Urgent Vinicius. War, populism and hope in Capossela’s new album

Urgency sf – 1. Situation that requires immediate and rapid interventions: the patient was hospitalized in u. to the hospital; call d’u. the firefighters.

“I don’t think I’ve ever written such explicit songs. They concern a world in disorder, undergoing radical change”. A world on fire or sick, which must be rushed to hospital. While around there are always new “emergencies”, often artificial, the voice of Vinicio Capossela – crank singer-songwriter, re-troubadour of ballads and bestiaries – is a slap, a breath of fresh air, a stick stuck in the gear. He invites you to slow down, to jump off the carousel. It indicates more pressing problems, deeper urgencies. It’s a political record, which involves risks. “Actually – he replies – even the previous ones Bestiary of love And Ballads for men and beasts they had contemporary references, but declassified through medieval allegories. This time it’s all out of metaphor “.

It’s strange to see him appear, with his ever-present fiddler cap and anarchist bow, on the glass of a Zoom call instead of among the stones of an amphitheater or in procession among the fumes of grilled sausages, livers and entrails. In the background the Unicredit tower, the Solaria, the Diamantone: all that skyline there that just doesn’t get us right. But then he starts to curl his beard and roll up between thoughts and quotes, and it all comes back.

His new album – to be released on April 21 by Warner Music – ranges from sixteenth-century madness to nineties reggae and dub, archlute meets theremin, rebec and bass. “Despite the urgency with which it was written, there is a well-structured orchestral work,” explains Capossela. I am Thirteen urgent songs, ballads, waltzes, jives and a cha cha cha. “If 12 is the number of balance, 13 is that of disorder. Prime, starry, happy, lucky number. According to Christian tradition, surely one of these songs will betray me”, he jokes, who he wrote them all between February and June last year, as a “consequence of the moment we are living”. February 2022 is the beginning of a new abomination in Europe. The attack on Kyiv which is both the apex of urgencies and a falling stone, “with all its corollary of poisoning, inflation and simplification, upon a repetitive and immobile world in which everything has been domiciliary”. An album with war inside. “There is – says the author – in the Children’s Crusade, inspired by Bertolt Brecht: a band of innocents among the rubble, in search of the way to a country of peace that cannot be found. There is in Glory to the Archibugio, a Renaissance march that recalls Orlando furioso and the words with which Ariosto cursed that firearm that will make remote killing efficient and death impersonal. The first step in an evolution of extermination that reaches up to today’s drones, to nuclear missiles”.

Again, there is in The Western Sofaon which we are “enrolled while lying down”, and which tells how real dialogue has become very rare and of how the “debate” from talk triumphs instead: the juxtaposition of positions between which the viewer or social user has to choose. Thus, in the opinion market, the logic of advertising testimonials wins. Whether we are talking about vaccines or the invasion of Ukraine. “A supine debate in which partisanship wins”, says Capossela, “and where the rules of the game do not change and cannot be changed. The illusion of being part of History live while the majority of people experience forms of participation and emotional involvement pre-packaged by information that makes fear and confrontation enter our homes”.

A portrait of communication in the time of populism. Now that the politically incorrect has arrived in government but continues to say that it is out of the chorus, in The part of the wrong Capossela paints, with a western air, the clash between two parties who squabble in a static duel. “Today populists are shameless. It is no longer unthinkable to hear words like those spoken by La Russa on via Rasella, for example, from the second office of state. Populism is a race to the bottom of politics, the legitimacy of wrongdoing”. Is the wrong only right? “The song offers no answers but illuminates a hypocrisy. I’ve been voting ‘against’ someone for years, not for a cause. I am waiting for a Messiah who says ‘something sinister’. But nobody comes. And the last one who came was crucified”.

But don’t think it’s a hopeless album. Indeed, it is a kind of ouroboros album, where the first and last tracks touch and open up to a different future. “If, with Goliarda Sapienza, joy is an art, hope is work. And also some kind of flag. All periods of crisis require a choice: my hope is to recognize a possibility in the limits in which we operate. The true essence of existence is in the things that are priceless”.

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• Henry Cicchetti

• Born in the lands of Virgil in a sultry September of 1987, he seeks refreshment in those of Aeneas. Al Foglio since 2016. He is @e_cicchetti on Twitter