Search - Francesco Guccini :: Radici

Perhaps the greatest living Italian poet

F. P. Barbieri | London UK | 03/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The sick vice of Italian songwriting is pretentiousness, the hope that by merely mixing together bundles of portentous words and images you will turn out to sound like the love-child of Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan. What sets Francesco Guccini quite aside is that he manages it; that this former high school teacher of Italian literature, who really does know poetry and writing, manages it with apparent effortless, writing the best lyrics I have read in any language, setting it to superb tunes, and singing it with a powerful, distinctively masculine voice. His triumph is the more remarkable in that his politics, as expressed in "La Locomotiva" here, are abominable, and his view of the world somewhat confused. "La Locomotiva" is nothing less than a hymn to terrorism; but try and not get swept along by the power of the images, the pace, the passion. Even more majestic is "La canzone dei mesi", in which he gives a lyrical description of the months of the year that shows his grounding in the poetry of his ancestors. What to say? All the songs are magnificent. They survive the test of being sung as he often does - sitting on a chair with an acoustic guitar and a glass of wine, and NO BACK-UP whatever. But there is a special place in my heart for the heart-stopping tale of an old man and a child, "Il Vecchio e il Bambino", and how they communicate or fail to. One of the greatest singers in the world, at the height of his powers."