A stepped creusa between houses in Nervi, Genoa
← All storie

1984: o zeneise o conquista o mondo

1984: Genoese goes global

With Creuza de mä, De André and Pagani turned Genoese into a world-music language.

When Fabrizio De André and Mauro Pagani released Creuza de mä in 1984, it looked like a gamble: an entire album in Genoese, set to Mediterranean instruments. It turned out to be a revolution: the record won the Targa Tenco, David Byrne picked it in Rolling Stone among the ten best albums of the 1980s worldwide, and in Liguria it marks a watershed between twentieth-century “dialect” song and the new experimentation in Genoese.

The creusa of the title is the narrow walled lane running down to the sea. From there, Genoese travelled everywhere – proof that a “local” language can speak to the whole world.

Bibliography

  1. Fiorenzo Toso, La letteratura ligure in genovese e nei dialetti locali. Profilo storico e antologia, vol. VII, Il Novecento, Le Mani, Recco 2009, pp. 137–138.
  2. Stefano Lusito, «Fra repertorio popolare e opera d’autore: la canzone in genovese», in Fiorenzo Toso e Giustina Olgiati (a cura di), Il genovese. Storia di una lingua, Sagep, Genova 2017, pp. 46–53, in part. p. 50.
  3. F. De André, M. Pagani, Creuza de mä, Ricordi, 1984.
  4. Alessandro Guasoni, “Fabrizio De André (1940–1999)”, in Antologia da lettiatua ligure, Conseggio pe-o patrimònio linguistico ligure, 2024–.

Image: Twice25 e Rinina25, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.5