Ivano Fossati: "After years of idleness only Mina could make me go back to singing"

When a product is worth more than the arithmetic sum of its component parts, it can be said to be valuable. Such as Mina Fossati, a record that brings together the greatest Italian singer of all time and a classy songwriter of refined talent: the result is – in fact – even higher than the value of the two. Eleven songs that oscillate between the ballad and the rock-blues song up to some ethnic sprinkling and a couple of songs (diminutive, not derogatory), in which two voices and two so different styles know how to mix with great wisdom, also playing chasing each other and giving themselves to the voice like two lovers who have become a little bitchy as they get older, but just for fun.

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Of course, he wanted us Mina to convince you to get back into business Ivano Fossati, who had retired for eight years simply writing some songs for others, but essentially "to laze about, and they were beautiful years". Six years in reality, given that in 2017 a phone call comes from Lugano which sends him into crisis, until his wife Mercedes' decisive intervention: "If you tell her no I ask for a divorce". It was not just a matter of saving the integrity of the family unit: "The truth is that we had to make a record together already in 1997, then it all jumped for disagreements between the two record labels. But I had forgotten it, Mina no "And two years ago she returned to the office. She was the only person who could take me back to the studio and, let's be clear, now I don't want to stay there, I'm not going back to doing concerts or recording other albums." Besides, nothing remained in the drawers: for Mina Fossati 12 songs were composed and 11 ended up on record, "the other one was really too mushy".

To present the product, of course, the only Fossati, one who does not like much the press – which in the song Butterflies also dedicates the winged verses "If they write about things, from the stars to the stables, gentlemen journalists do not break us …" – but still more than the partner, which has not made statements for over 40 years and for the occasion is represented by Massimiliano Pani, not as a son, but as an album arranger. "It could very well have been an album of covers – the former Paciughino explained – and instead the choice of unpublished works was precise and winning: the songs arrived at the rate of one or two at a time and we were always surprised by the quality. we had a celebration with the orchestra: the celebrations are held with the dead and these two are alive and ahead of everyone. We wanted pianos, guitars and strings ". Not just those, because the quality and quantity of the production are also impressive: there is also a nice accordion to act as a trait d'union between very different tracks, and in various ways there are 28 musicians, including Danilo Rea on the piano e Burkina of Elio and the Stories aimed at the bottom, more Celso Valli to arrange the strings. The historical musical period is of depressing qualitative scarcity, precisely in the sense that by now it is enough to press a button to have all the sounds you want, that by now executive talent is no longer needed, on the contrary it is almost despised, and for this a disc is not so a breath of fresh air, but an entire oxygen tank. Pani says it frankly: "He may like it or not, but there are no similar works around. And if a boy wants to become a musician in life, he has to listen to him".

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To find a fault a Mina Fossati, perhaps a piece of those sensational is missing, of those that listen to them and you remember them immediately and forever. Or perhaps, better said, the average quality is so high that nothing is imposed by detachment. Right now the first single is around, Tex Mex, which already explains the Fossatian derivation of the Latin fossati, a rhythmic and amusing rock-blues. But we must mention at least something else. Such as The infinity of stars, which opens the record, a classic on the piano so at Fossati that at any moment you expect Rocco Tanica to arrive with the sensational parody that he made years ago to Zelig (the one that ended up with "il maaaaare"). Or how Butterflies, amusing and amusing nursery rhyme that speaks of the present but to the taste of the Sixties for the retro sound and a surrealism that makes it a granddaughter of The thousand blue bubbles is A zebra with polka dots. Or how The cold war, dialogue on the value of forgiveness not only in love, but in life in general. Or how Moon diamond, almost only with the voice of Mina, who Ferzan Ozpetek he just chose for the film The goddess of luck. Up to the two songs that close the disc: The perfect man is imbued with African music and choirs, and Nothing better than the two of us it is a wonderful mix of funk, blues and rock, rich in rhythm and optimism about the present ("I believe it, I believe it, I know for sure, I haven't seen anything better than the two of us before").

To some the title of the disc will come to mind Mina Celentano from several years ago. But woe to the world to make such an approach: so much this was a ramshackle record until the catastrophe, so much this is studied in every technical and musical detail. The only conceivable comparison could be the presence of Mina, then in a record by Celentano, this time in one of Ivano Fossati. The latter however denies and instead emphasizes her role in the recording studio: "Of course, I wrote words and music, but we all have the idea that Mina is just a singer. Instead she is a great musician, behind every word that there is a thought coming out of the mouth. He is like John Coltrane: you could hear him playing and you understood that he was thinking at the same time. And when he arrives in the studio he has studied every detail. you can't even compliment her: she minimizes, she doesn't let her art fall from above ".

Also for this reason Fossati did not want to write songs with treble, warbling or vocal exhibitionisms: "I have never posed the problem of technically testing it, if anything, to amalgamate our voices. Mine needs short words and sentences, the its of long notes. Once I was awake two nights in a row to rewrite some verses with fewer words and fewer syllables. " Speaking of singing, it surprises what is perhaps the only hint of musical contemporaneity in a timeless-looking (or rather, from the air not of the past only): the vocoder, the electronic vocal synthesizer, which appears in Sunday love. Who knows, maybe a way to not bring out the aging of Mina's voice, which surprisingly surfaces here and there. If it were so it would be a mistake: this aging is like that of wine, it adds nuances, spices and flavors and is still far from turning it into vinegar. But everything Mina Fossati it is like a wine, of those for meditation, structured, which should be enjoyed slowly, savored and savored next to a hearth lit with the mind that flies.