English Holiday: Paolo Conte and "Fuga all'Inglese"

I'm not exactly sure what today's song, Fuga all'Inglese, means. I took the lyrics in Italian and put it through Google Translate, and what came out leads me to believe that it is about a couple on a holiday or vacation in England. I'm going to go with that until someone who knows Italian tells me differently. And what is wrong with an English vacation? I would love to go on an English holiday. I have only been in England once, and that for only three days, just enough to get a very brief flavor of London. In fact, right now I would like to have a holiday anywhere. Given that the album that this song comes from is called Reveries, I believe that it paints a picture of an event in the past. What seems to be missing from my life right now is the opportunity to create those scenes that create reverie. You don't really get those scenes from an eight hour workday. You do get those kinds of scenes from a holiday somewhere, particularly somewhere exotic or even pastoral and outside of your daily norm.

The musician who brings this song to us is Paolo Conte, who is no stranger to painting these types of soundscapes. A singer, pianist, composer and lawyer, Conte was born in Asti, in the Piedmont region of Italy. He began his music career as a vibraphone player traveling in local and touring bands. He started writing songs early on in his career with his brother Giorgio but eventually began writing on his own. His star rose in the 60s and 70s as he was the main creative songwriter behind hits of other well-known Italian artists. His solo career commenced in 1974. His songs are known for being evocative of colorful and dreamy Italian and Mediterranean sounds. His music is often jazzy, reminiscent of South America and French singers, and filled with a wistful melancholy. His music has also been used in many movies. Fuga All'Inglese can be found on his 2003 album Reveries.

Italian Serenade: Paolo Conte and "Come Di"

It was not long after I had visited Italy, and spent some time with a German friend, Ellen, who was employed as an au pair in Rome. Sometime after I got home, I received a mix tape from her (yes, a cassette tape, I'm that old). She had put on the mix a bunch of Italian music - this was in the early 90s, I would guess. Two of the songs that I really liked were by a guy named Paolo Conte. Of course, the internet was not that well established yet, and there was not a lot of opportunity for me to find information on Paolo Conte. I had my two songs that I played a lot, and that was it.

Over time and moves to different cities I lost the cassette tape. While living in San Antonio, sometime in the late 90s, Megan and I went to see a band called 8½ Souvenirs that we heard was really good. They were playing in a little place near the San Antonio River. A a few songs caught my ear - one called Happy Feet, one called No Lo Visto and one called Come Di. Two of those songs, I later learned, were covers of Paolo Conte songs, and the other was very much in the spirit of Paolo Conte. But at the time I didn't put two and two together. It wasn't until I began to delve into music from around the world I reacquainted myself with Paolo Conte, and made the connection. Because of those 8½ Souvenirs songs, and I really liked the Paolo Conte ones, I was introduced to a new area of music.

So, who is this guy? Paolo Conte is an Italian singer, pianist, composer and lawyer. Born in Asti, in the Piedmont region of Italy, he began his music career as a vibraphone player traveling in local and touring bands. He started writing songs early on in his career with his brother Giorgio but eventually began writing all on his own. His star rose in the 60s and 70s as he was the main creative songwriter behind hits of other well-known artists Italian artists. His solo career commenced in 1974.

His songs are known for being evocative of colorful and dreamy Italian and Mediterranean sounds. His music is often jazzy, reminiscent of South America and French singers, and filled with a wistful melancholy. His music has been used in many movies, and today's song, Come Di, was used in the 2003 film I Am David. Come Di is from the 1986 album of the same same, and this version was videotaped live.

Cosmopolitan and Sophisticated: Italy's Mau Mau and Venus Nabalera

When I first heard Venus Nabalera, by the Italian group Mau Mau, I wasn't really very versed in world music. I believe that I started listening to what is commonly labeled as world music or global music as the result of a happy accident. I was living in New Orleans in the early 2000s, and my journalist wife was tasked to write some entries on a series exploring the places where New Orleans musicians had lived. I forget which musician, a trumpeter who lived in the early 1900s, she was writing about when we headed to the Bywater neighborhood to look at an address, but we made the acquaintance of the woman who lived in the house that he had lived in for a little while. The woman turned out to be the wife of Dan Storper, the man who founded Putumayo World Music. They had bought the house and were in the process of restoring it. She gave us three or four Putumayo CDs, and I believe one of them had Venus Nabalero on it.

I remember being surprised that 1) this was an Italian band and 2) that I liked it, along with the rest of the music she had given us. I shouldn't have been surprised. In the 1990s I had become turned on to Celtic music at Milwaukee's Irish Fest when I sat in the audience as a new group named Capercaille played and blew me away with their modern take on traditional Scottish/Celtic music. My naive idea of Italian music involved accordions and violins and probably some mixture of Dean Martin and Louis Prima ("When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie..." or "Buona Sera Senorita Buona Sera...") song by a guy in a checkered apron. So hearing a group like Mau Mau do a song that was vaguely reminiscent of Brazilian music I had heard by chance, but sounding so modern, made me rethink my stereotypes and preconceptions. I listened to that Putumayo album, and the others, over and over. For the first time in my life, I felt sophisticated - like I shouldn't be privy to this type of music but I was. I also felt cosmopolitan, and vaguely like I had discovered a secret nobody else knew about.  I still feel that way sometimes.

In the years since, whenever I hear a new group that really captures my fancy, I have that same feeling that Venus Nabalera and other new world songs give me for a fleeting moment.  There is nothing more satisfying when you feel  like you've discovered something.  And there is nothing more wonderful, after you've savored it, to share it with others in the hopes that they will find it just as amazing as you have.

So, here is Venus Nabalera by Mau Mau, one of the songs that started me on this world music adventure so many years ago.  Just a few words about Mau Mau.  They are a group that formed in Turin in 1991, and they have released six albums to date.  Their name, in the Piedmont region dialect, can mean "one who comes from afar."   The name also references the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya that challenged the British colonial rule.  Venus Nabalera is from their 2000 release Safari Beach.