Fabrizio De André (album)

Fabrizio De André
(L'indiano)
Studio album by Fabrizio De André
Released July 21, 1981
Genre Blues, pop
Length 40 min 02 s
Label Ricordi
Producer Mark Harris, Oscar Prudente
Fabrizio De André chronology
Rimini
(1978)		 Fabrizio De André
(L'indiano)
(1981)		 Crêuza de mä
(1984)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]

Fabrizio De André is an album released by Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André, released in 1981. The songs were written by Fabrizio De André and Massimo Bubola. It is also known as L'Indiano (The Indian) due to the picture of a Native American on the cover.[2][3] The picture is a painting by Frederic Remington named The Outlier. [4]. The title of the painting and its author are not credited on the cover - neither in the original pressing nor in any of the subsequent reprints of the album on CD or vinyl.

Overview and songs

The album is a comparison of two peoples, Sardinians and Native Americans. It opens with the sounds of gunshots and people shouting from a bison hunting party, recorded in Sardinia especially for the album but intended to represent a hunting scene by Native Americans. These sounds also reappear in other sections through the album (the people involved in the hunting party are not credited). Also, the songs "Fiume Sand Creek", "Hotel Supramonte" and "Franziska" start with piano/keyboards introductions, musically unrelated to the songs themselves.

  • "Quello che non ho" ("What I haven't got") is an ironical blues song, where De André describes himself as lacking the possessions, benefits and advantages typically associated with wealthy people or upper classes in general.
  • "Canto del servo pastore" ("Shepherd Servant's Song") is about a shepherd's idyllic lifestyle.
  • "Fiume Sand Creek" ("Sand Creek river") refers to the Sand Creek massacre in 1864.
  • "Ave Maria", a version of the Hail Mary prayer in Sardinian, was sung in a choral multi-tracked style by Connecticut-born keyboardist Mark Harris providing the higher vocals, and De André providing the lower ones. According to Harris's recollections within "L'anarchia" ["Anarchy"], the seventh DVD in the 2011 documentary series Dentro Faber ["Inside Faber"] about De André's life and work, the song was supposed to be sung by a group of tenores, a Sardinian polyphonic male choir, and Harris recorded a demo with his own voice to teach the song to the choir. However, when De André heard the demo, he was impressed by Harris's performance and told him: "You sing this." The final recording, with an instrumental arrangement inspired by Pink Floyd (particularly by their 1971 album Meddle), does indeed feature Harris's full-throated singing from the demo, which he jokingly referred to as "a highly unlikely vocal performance by an American singing a Sardinian song in Sardinian." Harris also explained that, although he is not really a Pink Floyd fan, he does own a copy of Meddle, and that he played it for De André during the sessions, in response to the latter's request to find unusual, weird sounds.
  • "Hotel Supramonte" refers to the kidnapping of De André and Dori Ghezzi in 1979 in the Supramonte area of Sardinia. De André sings about the event and its circumstances in a sweet, quiet style, without any traces of sadness or - for that matter - of anger.
  • "Franziska" is a Latin American-flavored song about a Spanish girl, a penniless unlucky suitor of hers, and a painter who, although nearly blind, is ln love with her and extremely jealous of everyone else.
  • "Se ti tagliassero a pezzetti" ("If Somebody Cut You into Little Pieces") is, unusually for De André, a straighforwardly sentimental love song. Its title, inspired by Nick Mason's tongue-in-cheek vocal phrase on Pink Floyd's "One of These Days", also from Meddle, is not meant to be understood literally, but just as ironically as Mason's utterance in Pink Floyd's experimental track. Indeed, the first two lines in De André's song are as follows: "If somebody cut you into little pieces / The wind would pick them all up and gather them."
  • "Verdi pascoli" ("Green Pastures") is a joyous, quasi-reggae song, including prominent keyboards, backing vocals and a short drum solo. Its lyrics, inspired by a book on Native American culture De André was reading at the time, are about a very idealized and non-religious representation of a happy afterlife, closer to Summerland than to the Christian vision of Heaven.

Track listing

Side A
  1. "Quello che non ho" – 5:51
  2. "Canto del servo pastore" – 3:13
  3. "Fiume Sand Creek" – 5:37
  4. "Ave Maria"[5] – 5:30
Side B
  1. "Hotel Supramonte" – 4:32
  2. "Franziska" – 5:30
  3. "Se ti tagliassero a pezzetti" – 5:00
  4. "Verdi pascoli" – 5:18

Personnel

References

  1. ↑ Allmusic review
  2. ↑ (in Italian) Silvia Sanna: "Fabrizio De André. Storie, memorie ed echi letterari". Effepi, 2009, page 26 - ISBN 978-88-6002-015-4
  3. ↑ The album cover
  4. ↑ Frederic Remington on ArtCyclopedia
  5. ↑ Based on Deus ti salvet Maria a Sardinian popular song; translation by Fabrizio De André and Albino Puddu
  6. ↑ (in Italian) Riccardo Bertoncelli: interview to Massimo Bubola in "Belin, sei sicuro? Storia e canzoni di Fabrizio De André", 1st ed. Giunti, 2003. p.106 - ISBN 978-88-09-02853-1
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