Gigi D'Alessio's Malaterra World Tour 2016 at Enmore Theatre

Gigi D'Alessio's Malaterra World Tour 2016 at Enmore Theatre

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Posted 2016-02-10 by Emu Byronfollow

Wed 03 Feb 2016

Hot on the heels of the Shanghai stage of his "Malaterra World Tour 2016" (January 31st), Gigi D'alessio flew in from the Northern Hemisphere last week to sneak a concert at the Enmore Theatre on Wednesday 3rd, before flying on to Melbourne and doing another on the 4th. The furtiveness of this visit, due to the fact that he is less well known locally than Manu Chao, whom we also reviewed here in March 2013.

This in-equivalence in reciprocities, Anglo Saxon and Latin, are due in the main to dominant commercial reasons, which mean that Latins will buy David Bowie but few Anglos will buy Gigi D'Alessio (for example). Yet the Latin World pullulates with extraordinary musical talent and nowhere is this more the case than possibly in the area of the Neapolitan Song (think Renzo Arbores' 1993 Luna Rossa Album release).

If you don't know the Neapolitan Song, no need to be forgiven. Chances are you only think you don't! Wikipedia lists the Neapolitan Song as one of the best known in the world because taken abroad by emigrants from Naples and Southern Italy, and associated with the names of such iconic 20th Century performers as Enrico Carusso. This is relativist humour, which apportions credit to every which reason but the merit of the thing itself.

Already in the time of legends this part of the world (between Capri and Sorrento) was credited with being the place where Odysseus had listened to the Sirens sing.

In effect, in a place where "se nun se canta se more" (local dictum: 'if you don't sing in Naples, it's because you're dead") you must need be an outstanding "cantautore" ("singer songwriter") to aspire to the crown (that is, to keep and advance the tradition). .

"Gigi" did not come to international fame till the Festival of San Remo in February 2000 with the song "Non Dirgli Mai" from his 'Quando La Mia Vita Cambiara' (Album), a balladeer with a philosophy, an exceptional musical diction, lilting melodies, a vocalic power at once robust and fragile, and an eaesthetic sensibility whose plastic modulations had the effect of seizing on the empathic imagination and making one feel!



The Performance of "Malaterra" however did not disappoint, its self assurance sensed from the moment of Gigi's first appearance on stage and simultaneous gasps of excitement from the audience, who encompassed at least three generations.

The use of multimedia to further inscribe the performance within "the tradition" by allowing for the possibility of 'virtual' duets with Greats such as Renato Carosone (appearing on video screen) or Valentina Stella (amongst others), also deserves special commentary as it looped back not only into the living continuity of "the tradition" but also, the concept of the performance itself, "Malaterra".

Here a double 'entendre' is at work: one alluding at once to the ecological mismanagement of the Earth (of which Napoli's notorious ongoing waste problem is emblematic) and the other, a nod to the echo of the show's classicism, through indirect reference to one of the quintessential classics "Mala femmena" (by the great Antonio de Curtis: "Totò"; 1956).

This is resolved is so far as as Gigi himself explains "you do not cease to love …" (the "earth" or the "femmena", as the reference attests)… "just because she is 'mala'" ('wayward', in the case of the song, 'ill' or 'polluted' in the case of the Earth).

The validity of this double entendre is further fulfilled by the Multimedia presentation at the start of the show, about the extraordinary agricultural prolificacy of rural Campania (of which Napoli is the Capital) and which at first had me wondering whether the show was a giant ad for Crinitti's , the chain of Italian Restaurants where they do the twenty foot pizzas, gallons of wine, and gardens of basil and buffalo mozzarella,and where Gigi has been sustaining both body and old friendships, but no,no, nothing of the kind!



As D'Alessio explains, "the ecological diversity of this region feeds this grand Neapolitan culture, and this (musical) culture, in turn, feeds the world".

The tracklist, of both the concert and the album ("Malaterra") is, in any case, a wonderful symbiosis of that concept, but for those still in doubt about the acquaintance that I'm talking about, I recommend a visit to "La Casa del Disco", on Parramatta Road, Petersham, where the owners of the specialty record shop, have been advising an italophile public for over thirty years.

#music
#february
!date 03/02/2016 -- 03/02/2016
%wnsydney
189262 - 2023-06-16 03:16:51

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