The Modena City Ramblers, a band from Emilia-Romagna that has always used the “ESG pentagram”: “The economy can change music”

Founded in 1991, the group has always been mindful of the importance of environmental rights and social justice, they chronicle the Italian and global current events with passion and disenchantment. Flutist Franco D’Aniello: “We believe in young people, it is possible to be confident about the future.”

The pentagram can be sustainable in the sense that it is inspired by ESG criteria: environment, social and governance. Words from the Modena City Ramblers (MCR, or even better known as: “i Modena,” by friends). The notes of the band, founded in 1991, have struck a chord from the very beginning – namely, in mainly Irish folk-style ballads – with the issues of rights, social solidarity, and the environment. Not out of a passing fad, but rather out of a passionate conviction.

Intergenerational rhythms reverberate in a one-of-a-kind composition of sound, melodies and words in Italy that deserves to be recognized and known a whole lot more. The best description of the group was penned by the late Ernesto Assante, a shrewd music critic for Repubblica who died prematurely at the end of February 2024: “Modena,” he wrote in 2021, on the celebration of their 30th anniversary, “are not ‘exactly’ a band, rather a collective, a set of musicians who, without feeling the need to climb the charts or to have a real ‘frontman,’ steadily maintain the course of their music by constantly reinventing themselves, changing musicians and lineups, mixing Irish folk, rock, punk, Italian popular music, songwriting, guided by a single imperative, which is to describe life and history, while remaining immersed in the context of our country’s reality.”

CITY WALKERS

Let’s start by introducing the members of band. In the beginning, it was Alberto Morselli, Giovanni Rubbiani, Alberto Cottica (they were part of the group “Lontano da dove”), Franco D’Aniello and Luciano Gaetani (from “Abbazia dei folli”), Roberto Zeno, on drums. Later on, the group got bigger with the addition of Massimo Ghiacci and Stefano Bellotti, aka “Cisco,” Luca Giacometti, “Gabibbo,” the bassist who unfortunately passed away in 2007 due to a car accident. Then came Davide “Dudu” Morandi, who replaced “Cisco” on vocals in 2005; Francesco Moneti on violin and Leonardo Sgavetti on accordion, all of whom are still current members. The band has always been open to new opportunities, a kind of revolving door of creativity, with entries and exits of new members who can enrich and contaminate the group as a whole. The important thing, they say, is to be ramblers, city walkers and beyond, mixing Emiliano Modenese DNA with Irish sounds. Thanks to them, the term combat folk was coined, the eponymous demo tape they self-produced in 1993 inspired by the British Clash’s Combat Rock album.

SINGING TO THE FINISHLINE

Franco D’Aniello, among the band’s founders, is a flautist and skilled tin whistle player, also known as the tin penny whistle, the penny flute – because it was originally made of tin or simple materials – very popular in Ireland, Scotland and England. Different tones, distinct timbres. Before becoming a professional musician, Franco was a coach of youth league soccer, a darts enthusiast, and one of the few people who liked to play the recorder in middle school. If you can believe it, he portrayed a flute-playing Northern soldier in Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York, for which he played two songs on the soundtrack. In 2019, in Parma, he played with Jethro Tull, fulfilling a childhood dream with the transverse flute in hand. And he forged close relationships with Ian Anderson, the Scottish founder in 1967 of the British rock group, to the point that in 2023, the great flautist and composer featured on some tracks on the Mediterranea album. D’Aniello, soon after the pandemic – which had halted Modena’s much-loved live performances -authored an intriguing book (“Siginging to the Finishline. The history, the journeys, the music of the Modena City Ramblers” (La Nave di Teseo, 2021, pp. 272, euro 17) which took an in-depth look at the experience of his and the bands past.

It was a bit like pulling the threads together again.
Franco explains in the book: “Threads of a network called music, which binds events, people, worlds, even of different eras, just as it was for the Modena City Ramblers over these thirty years, for which the journey was never an end in itself. It represents an important moment from an artistic and social point of view. As the title of our first album says, we translated it from a Bob Dylan record, Bringing Everything Back Home, the journey is not the end but the means for the mind to be totally open letting in experiences, visions, noises, sounds, scents that then mixed together with notes becoming songs, albums. Everything I have seen and heard over these thirty years is still alive in my mind, in my heart, in my gut.”

