Fabrizio De André


Fabrizio Cristiano De André was an Italian singer-songwriter.
Known for his sympathies towards anarchism, left-libertarianism and pacifism, his songs often featured marginalized and rebellious people, Romani, prostitutes and knaves, and attacked the Catholic Church hierarchy. Artistically active for almost 40 years and the author of thirteen studio albums, he is considered one of the most influential and important Italian songwriters.
He is renowned for the quality of his lyrics, considered by many critics as poetry and included in several school textbooks. He contributed to the promotion of the languages of Italy, most notably Ligurian and, to a lesser extent, Sardinian, Gallurese and Neapolitan. Following his early death several streets, places, parks, schools and public libraries were named after him.

Biography

De André was born in Genoa in a family of Piedmontese origins, and was welcomed into the world by Gino Marinuzzi's "Country Waltz" on the home gramophone. Twenty-five years later, he would set his "Waltz for a Love" to Marinuzzi's waltz tune.
When the Second World War broke out, the De André family had to seek refuge on a country farm near Revignano, a frazione of Asti, in Piedmont. There, the child Fabrizio befriended Giovanna "Nina" Manfieri, a girl of his same age, which was his constant companion during childhood, and whose memories were immortalized in "Ho visto Nina volare" , one of De André's last songs. His father, who was an antifascist pursued by the police, joined the partisans. In 1945, at the end of the war, the family moved back to Genoa, where the father became an important member of Genoa's ruling class, as CEO, and later chairman of Eridania, a sugar factory.
Fabrizio's first primary school was that of the Marcellian Sisters, and he later attended the Cesare Battisti public school and the Liceo Classico "Cristoforo Colombo"; after his school leaving examination, he enrolled in the Law School of the University of Genoa, although he did not graduate, dropping out when he had only a few exams left. De André first played the violin, then the guitar, and he joined a number of local jazz bands, as jazz was his "first love".

First recordings

In 1960, De André recorded his first two songs, Nuvole barocche and E fu la notte ; in 1962, he married Enrica "Puny" Rignon, a Genoese woman nearly ten years older than him. That same year the couple had their first and only son, Cristiano, who would follow in his father's footsteps and become a musician and songwriter as well.
In the following years De André wrote a number of songs which made him known to a larger public, soon becoming classic hits: La guerra di Piero, La ballata dell'eroe, Il testamento di Tito, La Ballata del Michè, Via del Campo, La canzone dell'amore perduto, La città vecchia, Carlo Martello ritorna dalla battaglia di Poitiers, and La canzone di Marinella.

''Volume 1''

De André's first LP, Volume 1, was issued shortly after, followed by Tutti morimmo a stento and Volume 3; both LPs soon reached the top of the Italian hit-parade. The former contained a personal version of Eroina by the Genoese poet Riccardo Mannerini, entitled "Cantico dei drogati".

''La buona novella''

In 1970, De André wrote La buona novella, a concept album based on Christ's life as told in the Apocrypha. The album was very controversial, especially the song Il testamento di Tito, in which one of the thieves crucified with Jesus violently refutes the Ten Commandments. He had written a number of songs in which he showed a Christian-like open-minded spirit and in the meantime invited the audience in his own delicate way to think about the manipulation of the church.

''Non al denaro non all'amore né al cielo''

In 1971, he wrote another celebrated concept album, Non al denaro non all'amore né al cielo, based on Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology; in an interview, the LP was introduced by Fernanda Pivano, the first Italian translator of the "Anthology" and one of Cesare Pavese's most intimate friends. Fabrizio De André's name began to be associated with literature and poetry, and some of his songs found their way into school books.

''Storia di un impiegato'' and ''Canzoni''

In 1973, he wrote his most "political" album, Storia di un impiegato.
The following year, De André issued Canzoni, a collection of his translations from Georges Brassens, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. The album also included a number of his old songs from the 1960s.

''Volume 8''

In 1975, De André wrote Volume 8 with another famous Italian singer-songwriter, Francesco De Gregori. With this album, he broke with "tradition" to find a new approach to poetry and music. The lyrics show how deep the influence of modern poetry is on De André's work. 1975 marked a real change in De André's life: he began to perform in a series of memorable concerts and planned to move to Sardinia with his new love. For this purpose, he purchased the Agnata homestead near Tempio Pausania in the northern part of the island, where he set to farming and cattle breeding.
In 1977, the couple had a daughter, Luisa Vittoria. The following year De André issued a new LP, Rimini. Most songs included on this album were written together with Massimo Bubola, a young singer-songwriter from Verona.

