Canzone

This musical piece, originally titled La canzone di Orlando, has a duration of just one minute and thirty-eight seconds. The artist behind it, Lucio Dalla, born in Bologna in 1943 and passed away in Montreux in 2012, was a singer-songwriter and actor with a career that spanned almost half a century. His initial training leaned towards jazz, and he stood out as a clarinetist and saxophonist, in addition to occasionally dabbling as a keyboardist. Throughout his career, his music explored diverse avenues, from beat sounds to rhythmic and melodic experimentation, culminating in the singer-songwriter genre, and even engaging with Italian lyrics and melody.

His beginnings were as a clarinetist in a jazz group in Rome, where he shared space with figures like the future music critic Fabrizio Zampa and the comedian Massimo Catalano, with the support of maestro Carlo Loffredo. In his performances, it was common for him to improvise scat-style vocalizations, a practice also cultivated by Adriano Celentano in the 60s and 70s. Lucio Dalla thoroughly studied the vocal style of James Brown, a pioneer of funk, adopting a deliberately rough and dissonant use of the voice, with a jazzy inclination to adorn melodic lines with unexpected variations that challenged the musical conventions of the time. It was Gino Paoli who discovered him and encouraged him to embark on a solo career.