paths, moves away from pop and becomes a wave that sucks everything in.

Tomorrow we will write about “Jamin-a”

The text published here is taken, courtesy of the author Federico Pistone and the publisher Arcana, from the book “Tutto De André – The tale of 131 songs”. (C) Lit editions of Pietro D'Amore sas