The master’s voice at the cinema: November 28

Ideally accompanying the spectators on this journey into the sound world (but not only) of the great author is Stefano Senardi, one of the best known Italian record producers, author of the film together with the director, as well as a friend of Franco Battiato. The film begins with Pino “Pinaxa” Pischetola, the historic sound engineer of the Sicilian singer-songwriter who says “this is Franco’s voice, alone”. Behind his mixing desk in his studio, Pischetola decomposes and recomposes the hit that helped make Franco Battiato a pop phenomenon. He does it by vivisecting the piece I’m looking for a permanent center of gravity isolating the various vocal and instrumental tracks: Battiato’s voice “split”, the carpet of strings “it is a real orchestra” underlines the sound engineer, painstaking work on the madrigalists’ choir, the saxes, the disco music rhythm. Very interesting reconstruction of a success. The result was a pocket symphony that was also good for dancing. All meticulously designed by Battiato to be successful. As told by Morgan, who also plays Signs of life, Battiato had decided, after years of experimentation, to be successful. “He had decided a priori to make a hit record. He built it according to logics that he considered successful. And he was right. However, they had nothing to do with what was on the market. He revolutionized the market, but in a structurally perfect canon”. And this was perhaps his most important prerogative, what distinguished him from all the other artists of his time: an operation of demystification of the language of pop music. The sale of the album that gives the film its title in 1981 was disruptive. “The master’s voice” was the first Italian LP to exceed one million copies sold, albeit thanks to the astuteness of the author himself, as Alberto Radius recounts in an amusing anecdote. “Four thousand copies per million were missing. Franco bought them. He sent a hundred people to buy the record” he says smiling. Anecdotes, testimonies and stories follow one another in the film. Starting from Milan and arriving as far as Milo, in the house of Franco Battiato, Senardi meets numerous artists who have intertwined their lives with that of Franco. Nanni Moretti, Willem Dafoe, Caterina Caselli, Morgan, Alice, Carmen Consoli, Vincenzo Mollica, Francesco Messina, Roberto Masotti, Francesco Cattini, Alberto Radius, Carlo Guaitioli, Eugenio Finardi and many others. “Even in the most remote village you could hear the notes of that record in the distance”. Like many other authors, the master went through several artistic stages. Party with songs (interesting the video, taken from the Rai showcases, of Battiato’s debut on TV, when, as a guest on the program “Diamoci del tu” hosted by Caterina Caselli and Giorgio Gaber, he sang Tower) has revisited songwriting and pop by contaminating them with ever-changing musical styles including orchestral music, progressive rock, ethnic music, new wave and electronic music. He then goes through a phase of experimentation without seeking success and not caring about sales, to then return to pop. Clarifier, in this regard, the story that Bruno Tibaldi (from 1972 to 1981 artistic director of the Italian EMI, who published the trilogy “The era of the white wild boar”, “Patriots” and “The voice of the master”) makes in the documentary by Spagnoli : “I knew him, but he was off the market. The producer Angelo Carrara came to my office together with Franco, who sat on the sofa and kept silent the whole time. When he understood that he wasn’t convinced to sign him the contract, he raised his hand – can I say something too? And of course we are here for you – I replied. And he – From this moment I decided to be successful. Tell me how to do it and I’ll do it”. And precisely this contamination, this mixing of high and low is also underlined by another illustrious guest of this documentary, Nanni Moretti who, in 1984, in the soundtrack of the film “Bianca” inserted the song “Scalo a Grado” taken from the album “Noah’s Ark” another album that fits into that operation of demystification of pop. “The strength lay in the coexistence of these two aspects: the great and refined musical culture and a highly original irony. And also self-irony, which is always good”. In 1989 Nanni Moretti, as further evidence of the esteem he had for this author, inserted the song “E ti vengo a cerca”, taken from the 1988 album “Fisiognomica”, right in the cult scene of the film “Palombella rossa”. It was the unforgettable scene in which Michele Apicella, a PCI official, played by the director himself, in a political program is called to account for the ideological bewilderment and emptiness of values ​​that gripped his party (it seems that nothing has changed…). Marco Spagnoli’s film event also explores other aspects of Franco Battiato’s life. Part of his life was dedicated to study and deepening. Battiato theorized that every now and then it was necessary to detach oneself from one’s favorite means of expression, from what today would be called the “comfort zone”, to experiment with other forms