After
the cd Avanti Pop, Targa Tenco 2007 (Best Interpretation) e PIMI 2007 (Best Ttour)
The journey by Têtes de Bois through
today’s Italy in
search of stories about labor and laborers
Produced
and realized by: Têtes de Bois
Author
Andrea Satta
With
the kind participation of: Sergio Spina e Licio
Esposito
Co-prodced by: il manifesto
Editing:
Lorenzo D’Agostini
Production
design: Marta Dal Prato
Music:
Têtes de Bois
Sound: Carlo Amato
Length: 104’ (8x13’ ca)
THE DOCUMENTARY
SYNOPSIS:
Avanti Pop is a snap shot of a singular journey through today’s Italy in search of stories about labor and laborers.
If once the workers’ struggle created and generated music, today in the midst
of this crisis it’s music that autonomously moves to remind us of labor’s
plight and give it a voice. Avanti Pop
collects, reminds, evokes, rehabilitates with the weight and levity of an
artistic event. Only through a shared
frame of reference artists like Têtes de Bois, Daniele Silvestri, Paolo Rossi,
Ascanio Celestini, Francesco Di Giacomo, Rocco Papaleo, Ulderico Pesce,
Moni Ovadia, Paola Turci, Teresa De Sio, Giuseppe Cederna, Mario Tozzi,
Alessandro Portelli, and all the others who “are in agreement on the ideas and
courage”, could give birth to the text and original contributions like those
collected during this journey.
The Têtes de Bois’s van, for the past ten years an ideal stage with thousands of miles
on its back, arrives in front of a plant, call center, field of tomatoes, etc.,
and is transformed in a life raft for ideas, area for exchange and itinerant
emotions. Têtes de Bois then
performs a specifically chosen repertory, collects the stories of the
protagonists of those struggles and, at every stop, between songs and stories
hosts on stage guests and individuals who give a voice to the misdeed that
occurred in that location.
The scheme for each stop is the following:
·
STORIES music and
brief original tales, possibly accompanied by footage or audio, performed by
those who have experienced them first hand
·
THE STORY WITHIN THE STORY a brief
tale, a true anecdote, a parallel story, and the price of serendipity. Something that happened no matter what the
circumstances.
·
I WAS THERE the history of
the place, a written piece, given a voice by the people who were there and
witnessed first hand and act as the memory of the event for the audience. This role is often interpreted by an artist,
who for temperament and culture, can be the witness of time.
·
THE GRAPHIC PROJECT images,
footage and text are to be projected at the back or side of the stage, in
addition to vignettes drawings done live by artists there to interpret
graphically the theme of each stop.
THE EPISODES:
1.
ROCCO
SAN ROCCO
2.
THE STEEL
AND ALUM RAILROAD (LA FERROVIA DELL’ALLUME
E DELL’ACCIAIO)
3.
ELENA
FEDEL
4.
FROM HERE TO ETERNIT (DA QUI ALL’ETERNIT)
5.
EMMA
ABDUL, RICE AND SAN MARZANO (EMMA ABDUL, RISO E SAN
MARZANO)
6.
SANTABARBARA
7.
SMERALDINA
IN THE WATER (SMERALDINA DENTRO L’ACQUA)
8.
ROCCO
GATTO AND HIS NROTHERS (ROCCO GATTO EI SUOI FRATELLI)
CAST:
Tetes de Bois, Ascanio
Celestini, Francesco Di Giacomo, Rocco Papaleo, Paola
Turci, Ulderico Pesce, Danilo Nigrelli, Alessandro Portelli, Lucilla Galeazzi,
Mario Tozzi, Petra Magoni, Pino Marino, Enzo Del Re, Moni Ovadia, Teresa De
Sio, Raiz, Stefano Pogelli, Marco Boccitto, Paolo Rossi, Momo, Peppe
Voltarelli, Rolando Ravello, Francesco Vergovich, Nada, Daniele Silvestri,
Giuseppe Cederna, Andrea Rivera, Silvia Aielli, Gisella Bein, Polveriera Nobel,
Natale Bianchi, Ciccillo Gatto, Emma Seno Vaccari, Silvestro Capelli, Elena
Fedel
BIOGRAPHY:
A band, an idea, six musicians, an artistic
collective. Têtes de Bois makes his
debut in Rome in 1992, the 15th of February to be exact, at a
concert in Campo de’ Fiori, under Giordano Bruno’s statue, on top of an old
1956 FIAT 615 NI van, bought from a junk yard, and for years to come their
itinerant stage. At that time Têtes
played and sang the songs of Ferré and Brassens, Baudelaire’s musical poems.
Theirs is a story exemplified by passages, roads,
junctions, escalators, subways tunnels, street cars. Their music is characterized by the search
for an ‘other’ sound, made up of words and sounds from everyday life, absorbing
signals, opening themselves to stimuli and unease, taking risk without the
benefit of a safety net, able to transform unconventional spaces in performance
sites...
From that time Têtes de Bois has won two prestigious Tenco awards, Best Performers Category,
and has taken part in thousands of performances while traveling with their
itinerant van, in clubs or festivals. At
the beginning of 2005 its mythical van went back on the road to crisscross
Italy in search of stories about labor while singing Avanti Pop, Bandiera Rock...The voyage continues...
Têtes was selected by the City of Charleville-Meziers, France, Arthur Rimbaud’s birthplace,
to headline the concert on the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Têtes
de Bois are made up by Andrea Satta – lead singer; Carlo
Amato – contrabass, base, computer and sampling; Luca De Carlo – trumpet;
Angelo Pelini – piano, accordion, keyboard; Maurizio Pizzardi – guitar; Lorenzo
Gentile – drums, percussion; Fabio Lauteri – press; Raniero Terribili – sound;
Anna Maria Piccoli – human architecture.