DESCRIPTION:
Americana is a title that echoes loudly through Italian culture as it was originally
the title of a controversial literary anthology, edited by Elio Vittorini in the 1940s.
The collection included 33 American writers (dating from the early 1800s to the
1930s), all translated by well-known Italian writers and intellectuals, including Cesare Pavese, Eugenio Montale and Alberto Moravia. At the time, Vittorini was unable to publish Americana exactly as he wanted it, as Italy’s pre-war fascist regime refused to tolerate open displays of affection for any foreign cultures other than Germany. Despite such coercion, many Italian intellectuals (including a very young Fernanda Pivano) had shown an interest and actively participated in underground translations of American literature from as early as the 1930s. And, inevitably, Pavese and Vittorini were looked up to as leaders.

Curiously, though, neither of these writers had ever visited America in person. So their experience of the New World was filtered through the words of these writers, a fact that naturally made the country seem even more exciting and legendary.
Like these past Italian intellectuals, Guano Padano has also fallen under the primitive spell of these American authors and the books they published nearly a century ago. Just like them, they too cannot hide either their admiration and awe of these giants from this mysterious land beyond the Pillars of Hercules. And this admiration is intensified by their love and respect for the Italian intellectuals who defied the fascist state by bringing American literature into Italian culture through their reading, translating and writing (as Pavese wrote in an article in 19472). A move that both betrayed the current fascist culture and helped found the cultural renaissance that was to come.

It follows from all this, that the silent guides of Americana’s music are its texts. These words and verses have been stitched together into a musical tapestry that contains all the dark, vibrant colours, characters and landscapes of these books. From the cacti and bloodstained plains of Pavese’s La luna e i falò (The Moon and Bonfires) to the dusty, deserted flatlands and errant knights of Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat, and across I mari del Sud (South Seas) with their giant, white-clad sailors who continue to weather these waters without ever having the time to savour and to know them. This music has felt the dust that covers the shoulders of Hemingway’s characters. It has suffered the same hunger and experienced the same rage as the black boy, Richard Wright, and followed the hoofprints and scent of Saroyan’s white beast and the wild spotted horses of Faulkner’s early stories. It has dreamed of farms and rabbits with Of Mice and Men’s George and Lenny, endured the homeless roaming of John Fante’s wop emigrants, experienced the life force encapsulated in the epitaphs of Spoon River and heard the deep, rich energy of black spirituals in the pages of Sherwood Anderson’s Ohio.

These are the worlds that Guano Padano seeks to capture in its music. It is a vision of a primitive, yet virginal America, that is both fertile and a waste land, and where boundless plains melt into the lurid suburbs of alcoholic towns. This is a land of karstic rivers: a land where the air is full of the scent of dirt and sweat and railroads and freedom.


Guano Padano take their spaghetti western/jazz/swing tunes to a new level. Featuring contributions from Joey from Calexico and author Dan Fante