YOUNG PEOPLE AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Some of Modena’s songs have specific meanings.
Two, in particular, from the 2004 album ¡Viva la vida, muera la muerte! warrant special attention. The first is Cento Passi (One Hundred Steps), a tribute to Peppino Impastato: a Sicilian journalist and activist against the Mafia, he rebelled against his family and the code of silence, and for this he was murdered in his thirties by the Cosa Nostra in Cinisi, Palermo, on May 9, 1978. The title takes its cue from Marco Tullio Giordana’s 2000 film, aptly titled “One Hundred Steps”, meaning the distance that separated Peppino’s house from that of boss Gaetano Badalamenti. The second track is Ebano, the story of an African girl who emigrated to Italy to seek her fortune but was forced, like many of her countrywomen, into the slavery of prostitution. She is called Black Pearl and pleads for each of us to remember her story because “…along the road as evening approaches, I don’t ask my dreams for anything anymore.” With this song, in 2005, they won the 2005 Amnesty Prize for Italy, an award given to the song that best addresses the issue of human rights.
“Many people see themselves in our movement,” says Franco D’Aniello, “especially the young people who come to our concerts. We are between 50 and 60 years old, but we are like them, without being conceited, without showing off. Before we play we hang out with them, we don’t lock ourselves in dressing rooms. We talk, we think, and oftentimes friendships are born. The kids see us a bit like big brothers, not like boring parents. Hence, the fact that at our live events there is a good mix of generations which is even more inspiring. The language of music is universal, especially if it does not use slogans and clichés.”

FUTURE, ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

So, are you hopeful about today’s young people? “Yes, absolutely,” Franco D’Aniello reflects further. “Young people, at least the many people we meet, are open, cheerful and engaged. The problem is that today, because of the ageing population, there are fewer of them, so the ones who make more noise are the ones who are bored, getting lost on social media, isolated, and often use aggressive language. We are fortunate to meet a lot of these people at concerts, of course, but also in schools where they invite us to talk about various issues. This connection really affects us positively, it makes us be more positive about the future, despite the many problems that we know exist. And then, in some way, it is also the reason why we keep playing.”

Economics and finance: how do you view them? Can music bring about change in these areas? “Why not,” Franco answers, “Music, in general and the music we play, is very important. It may not change the world, but it helps to share a different outlook. We in Modena are dreamers, but we are also very pragmatic. However, those who say that nothing can be done, unconsciously or consciously want to keep things as they are. We are artisan musicians and have had a hard time during the pandemic. The inclined plane of the world has not changed: the gap between the rich and the poor on the planet is widening, with wars unwanted by ordinary people, an ecological transition that doesn’t have to mean very expensive electric cars. So in a few words, we don’t like this kind of society, things will only get worse if we get stuck on rhetoric. But if we all get involved, we can at least fight the indifference by which rights are trampled.”

MEDITERRANEAN FATHER

The band Modena City Ramblers like to write stories and express emotions. As in their latest album from 2023, Mediterranea, dedicated to the tribulations of the sea and migrants, to show how, in the darkness, many strive to restore hope. It is worth reading and listening to “Per quanto si muore,” translated as “Even if we die” which is helpful in this time of conflict. Then, maybe we can all go – young and old – to an upcoming MCR concert to jam and jump around while waving your arms with your lighter sparked or your cell phone in flashlight mode.

Mediterranean Father warm these wings of mine again
Let me soar up there where I can see
Without suffering man’s pain
I can taste that cruel flavour
And maybe it’s the way to understand love
Maybe it’s the way to understand love

Mediterranean Father who gave me breath
And my steps as a man, I am confused
If I want forgiveness or if condemnation will be the sentence
Because from up here I can’t understand
what lurks in the bottom of man’s heart
What lurks in the bottom of man’s heart.

Mediterranean Father if we are deluded by your wind
Let our end remain alive through time
That the name of those who have departed may become word and memory
That the name of those who have gone may become memory
that at least our story gets there
That at least our story gets there
that at least our story lives on
That at least our story lives on

Beyond the desert and the thorns, beyond the war and the hunger
Beyond the path that unites, beyond the road that one day ends
Beyond the scorching stone, beyond the tongue that lies
Beyond the voice that laughs, beyond the sword that kills
Beyond this horizon, beyond life and death

Even if we die we will always live
Even if we die we will always live
Even if we die we will always live
Even if we die we will always live