of art. So here are Battiato the director and Battiato the painter. The exploration of the world of painting takes place to test himself, to “experiment” in a field where he felt inadequate. Together with Gaber, to whom he was linked not only by a feeling of friendship, but also by an impressive physical resemblance, he had studied singing. In fact, although they have been frequenting the world of music and discography for some time, they were both self-taught from a singing point of view. Even the spiritual sphere was deepened by the Master. Esotericism and mysticism, not only Christian, were the two spiritual orientations that interested him the most. Moving within such a complex spiritual orientation, where it was easy to touch the two extremes of the maximum and the minimum of refinement, to pass from philosophy to the most grotesque scoundrel, was not easy. Battiato, thanks also to the help of a friend of his, Roberto Calasso, publisher of Adelphi, succeeded in the enterprise. In fact, it was Calasso himself who directed Battiato towards the Milanese seminars of Henri Thomasson, a direct pupil of the Armenian mystic and philosopher Georges Gurdjieff, who explained a part of Eastern thought to us Westerners. Gurdjieff maintained that the human being lives in a state of sleep, of total unawareness, is tremendously touchy and irritable and responds mechanically to every external stimulus, so it is necessary to wake him up, unmasking his false personality which hides his true essence and favor its development. The title of the documentary “The Master’s Voice” alludes to the homonymous record company, but it is a quote from Gurdjieff, according to whom a man is made up of four bodies. The fourth, the highest is the ego, the conscience, the will, a master who gives orders through the voice. Permanent center of gravity is another idea of ​​Gurdjieff’s, which defined in this way the search for an authentic point of view, detached from external events. “Signs of life” can be considered an anthology taken from the Armenian thinker, in which the narrator describes the change that is upon us. Even Battiato’s choreography in the videos that accompanied the song I want to see you dance, to a distracted eye they might seem awkward movements, almost the joke of a champion of irony, but in reality Battiato hinted at the movements of Gurdjieff’s Sacred Dances. In the documentary there is also a sort of reunion of the band which in 1980 entered the studio with Battiato and Giusto Pio, the violinist, composer, arranger and conductor, who died in 2017, without whom Franco Battiato probably would not have become the artist that we all appreciated. There are the percussionist Donato Scolese, the keyboardist Filippo Destrieri, the saxophonist Claudio Pascali and the guitarist Alberto Radius (the bassist Paolo Donnarumma and the drummer Alfredo Golino are missing to complete the group. Battiato was able to lightly unite distant worlds which is also one of his most beautiful albums.He frequented the avant-garde and pop, high and low, as Moretti had underlined, depth and irony, the passion for technology, electronics and historical knowledge, the study of oriental philosophies and places of popular aggregation such as the Palazzetti dello Sport, Christian mysticism and esotericism, popularity and messages for initiates, his Sicily and Milan, life and death, but not understood as the end of an earthly journey, on the contrary as rite of passage. Battiato’s universe was full of poetry as told by Eugenio Finardi who is moved as he talks about it: “Music is something that concerns the absolute, poetry is the most human art”. In a Rai programme, when asked by Mino Damato: “Beating when we talk about very distant worlds, about something that comes to us directly and indirectly from past centuries. What are we talking about, a sound, a feeling or a concept?” The Maestro’s answer encompasses all of his poetics: “The concept is misunderstood and changes, it follows the fashions, the sound goes through the centuries, the feeling is eternal”. The docufilm could not miss the dean of music critics Vincenzo Mollica who in turn asks: “Battiato, how do you want to be remembered?” Lapidary beat: “Like a sound” Mollica: “A sound?” and Battiato: “Sound is the vibration of what I am”. Finally, a documentary that takes a 360-degree look at an artist who cared about humanity. With his art, because limiting it by defining it only as music would sound reductive, Battiato has opened doors. His compositions, even where they are popular, almost commercial, sow clues, pointing the way to those who have the patience and curiosity to investigate them further. His artistic testament, his legacy is a treasure hunt whose prize is inner development. And this is precisely the path indicated to us by the Maestro through his songs. Always with irony so as not to “be too direct and arrogant” as he himself once said. A film that wants to be a kind of shock to confuse and destabilize the viewer, as indeed he did throughout his life. “The public should be disregarded, does it expect something from you? Very well, Holy Mass!”