By Francesco Ciabattoni (Georgetown University)
The Canzoni della mala, or mob songs, are a musical genre that captured Italy’s imagination between the 1950s and the 1980s, offering a crude, poetic, and sometimes ferociously ironic, fresco of life on the margins of society, especially in Milan and its surroundings. While Oriana Binik (p. 47) traces the invention of the mala narrative back to Paolo Valera’s novel Gli scamiciati (1881), the transposition into song seems to have begun in the late 1950s with a circle of intellectuals gathering at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and with Giorgio Strehler. The first mala album was Ornella Vanoni’s Le canzoni della malavita (1958), which the Milanese singer performed live at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto in 1959. Vanoni was undoubtedly the most iconic interpreter of Canzoni della mala: suffice it to mention her famous “Ma mì” (“But I”) and “Le mantellate” (“The Cloaked Ones,” about a correctional facility housed in a former convent in Rome), both written by Strehler and Fiorenzo Carpi in 1959 (though “Le mantellate” is written in Roman dialect, and Gabriella Ferri’s performance was perhaps more convincing). In the same year, Vanoni also interpreted “Hanno ammazzato il Mario” (“They Offed Mario”), with lyrics by Dario Fo. Other songs were to follow, such as the highly successful “Ballata del Cerutti” (“Ballad of Cerutti” from 1960, by Giorgio Gaber and Umberto Simonetta), then Enzo Jannacci and Walter Valdi’s “Faceva il palo” (“He was a lookout,” 1966), and “La Balilla,” which Gaber recorded with Maria Monti in 1963. The latter is actually a popular folk song (Binik 50), reworked in a more “modern” key by the popular singer-songwriters of the time. In fact, a major folk revival was blooming in all fields, and several traditional songs from regional and dialectical repertoires were included in the songs of the mala, for example the “Canto di carcerati calabresi” (“Song of the Calabrian inmates”) arranged by Gino Negri and performed by Vanoni.
Set in taverns and popular villages, the songs of the mala tell realistic stories of love, revenge and human misery through simple and direct language, often ironic and scathing, with frequent use of dialectisms.
The Canzoni della mala are not only a product of pure entertainment, but reflect the social and political transformations of post-war Italy, making marginality, the excluded, criminals, and life on the wrong side of the tracks a focal point for the first time. Through their melodies and lyrics, these songs have offered an authentic glimpse of reality, albeit through a romanticization of crime and with help from the popular folk movement, by denouncing the inequalities of a rapidly evolving society.
The importance of these songs lies in their ability to speak a universal language, to touch deep chords in the human soul. This collaboration between artists from different disciplines such as theater, music and poetry has given life to unique and unforgettable works of art.
CANZONI DELLA MALA:
Hanno ammazzato il Mario (Ornella Vanoni)
La balilla (Giorgio Gaber e Maria Monti)
Le mantellate (Gabriella Ferri)
Ma mì (Ornella Vanoni)
Faceva il palo (Enzo Jannacci)
Bibliography:
Binik, Oriana. “«Mi tolgo gli orecchini, sono frivoli» Le canzoni della mala milanese tra autenticità e romanticismo” in Studi culturali 1, aprile 2017, pp: 47-72
Guaitamacchi, Ezio. 1000 canzoni che ci hanno cambiato la vita. Rizzoli, 2009.
Pedrinelli, Andrea. La canzone a Milano: Dalle origini ai giorni nostri, Hoepli, 2015.
Plastino, Goffredo. Cosa Nostra Social Club, Il saggiatore, 2014.