"Lunfardia" - Adriano Celentano

The revival and growing popularity of the Tango both in South America, in Argentina where it originated and in Europe, prompted me to do this short article on Italian pop idol Adriano Celentano as he sings a beautiful composition called Lunfardia, written by the great  Fabrizio De Andre and Roberto Ferri and sensitively arranged as a tango by  Celso Valli, and as usual Celentano provides us with a rugged  individual performance, that has become his enduring trademark since as a young man, he first exploded onto the music scene in the fifties as a rock and roll star.  He is still considered as the senior figure of the Italian popular music scene and since his humble beginnings, has had a string of hits not only in Italy but around the world, one of his best known being Azzurro in 1968. Lunfardia has been taken from his classy album “C’e sempre un Motivo” – Dario Poli.

Adriano Celentano (born 6 January 1938) is an Italian singer, songwriter, comedian, actor, film director and TV host. Celentano was born in Milan at 14 Via Gluck, about which he later wrote the famous song “Il ragazzo della via Gluck” (“The boy from Gluck Street”). His parents were from Foggia, in Apulia, and had moved north for work.

According to urban legend, before beginning his singing career, Celentano was a student of Ghigo Agosti (European rock pioneer) during Agosti’s 1955-1956 Northern Italian tour, which was also guitarist Giorgio Gaber’s debut.

Heavily influenced by his idol Elvis Presley and the 1950s rock revolution, he is also known as the most famous dancer of the Hula hoop fad. For the last 40 years he has retained his popularity in Italy, selling millions of records and appearing in numerous TV shows and movies. In the latter respect, he has also been a creator of a comic genre, with his characteristic walking and his facial expressions. For the most part, his films were commercially successful; indeed in the 1970s and part of the 1980s, he was the king of the Italian box office in low budget movies. As an actor, critics point to Serafino (1968), directed by Pietro Germi, as his best performance.

As a director he frequently casts Ornella Muti, Eleonora Giorgi and his wife Claudia Mori. He and Claudia have three children; Rosita, Giacomo and Rosalinda Celentano, most notable to worldwide audiences for playing Satan in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. He also often works as a host on several Italian television shows.

He has released forty albums: comprising twenty nine studio albums, three live albums and eight compilations. His most famous songs are “La coppia piu’ bella del mondo”, which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc;”Azzurro” (1968), with lyrics by Paolo Conte; and “Prisencolinensinainciusol” (1972). Celentano was referenced in the 1979 Ian Dury and the Blockheads song and single, “Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3”, as one of the aforementioned “reasons to be cheerful,” and in Fellini’s 1986 film Ginger and Fred. ( Wikipedia)