Somehow, I’m stumbling on a theme. This is the second start of the week where I share the utterly brilliant work of another ethnomusicologist. In today’s case, it’s for good reason, I have to share what I consider is one of the Balearic masterpieces — Riccardo Giagni’s Kaunis Maa. Perfect for summer, Kaunis Maa is the product of influences I would classify as Mediterranean and from the Southern Hemisphere (in spite of it’s title translating from Finnish to “beautiful land”). This Kaunis Maa, this “beautiful land”, is ideal for this and any summer. Mixing early ‘90s, melodic ambient (although predating it…) with tropical latin music of a decidedly minimal bent, frames Riccardo’s work as more of our time than his.
Riccardo Giagni was born in Rome and began his professional career not as a musician but as a student of philosophy, studying aesthetics and linguistics at L’Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza. On the side, he tried to keep maintain open a route into music, taking up composition after graduating in philosophy, at L’Aquilla’s Conservatorio Alfredo Casella.
Splitting his adult life in two, Riccardo would (on one side) function as a cultural curator — musical, literature, etc. — for influential Italian media company RAI TV and radio, then the other side (the musical one) afforded him the ability to work with artists hovering the Iberian world like Miguel Bose, Matia Bazar, and Ivan Cattaneo, to name a few. In time, Riccardo became an in demand session musician and songwriter who specialized in turning his thorough knowledge of African, Italian, Occidental and latin music into additions/compositions, capable of remixing them into the European Pop style.
Always in the background, in the late ‘80s, impressive, Italian ethno-jazz record label Stile Librero afforded Riccardo some space to create his own vision (untied to the whims of a Pop record label). Kaunis Maa would find Riccardo mostly using his preferred tool: the classical guitar. Joining him must have been a chosen bank of samplers, harmonizers, delay/reverbs, and drum machines. Human help came from keyboardist Paolo Emilio Marrocco and ex-PFM multi-instrumentalist, Mauro Pagani. Antonella Ruggiero from Matia Bazar lends her wonderfully melismatic vocals to the whole session.
For just barely over 30 minutes, Riccardo Giagni affords us a very mature-sounding take on tropical dance music. It’s not hard to think of its closest aural cousin Joan Bibiloni’s For A Future Smile when you put on Kaunis Maa. On songs like the opener, “The Closest Friend”, African-style drumming opens up a jungle world barely noticeable from its quite ambient beginning. It’s stunning. Delicate but spirited, longing but inviting, the album unfurls as quintessentially what “Balearic” should stand for. Fourth world music imagines world music as this vague, experimental hybrid untied to any continent. Ricardo’s Kaunis Maa imagines Balearic as an ideal with instantly placeable sonorities spacing each other out, for maximum enjoyment.
Three cuts to a side, as the original LP played, each song hovered near the 5 minute mark giving Riccardo enough time to do little vignettes within each piece, allowing a hazy, summery vibe to infiltrate nearly every cut. “And I Touch, And I Give” featuring some fabulous fretless bass playing hovers in the technocratic jazz of the best Jako cuts, yet inspiring all sorts of genuinely touching classical guitar minuet that act as a human foil, giving life to the ethereal electronic backing. Riccardo’s rework of Grazia Di Michele’s “Le Ragazze Di Gauguin” is even more impressive.
Here, “Donne Di Gauguin” gets the starlit treatment. More romantic, more luxurious, and more “Italian” (if that’s even possible), Riccardo rethinks the light reggae touches of the original as more Arabic-touched, and amplifies through sound samples and a gorgeous guitar tone, its windswept melodies, letting his touch sway you to the A-side’s ending.
The flip side, beginning with the titular track, is just as riveting. “Kaunis Maa” is a beyond spacious track with fascinating aural tricks. Drum machines mimic water surf. Riccardo’s guitar plays like a soaring seagull. Every once in a while you hear actual electronic wind announce a tonal change. For seven minutes it’s the aural equivalent of a castle in the sand. A few seconds of sonorous melodies, shapeshifting to another wonderful thing, all driven by the influences of world music. When the track ends in a stuck, sped up tape loop, all you can think of is: “Oof, what was all of that?”. Get to the end, and “Passaggera” with sonic nods towards his fellow, Stile Librero alumni, Paolo Modugno, although, here, on happy pills, you’ll start realizing just how beautiful the album is.
It’s experimental, it’s emotional, it’s open and inviting. Kaunis Maa isn’t some distant soundtrack to nod off with, it’s a soundtrack to living fully.