A multi-voiced narrative that intertwines music, civil memory and artistic passion to celebrate the 33 years of the professional turning point – after the victory in Castrocaro in 1985 and three participations in Sanremo – of a pioneer of Italian female songwriting, the Palermo artist Aida Satta Flores, who returns with “Volver”, available on vinyl and digital for Arte Senza Fine and Azzurra Music. A double album with revisitations of old songs, taken from “Il perfume dei limoni”, the first 1992 album produced by Nomadi, and new tracks from the latest work “Canzoni à la coque”, published last June.
Not a nostalgic celebration, but a return in the name of change, the result of two years of intense collaboration with the young talents of the Alessandro Scarlatti Conservatory of Palermo, with which the artist performed the pieces of the album live, for the first time, during the evening “Tutto nasce per fiorere”, held on 21 October at the Cineteatro Colosseum in the Sicilian capital, on the occasion of World Listening Day.
Record and event are part of “Fai la tua pArte”, a cultural project conceived and directed by Satta Flores to support emerging artists in building their own musical identity.
“They were two incredible years – he tells us – in which the boys worked on the songs that I call “à la coque”, because all human beings are born like eggs, with a shell that if you break it from the outside there is an omelette, if you break it from the inside there is the principle of life. After 33 years those songs still have a living yolk, because from the pop rock of the ’92 album they returned to their ballad nature”.
“For me – he continues – this album is not a concept, but a bouquet of flowers with many varieties”. In fact, in “Volver” we range between different sounds, from folk to jazz through rock, with an equally varied audience of guests, to address pressing current issues.
Among these Eugenio Bennato, Max Manfredi, Danilo Sacco, the Chorale Settima Polifonia and Lina Gervasi from Catania on the theremin. The launch single of the album is the piece “Un target al centro”, a love song dedicated to her husband Giovanni, recorded with Augusto Daolio in ’92 and re-proposed here with Cisco Bellotti, historic voice of the Modena City Ramblers: “In that song I told him, since he couldn’t decide to declare his feelings, ‘The water gun, love, you can shoot it for yourself’. Today that gun has become fire and iron. It’s intolerable that there are two women killed in the day, as is imprisoning the children of the Global Sumud Flotilla or seeing the Israelis shooting children queuing for a piece of bread.”
A thought for the little victims of the genocide, written by the artist and recited by Moni Ovadia, is the basis of “Il perfume dei limoni 2.0”, a new version of the song of the same name, recorded with the great actor and the Cantoria Choir of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.
The album also talks about the mafia in “Qui la mafia non c’è” – written in the aftermath of the Capaci massacre and re-recorded with Bellotti, Davide Shorty, Treephase Band and Allievi Yellow School – and about gender violence and feminicide in “Fiori di carta”, with Mariella Nava, and “La metamorfosi di un fiore”, dedicated to Saman Abbas, with Amedeo Minghi, an authoritative male voice to denounce the unstoppable drift of human relationships. The song is the protagonist of the first video clip taken from the album, available from 8 October on YouTube directed by Gioele Sanzeri. In “Volver” also “unn’E’”, a dedication to Franco Battiato from 2024, reinterpreted with Mario Incudine.