La pantera, l’aquila e la tigre: Dive #1

Transcription

Opening song: ⋆｡°✩ Mina, “Una zebra a pois,” 1960 ✩°｡⋆

Dear listeners, welcome back to CANALE MILVA: the web radio platform that has been exploring the format of the sound exhibition since the summer 2020. The starting point of our sound exhibitions is always some classic of the Italian song, selected for you by Giada Olivotto and Camilla Paolino and re-interpreted by the visual artists whom we invite for the occasion. Today is a special day because we are inaugurating a new column, titled “La Pantera, L’Aquila e La Tigre: Dive” and built around the three mythical figures of the Tigre di Cremona, the Aquila di Ligonchio and the Pantera di Goro, which, as our more experienced listeners might know, were the nicknames respectively given to Mina, Iva Zanicchi, and Milva by their fans. So, three Divas of the Italian song who, in the 1970s popular culture of the peninsula, took on zoomorphic and fantastic traits in the eyes of their fans, because of their roaring, shrill, or scratching voices, but also because of their postures, stage presence, and the ability to take up space and defy costumes. 

This somewhat crazy column is inaugurated by three heterogeneous sound pieces, composed for us by the three artists who took up the challenge to participate in this first exhibition of “La Pantera, L’Aquila e La Tigre: Dive”. They are Gaia Vincensini, who worked in collaboration with Nawfal, Giorgia Garzilli, and Maya Hottarek, whom we take the chance to greet and thank from the bottom of our hearts. So let us listen together to their sounds, singing, and spoken compositions inspired by the mythical figures of the Tigress of Cremona, the Eagle of Ligonchio, and the Panther of Goro. Rrrroar!

Let’s begin our listening with the sound piece composed for us by Gaia Vincensini in collaboration with Nawfal. The two authors first met inside a white limousine. Sinking to the bottom of a flute, Gaia and Nawfal introduced themselves to each other on a birthday evening. Wrapped in the effervescence of a golden liquid, the two watched the bubbles head upward, away from the cosmology of the rational. Among the blond waves, the roar of the engine can be heard echoing. Two stars of the earth in incognito, in a submerged, bumpy path. Gaia and Nawfal’s sound piece describes through sounds the magic triggered on that night: an immersive moment that took the two through an experience of imaginative mutation, of a roaring life swimming in champagne. “sans titre (premiere collaboration)” deals with the impossibility of mutual understanding and the antinomian desire for community. On our instagram page you will soon find the narrative text that Gio Ventura wrote for “sans titre (premiere collaboration),” freely cited above. And now, let’s listen to the sound piece together

⋆｡°✩ Gaia Vincensini in collaboration with Nawfal, “sans titre (premiere collaboration),” 5m16s ✩°｡⋆

Thanks again to Gaia Vincensini for this piece, which, we remind you, was made in collaboration with Nawfal, whom we also thank very much. 

Let us now continue our listening with a sound piece by Giorgia Garzilli, with a title as beautiful as it is long, which I will now read to you: “Cuando estas aqui con migo esta tina ya no tiene pirañas sino nishikigoi” – here we go. A title that comes from a line of the famous song “Il cielo nella stanza,” which in its original version goes like this: “when you’re here with me, this room no longer has walls but trees,” etc. etc. In our case, however, we are not talking about walls and trees, but rather about piranhas and nishikigoi, i.e. carps: two free associations of ideas proposed by the artist to immediately plunge us into the strange world of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) and, in particular, of women’s WWE, inhabited by wrestling Divas and fighting fish. Thank you, Giorgia Garzilli, for this extravagant proposal, and thanks also to Camilla Salvatore (who in the sound piece interprets Consuelo Velazquez’s famous “Besame Mucho”) and Ambra Viviani (by now, a regular on CANALE MILVA) for lending their voices to Giorgia and all of us. 

⋆｡°✩ Giorgia Garzilli, “Cuando estas aqui con migo esta tina ya no tiene pirañas sino nishikigoi,” 5m38s ✩°｡⋆

Many thanks to Giorgia Garzilli for sharing with us her talent for storytelling and her ability she has to amalgamate voices and experiences in the eclectic sound project she orchestrated. We also take this opportunity to thank Ambra Viviani and Camilla Salvatore, who lent their voices for the realization of “Cuando estas aqui con migo esta tina ya no tiene pirañas sino nishikigoi.”

And now, let us be carried away by the notes of Maya Hottarek, who transposes the mythopoetic practice grounding our new column into the present moment, where the practice of associating a star’s name with a non-human species is actualized in the figure of AJJA, a legend of psytrance, known as The Spider. This nickname, given to AJJA by his fans because of his skills in the art of weaving mesmerizing, hypnotic musical textures in which the listener is likely to become entangled, gives the title to the piece Maya Hottarek composed for us, in the wake of a sonic speculation around a spider rave. Careful, little flies, not to fall into the trap that Hottarek – in the footsteps of The Spider – has set for us.

⋆｡°✩ Maya Hottarek, “The Spider,” 10m27s ✩°｡⋆

And with the sound piece by Maya Hottarek, whom we warmly thank for her participation, we conclude the first sound exhibition of our new column “The Panther, The Eagle, and The Tiger: Divas”, dedicated to the fantastic divas who inhabited the scenes of the 1960s and 1970s Italy.

As always, we warmly thank the artists and all those who collaborated in the realization of this new sound exhibition! We would also like to thank Lumpen Station for its hospitality and Pro Helvetia, Temperatio Stiftung, and the Swissloss Fund of Canton Ticino, as well as the Magica Opalini association for supporting our project. Last but not least, many thanks to all the faithful listeners who have been following us since summer 2020: we’ll be back soon with the next episode of CANALE MILVA!

Closing song: ⋆｡°✩ Mina, “Una zebra a pois,” 1960 ✩°｡⋆

Other references: ⋆｡°✩ Gino Paoli, “Il cielo nella stanza,” 1960 ✩°｡⋆