Who suffers the “ballo di San Vito” can’t stand still, and wanders all long the peninsula restlessly, finding new places and new losses, desiring to be somewhere else under the fire of the street, pursued by magic. Who suffers the “ballo di San Vito” can live only this way, that’s why Capossela claims that this record is more of a life experience. You can tell it from the title track: it sounds tribal, bloody, and almost inebriates because of its powerful rhythm – we can say it’s punk, not the kind of song you would expect from a classic, jazzy songwriter. In fact, Il ballo di San Vito is a turning point in Capossela’s career. He’s his own producer for the first time, and so we can recognize different personalities and themes in the album. Marc Ribot, Tom Waits’ guitarist, appears, along with the jazz pianist Evan Lurie and many musicians belonging to the new Italian music scene, like La Crus or members of Africa Unite. Thus, Il ballo di San Vito is completely different from the previous records: the Latin American atmosphere is now abandoned, and its void is filled with Italian popular music, guitars, drums, tarantolata, dark and urban blues. But it’s not only music: the record’s aim is to track a map of the gutters and non-imaginary places, like Rimini after the summer, Milan under the November rain, Turin and its Murazzi, and lots of streets, the perfect endroit to let your night pass.
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Click here to read some interesting parts of interviews released by Capossela in 1996. The interviews can be both read and downloaded in Word format.