Deborah, Giorgio and the Band

A Band in the Main Street – August 2007

It’s 14th August, the eve of ferragosto in Italy, and there is to be music in the main street.

We cannot hear anything from our balcony even by 10pm but we decide to go and see whether something is going on. As we walk down via Roma towards the centre of town we hear that there must be something, by the sound of many voices, but still we hear no music.

Most towns in this part of Italy will have street music both tonight and tomorrow night, starting at about 9.30pm and going on to round about midnight. From somewhere, out of the ether, are conjured up lots and lots of bands, that presumably are not all so fully employed for the rest of the year.

Loud, Very Loud

As we go through the arch into the main street we can see that music there indeed must be, for there is a brightly-lit stage at the end of the street, and as we get closer we hear it, for the volume is extremely high, but with such well-designed speakers that the sound is projected forward and does not dissipate outside of its target area. Very loud.

A timeless audience

I am spotted by Valeriano who is sitting in the front row of white plastic chairs, so feel I should go and sit next to him. Valeriano is a short and jolly round chap in his 50s with no neck and a grey moustache. He’s the town electrician.

The audience in the front rows of white plastic chairs is made up of timeless-looking folk, men and women, who could have been sitting there unchanged since 1962. Elderly, unsmiling, unresponsive, with large noses and pullovers and one or two men wearing a kind of high trilby hat with a narrow brim, much favoured by ageing Italian men.

A singular enthusiasm

To our right, on the white plastic chairs, is Valeriano, who is bouncing about on his seat and waving his arms and clapping his hands and you have to admire his enthusiasm, since no one else seems to share it. Behind us sit various motley folk, all rather passive looking.

Deborah, Giorgio and the band

The band is billed as Deborah Valli and Giorgio Palma. Deborah is the singer who, as we arrive, is just leaving the stage dressed in a long low-cut dress and teetery-glittery high-heeled shoes, having just completed a stint and now letting the band have a go. Giorgio Palma is a young, thin, button-accordion player. In addition there is a trumpeter and a saxophonist in white suits, both somewhat older that the other two, and behind them a drummer and synthesiser player, the drummer in particular so surrounded by equipment that we can barely see him. As we sit down, the band begins an over-loud rendition of Rodrigo’s guitar concerto, of all things.

Poster on a wall advertising the band, together with tomorrow night’s band, whose name is Simona.

From Stand by Me to Jimmy Shand

Then there’s “Stand by Me”, (Ben E King song from 1960s), sung in Italian by the synthesiser player, with rather banal lyrics from what I can make out. And then the accordion player does a couple of tunes that seem to be popped-up versions of local folk tunes, he a kind of present-day pop-Italian Jimmy Shand. Very proficient.

Deborah in a plastic bag

And then Deborah reappears on stage, having changed her costume. She is now dressed in a red plastic sack – probably she’d call it a disco dress – low-cut top and short skirt slit into lots of frills. On her feet some high-heeled cork-soled sandals. And slightly shiny transparent tights. Deborah gyrates on stage when not singing.

A closer view of Deborah and Giorgio’s promotional poster on the wall.

My Way to strobe lights and jerking knees

The same mix of pop songs and popped-up folk songs and classics. The trumpeter does a solo on Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, complete with pauses and heavy blowings at the end, which the audience greatly appreciates and shouts, “Bravo”.

At the other extreme, there are some out-and-out disco numbers, with a flashing strobe light, Deborah doing the singing and during a pause in the vocals she punches her hands into the air, one, two, in quick succession, followed immediately by a lifting of the shiny-stockinged right knee. During the accordion solos she hoiks up her bosom.

Mouthing, hissing and a passive audience

Some of the pop songs seem to be known by some of the audience, with a group of girls in the front row mouthing the words, while the older folk sit passively and inscrutably.

During all of this, a smoke machine periodically hisses out steam from the side of the stage. There seems to be no pattern or meaning to this, it just happens now and again, to provide a mist around the feet of the musicians that quickly dissipates.

No one dances, despite the best efforts of the band to encourage it by clapping their hands in the air above their heads as a song begins. Some of the audience half-heartedly join in the clapping, and Valeriano enthusiastically joins in.

After a while we decide we can slip away without appearing rude, and so do.

And then there’ll be another

On the following evening there’s another loud and run-of-the-mill group, fronted by a singer in a low-cut dress, which we don’t see as we’ve been to the coast for the mussels festival at Pedaso. I go down town after we’ve returned from Pedaso at about 1.30am to see if I can catch the last couple of songs but the performance has just finished, and the passive and inscrutable older folks in their brown suits and flowery dresses are slowly filing away through town, having dutifully stayed to the end.