Concerts with PFM and kidnapping

1979 was another milestone in De André's life. The year began with a series of distinguished live concerts from which a double LP was compiled; De André was accompanied by one of the most renowned Italian progressive rock bands, Premiata Forneria Marconi ; the albums were released as In Concerto - Arrangiamenti PFM, and In Concerto – Volume 2. At the end of August, however, De André and Ghezzi were kidnapped for ransom by a gang of bandits in Sardinia and held prisoner in the Alà dei Sardi mountains. The couple were released four months later with a ransom reportedly being paid. As De André stated in some interviews, he was helped by his father to find the money and had to start a tour shortly after the release of the Indiano album to repay him. When the bandits were apprehended by the police, De André was called as a witness before the Court. He showed compassion for some of his kidnappers, since he had been well treated by his "guardians" and declared his solidarity with them. "They were the real prisoners, not me", he said. He said he understood they were driven by need, but he did not show any compassion for the higher echelon of the group that organized his kidnapping, since they were already rich.
This incident, and the hard life of the Sardinian people, gave him inspiration for his following album, released in 1981. The album is untitled but, due to the image of a Native American warrior on the cover, the media called it L'Indiano. In De André's poetical vision, Native Americans merge with poor Sardinian shepherds as an allegory for the marginalization and subjugation of people who are "different". The song Hotel Supramonte, is dedicated to the kidnapping and to Dori Ghezzi, who was with him during those days. The album also contains one of his most famous songs, Fiume Sand Creek : in De André's unique, allusive way it tells the story of the massacre of defenseless Native Americans by US Army troops on 29 November 1864.

''Crêuza de mä''

In 1984, he turned to his native Genoese dialect; in collaboration with former PFM member Mauro Pagani he wrote one of his most celebrated albums, Crêuza de mä. The songs are a tribute to the traditional music from the Mediterranean basin. The album was awarded several prizes and was hailed as "the best Italian album of the 1980s". David Byrne named it as one of his favourite albums, and Wim Wenders said that it was this album that introduced him to the music of De André, whom the director names as one of his favourite artists.
As Pagani has repeatedly stated, De André wrote all the lyrics for the album, while the music was almost entirely Pagani's.

1990s

In 1989, De André married Ghezzi; the following year a new album was issued, Le nuvole, which included two more songs in the Genoese dialect, one in the Gallurese dialect of Northern Sardinia and one in the Neapolitan dialect, the highly ironic "Don Raffaè", a mockery of Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo. A new series of well received live concerts followed, from which a double LP, 1991 concerti, was issued.
In 1992, he started a new series of live concerts, performing in a number of theatres for the first time.
De André's last original album, Anime salve, was issued in 1996. Written in collaboration with Ivano Fossati, it represents a sort of "spiritual will", and includes songs such as "Khorakhané", "Disamistade" and "Smisurata preghiera", based on poems within short stories featured in the collection The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Colombian writer and storyteller Álvaro Mutis. De André also sang a version of this song with its original Colombian Spanish lyrics, "Desmedida plegaria", which he never officially released.
In 1997, he undertook a new tour of theatre concerts and a new collection, called M'innamoravo di tutto, was issued, focusing on his earlier works. The Anime salve concert tour went on up to the late summer of 1998, when De André was forced to stop it after the first symptoms of a serious illness, which was later diagnosed as lung cancer.
De André died in Milan on 11 January 1999, at 2:30 am. Two days later, he was buried in his native town, Genoa; the ceremony was attended by a crowd of about 20,000. He is buried in the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, in the De André family chapel.

Fabrizio De André and faith

In the concept album La buona novella , De André gives us the ultimate expression of his religious vision, making a clear humanization of the divine. In a 1998 concert at the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome, De André made the following statements about the album:
Giovanni Guida|alt=
The attitude taken by De André against the political use of religion and the Church hierarchy is often sarcastic and highly critical about their contradictory behaviour, such as, for example, in the songs Un blasfemo, Il testamento di Tito, La ballata del Miché and the last verses of Bocca di rosa.
After the kidnapping, the religious vision of De André had a new development;

Posthumous releases and tributes

After De André's untimely passing, various releases in various formats appeared as tributes to him and to his career.
As evidenced by the various live performance clips featured within the Dentro Faber documentary series, De André was very shy and reserved throughout his career, even as a live performer – indeed, he started performing live only in 1975, with a concert residency at the famous "Bussola" nightclub in Viareggio, after having reached several high points in his career, because he did not feel confident enough to perform before a live audience. Furthermore, he always viewed his live shows as either a "necessary evil" or as a job. Because of this, his live performances feature a number of idiosyncratic, eccentric behaviours and attitudes.

Albums

*