Luciano Federighi: Still blue and sentimental By Edoardo Fassio Italian author LUCIANO FEDERIGHI has given an invaluable contribution to music criticism in decades of riveting articles, lectures and radio broadcasts. His extensive bibliography includes Blues on My Mind, an essay on blues topics and poetics, Blue & Sentimental, devoted to the American vocal universe of the mid-twentieth century, and the three volumes of Istrioni e sirene, a series of monographs that span jazz, soul, pop and blues, in alphabetical order, from Johnny Adams to O.V. Wright. But Luciano is also a classy performer; a one-of-a-kind singersongwriter in blues, equipped with a surreal vein and corroborated by his encyclopedic knowledge of the forms and contents of the African American songbook and the classic noir-pulp literature. Armed with a deep, relaxed and vaguely threatening voice, he enriches his stanzas with metaphors and double-entendre lines, suspended between laconic sarcasm and hallucinatory restlessness. Federighi walks the same backstreets that belonged to Chet Baker, Paolo Conte, Percy Mayfield, Henri Salvador, Dr. John and Tom Waits, an uncomfortable neighborhood for lonely and broken hearts. No surprise, his own website is named Lonelyville Records http://lonelyvillerecords.com/. In a tragic year for entertainment, Federighi has released two albums, thus bringing his personal discography to the double digit. Viareggio and Other Imaginary Places throws a nostalgic glance to his hometown on the Versilian riviera, though the recordings, in which Luciano, on vocals and piano, is accompanied by saxophonist Davide Dal Pozzolo, took place in Turin. Dark, melancholic and claustrophobic themes dwell with sentimental turns and salacious humor, always in need of “A Sabbatical From The Blues”. The subsequent October Land is also a fourhanded job. A partnership with Andrea Garibaldi, a pianist and arranger, it is a successful experiment in impressionism, all about the blues of desolation and apprehension. It reports of an insecure land, populated by ghosts, and there is even a tribute to Mel Tormé in “The House Is Haunted By The Echo of Your Last Goodbye”. Out of these most threatening stories, Luciano apparently secretes a calm and positive force. True to the nature and the more-than-a-century-old history of the genre, he makes good use of the blues to come to the rescue of those who are afflicted by the blues itself. http://www.ird.it/appaloosa/?q=node/506788 https://open.spotify.com/artist/ 5frmD9KTSna1tv8ddphBx8 December 2020 • Rock and Blues International
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