Matteo Salvatore - 1973 - Le Quattro Stagioni del Gargano

 "Hi, Matteo, you lived like a devil, but when you sang, you sang like an angel."

    This was the funeral poster that appeared on the walls of Apricena, in Puglia, in August 2005, while the funeral of Matteo Salvatore was taking place, considered - in the 60s and 70s - one of the greatest Italian songwriters, if not the greatest: a "prophet", the "Homer of the disinherited".  Salvatore was "a musician sublime" but at the same time "a histrionic man" and a "cheater". An angel and a devil, as it had been written on the anonymous poster of his funeral.  The great Apulian artist was singer of the poor, of the farm workers, of the forgotten, compared by many to Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash. However, he had many dark sides: the strangulation of his partner, a feminicide soon classified as an "accident", and the complex origin of the musical pieces of which Salvatore ended up attributing paternity to himself, after saying initially to have learned them from popular tradition. 

    The artist, born in 1925 into one of the most unfortunate families of Apricena, at the foot of the Gargano, in the province of Foggia, lived a hungry childhood and adolescence. His father was a porter, a man of hard work, and her mother pretended to be mutilated to beg and collect a few pieces of bread to take to her children. Matteo remained illiterate but at the age of 7, he was lucky enough to meet a blind musician, an over eighty year old "bearer of serenades", Vincenzo Pizzicoli, who taught him to play the guitar and passed on to him - this was Salvatore's first version - a heritage of 150 Apulian folk songs.

    With his wife Ida Signoriello and his children, Salvatore then moved to seek his fortune in Rome, where he lived in a shack and played in restaurants, as well as being an abusive valet. In a restaurant in Trastevere he is discovered by the "reuccio" of the Italian song, Claudio Villa, who opens the doors to Rai TV and the tours that count. His notoriety arrives in the 60s with the song "Lu suprastante", a story of the oppression and exploitation of the Apulian prisoners. It is in this period that Matteo abandons his wife and children to go and live with one of his singers, Adriana Doriani. Their love story is decisive in the life and art of Mattep: the two "didn't just share love and sex, home and money, problems and happiness. They shared everything.

She helped him, perfectly illiterate, to start distinguishing one letter from another and even to scribble something. Together, finally, the 'one hundred and fifty songs' that Matteo had learned from his blind teacher took graphic form".

    1973 is the year of the box set with four LPs and no less than fifty-six performances: "The four seasons of the Gargano", of which 23 are signed for four hands, by Matteo and Adriana.

     They tell of hunger, poverty, exploitation, labourers, work, love, joy, religion, games, death, proverbs, the ferocity of bullies. An absolute masterpiece, an overwhelming success, the definitive sanctification of the "greatest Italian storyteller", so much so that Matteo Salvatore, having savored the taste of glory, abandons the old version of the songs learned from tradition and claims, from now on, that the lyrics are all written by him. On August 26, 1973, in San Marino, however, the tragedy that will change everything also takes place. A few hours before a concert, Matteo, father-master in the couple, kills Adriana, probably blinded by jealousy for her and perhaps also by a sense of intellectual inferiority.  In the end Matteo Salvatore is sentenced to 7 years in prison but only serves 4. However, he is unable to recover. He lives as a penniless tramp.

     He sings in the campsites and in the Apulian summer festivals. For years he is kept on the sidelines, if not forgotten. A story, his, "always poised between redemption and damnation". But perhaps  precisely in this lies "his persistent greatness: in this profound contradiction between the man and the artist, between his private life and his art, as well as in his irreducibility, in his elusiveness. Thus perhaps he has defended himself all his life from a world he has never been able to understand or even accept. (ANSA).

TRACKLIST

Disc 1: Primavera: "Lu gregge, lu pastore e la campagna"

A1 Il bando della carne

A2 Lu gregge, lu pastore e la campagna

A3 Le mele

A4 Padrone mio ti voglio arricchire

A5 I maccheroni

A6 Corre a mamma tua

A7 Tuppe tuppe a lu portone

B1 Il pastore

B2 Maria Santissima Incoronata di Apricena

B3 Don Nicola si diverte

B4 Meza verzura de feve

B5 La cometa

B6 Lu maccatore

B7 Parruzzelle

Disc 2: Estate: "La siccità"

C1 La siccità

C2 Teresa

C3 San Lazzaro

C4 Lu soprastante

C5 Il lamento del mendicante

C6 Mennelle e mennelastre, vulive e vuluastre

C7 Petto tondo

D1 Lu polverone

D2 I fuochi

D3 Le tre frustate d'lu patrone

D4 Il forestiero

D5 La ballata di Taresina

D6 Io vado all'aia

D7 I proverbi paesani

Disc 3: Autunno: "Pe' 'nu cacchio d'uva"

E1 Il bando del comune

E2 Pe' 'nu cacchio d'uva

E3 Nostalgie di un emigrante

E4 Il pianto delle vedove

E5 Tarragnole

E6 I capelli neri

E7 San Michele

F1 Le fontanelle

F2 San Luca

F3 Gatti e cani

F4 Brutta cafona

F5 M'ha ditt' mamma mia

F6 La zia

F7 L'uomo della montagna

Disc 4: Inverno: "Carnuèle pecché sì morto"

G1 Carnuèle pecché sì morto

G2 La lota e lu traino

G3 Morte a lu paese

G4 La pizzetta de zucchero doce

G5 La femmina del Settecento

G6 La morte traditrice

G7 Prima, seconda, terza qualità

H1 L'ultimo martedì

H2 La notte è bella

H3 La santa ora

H4 Lu signèle

H5 Lu monaco cercatore

H6 La ballata del bracciante

H7 Uè chi vò l'anice

Credits:

Matteo Salvatore: Vocals, Guitar

Adriana Doriani: Baking vocals