Preparing an Indigestible Dish: Macchina Maccheronica and Rock in Opposition as a Genre (original) (raw)

Jazz Under State Socialism, Vol. 11, Ubuntu Fusion Music, ed Yvetta Kajanová, 2024

Abstract

Macchina Maccheronica is the seventh studio album by the Italian group Stormy Six, recorded in 1979 and released in 1980; Macchina Maccheronica was also an alternative name for the band: an effort to switch to Italian from the rather obsolete name created when the band was formed in 1965. ‘Latino maccheronico’ (macaronic Latin) was a way, in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, to mix Latin and vernacular Italian, and it became a literary genre. ‘High’ and ‘low’ were also the basic ingredients of Stormy Six’s music and lyrics at the end of the 1970s. As a matter of fact, Stormy Six travelled across genres along their whole career: from r&b to psychedelic pop, to country rock, to folk and protest songs, to progressive folk and progressive rock, and to alternative rock. When the material for Macchina Maccheronica was composed, Stormy Six were one of ‘the five rock groups the record companies don’t want you to hear’, as a poster went in 1978, announcing the first Rock In Opposition Festival in London. Ironically, Macchina Maccheronica has become one of the canonic examples of RIO, a sub- genre of progressive rock which emerged after the demise of the league of independent bands (Henry Cow/ Art Bears, Univers Zero, Samla Mammas Manna, Etron Fou Leloublan, Art Zoyd, and Stormy Six) that gave birth to that acronym. Both the album and the genre are a good field to investigate musical and lyrical creative processes based on the interaction of different materials and models: folk and vernacular, structured (written) composition, improvisation, rock, jazz, cabaret. In 1980 Macchina Maccheronica was awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for best rock record of the year. The Police scored second.

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