BELLI IN ZONA

Biography

"Belli in zona", the album by M. Santilli and G. Muto, seduces beyond clichés a Ticino free of clichés and postcard images and instead observed with attentive, curious eyes, but above all listened to with different ears. The land of merlot and clogs is revisited by the duo from Ticino (but based in Zurich and Bordeaux) formed by clarinettist and singer Marco Santilli and saxophonist Giordano Muto. 'Belli in zona', the album released in collaboration with Rete Due, traverses the canton of Ticino in music with jazz moves, forays into traditional themes, revisitations and original songs. Nothing of what has already been heard in music concerning Italian-speaking Switzerland, however, is to be found in this sparkling 15 tracks. No fiddles, ballads and mandorlini. Nothing predictable. Of course, there is also singing in dialect (but not only) with 'O ra valmaggina', the Valle Maggia folk song, which describes with simple intensity a life of hardship and sacrifice. In 'Scurdàss', too, they sing in dialect, but this time in Novazzano dialect. And that's not all. Among the songwriters is also Gianbattista Mantegazzi, with his famous march 'Bellinzona', or - together with Calgari - with 'Sacra terra del Ticino'. There is the popular song of 'Cucù', 'La maggiolata', a song dedicated to Alfonsina Storni, the Argentine poetess of Ticino origin, another to the Gotthard tunnel 'dedicated to all the friends and students who take the Sunday evening train to go beyond Gotthard' (so the booklet reads). The emigrant is not missing, in 'Letter from America'. Ticino, in short, is very present in the disc, yet it is not grasped at first glance, it seems misrepresented. But this is not the case. More than Ticino and its musical production, in 'Belli in zona' one finds an essence of southern Switzerland that gives flavour to the compositions and arrangements of the versatile duo. The echoes, the impressions, the images of Ticino are diluted in an amusing and amused game of references between instruments, where what prevails, always, is the creative act, the desire to make music. The cue offered by a street, a situation or a fragment of a folk song gives the two young musicians the 'la' to launch themselves into melodic and tonal evolutions, rich, poetic, lively and melancholic, hanging by a thread of breath or cascading, dizzyingly. A feature that unites all the compositions is the absolute unpredictability of Santilli and Muto's music. Serious yet ready to burst into laughter, playful yet impeccable in their performances, they follow in the footsteps of others to take completely original steps: the listener's horizon of expectation is disillusioned time and time again. And the message that seems to be conveyed by this elegant and at the same time singular homage to Ticino is precisely that of not limiting oneself to observing one's own land, one's own places, with the same lens and the same perspective. If Ticino has been able to inspire such a fresh and lively musical play, it certainly cannot exhaust itself in the preconceptions and sterotypes that it is all too often associated with. (Virginia Pietrogiovanna)

Tag: worldmusic, jazz, avantgarde, folk, classic, clarinet, saxophone, vocals, ticino, ticinomusic, bellinzona, chamber jazz