Anastasio returns, from anger to poetry in ‘Mielemedicina’

From anger to poetry. This is the path that led Anastasio to the creation of the new album ‘Mielemedicina’, nine unreleased songs to be released on February 25 for Epic / Sony Music. The rapper from Meta di Sorrento, who had made himself known at ‘X Factor’ in 2018 and then at the Sanremo Festival in 2019 as a guest and in 2020 in the race, explains that the title of the album comes from a phrase of the Latin writer Lucrezio: “When the doctors want to give children the repulsive absinthe, they first cover the edges of the cup with a layer of blond and sweetened honey, and the imprudent child, his lips seduced by sweetness, swallows at the same time the bitter infusion and, deceived but not a victim, he receives strength and health from it “. But those who think that this has some reference to the pandemic, to the debate on vaccines, is wrong. “I don’t like to refer to current events, I’m not a reporter. And frankly, I didn’t think I had much to say about the pandemic. I’m vaccinated but I’m sick of this debate. My record talks about something else, about hearts for sale and honey, for example. I felt ready to handle the theme of feelings, of sweetness, of light beyond the shadow. I wanted to abandon the terrain of anger that belonged to a more adolescent phase “, explains Anastasio conversing with the Adnkronos. “If you really want to look for a concept in this album, which is made up of very different songs, it’s the language. I tried to make an album that made the world of rap communicate with that of poetry and to do so I looted some poetry : I have stolen the spirit from some, some verses from others, but no poet has been mistreated “, he jokes. The push towards poetry was given to him by a book of poems by Massimo Ferretti, ‘Allergia’: “It was given to me by another poet from the Marche, Davide Nota. I read it and I realized that I like poetry. I unlocked the hunger for poetry. From there I started reading other poets as well. The whole album tries to be poetic “, he explains while quoting Bukowski and Baudeleire, as well as Ferretti. “In short, to make a new album I need to be new, to have lived enough to write about it”, he points out. The album opens with ‘E instead’ which is also the new single, after ‘Assurdo’, released at the end of January. ‘Absurd’ is a sung piece and someone, when it came out, spoke of Anastasio’s ‘indie’ turning point: “Dunno – he replies – I just know that I haven’t betrayed myself. I’ve always liked guitar songwriting and ‘Absurd’ could never be different from how it is. Indie, rap, lyric, trap, screams and gargling are instruments and as such they should be used at will, when needed. only jazz and only classical with the violin? Someone will remember that when I introduced myself to XFactor they asked me ‘what are you doing?’ and I replied ‘many things’. It was true. The whole album is inspired by this approach “. So ‘E Instead’ is in some ways the sequel to ‘Rosso di Rabbia’ (the single that Anastasio presented on the stage of Sanremo in 2020). . “If no one is really serious, then by being serious you will not get anywhere”, sings Anastasio. The theme of language is instead at the center of ‘Babel’, a passage with obvious biblical references. “Today we find ourselves in a second Babel. where our words no longer have any meaning, they are empty shells, without value. Internet and the bulimia of reading, the infinite scrolling of images, take away from language – which in my opinion is a magical thing – its soul and its playful essence “, says Anastasio. Mysticism and poetry also pervade ‘Symbolism’.” It is perhaps the most difficult piece to explain – says Anastasio – where the central theme is the death of God, viewed by men with admiration as one observes a tightrope walker (“the walking man”) but at the same time with the desire to see him fall for replace it “. From the dark tones of ‘Simbolismo’ we move on to the lively ‘Tubature’, which sees Anastasio’s first collaboration with the pianist and composer Stefano Bollani, a piece that mixes a lot of jazz with rap, both in words and in music. “Here the words want to create a whirlwind: the theme is that of the world, of the imaginary which is as real as the real world”. Then there is the song ‘Magari’ which is linked to ‘Absurd’ and to the theme of sales of the heart. “The lyrics of the song – he tells Anastasio – was born from the verses of Massimo Ferretti and in particular from his verse ‘because the caress, if dreamed, can be a blue miracle and the one had is only a hand wind’ “. And yet the poem, that of Charles Baudelaire, inspires the song ‘Goddess with two faces’ which, explains Anastasio, “in the poems dedicated to his muse Jeanne Duval presents this woman as a savior demon, a woman who makes you happy but with smile sends you to hell “. In ‘The Dying Empire’ is depicted a past world in decay. “In the text – says Anastasio – I represent a medieval city with its classical elements, a castle, the soldiers and the people. In this empire that dies and goes towards ruin, the people celebrate around the fires, the rebels assault the castle and the emperor, in an unsettling anachronistic frame, flees in a helicopter “. To close the album is the longest piece, which at the embryonic level was born even before 2018: ‘The man, the Cosmos’, over 5 minutes of a piece that – explains Anastasio – “wants to be a journey, it starts with a slow zoom that starts from the big bang, passes through galaxies and planets to finally get to dwell on the smallest details of what surrounds us as’ a smurf ice cream ‘,’ a parking lot ‘,’ a carnivorous plant ‘,’ free larks’ …. I think it’s the perfect closure of the album because paradoxically it brings with it a large opening, the slow zoom-in turns into an excited zoom-out which in the end remains suspended between the space and the time “, underlines the artist, who from April will bring the songs from the new album to the stage as well as the rest of his repertoire. The tour will start from the Estragon in Bologna on 6 April to then touch Florence, Milan, Turin, Padua, Trento, Naples and Rome, where a double date is scheduled, on 29 and 30 April at the Spazio Rossellini. “I can’t wait. I feel ready. I want to find my audience again, to take their applause and I think that even those who love music have a great desire to go back to concerts”, he concludes.