Before the image, before the story, before the music, before anything else, what really gets to you is that voice. In full flight, Loredana Bertè’s voice is just this guttural thing unlike anything else, searing quite anything within its range, making you stop and immediately take notice. Powerful and raw, it’s a voice just raging with all the power in her humanity. As for me, I won’t rock the boat. I’ll agree with all Italians who place Loredana Bertè’s Traslocando as that perfect window into her world. My only wonder (which they’d probably share) is how in the hell did everyone else worldwide miss the finely honed range of her fuselage.
Loredana’s story began in Bagnara Calabra, a coastal city close to Sicily. Together with her sister, a young Domenica (and future Mia Martini), from the beginning they were forced to fend for themselves. Growing up under the tutelage of two abusive parents — one physically/emotionally and the other distant and indifferent from suffering their father’s abuse, meant that as sisters they had to navigate a hard world together. By the time they were teens, as Loredana admitted herself, frequent bouts with depression and sexual abuse had forced her hand, making her distrust much of any authority and to look outside her home for any kind of support to get her and Mia’s life heading in a different direction.
After parent’s divorce in the mid ‘60s Loredana would find herself in Rome working odd jobs in Italy’s early disco scene trying to help the rest of her family survive. While living in Rome, Loredana enrolled in art school and came to befriend a young Renato Zero (then Fiacchini). Together this trio, including her sister Mia, took the school by storm, setting trends as early scenesters, promoting a very Italian form of newfound rock n roll lifestyle. By the early ‘70s, Loredana began a career not as a singer but as an actress and model, appearing on shows for RAI, filming bit roles in Italian cinema, and scoring a lead role in the main production of the then controversial Broadway adaptation of “Hair” in Italy.
It wouldn’t be until 1970 Loredana and Mia would take their first steps into the musical world by appearing extensively in Chico Buarque and Ennio Morricone’s Per Un Pugno Di Samba providing their already distinctive backup vocals throughout this influential record. Shortly thereafter, Mia would be the first to take her first steps to stardom parlaying her powerful voice into early albums like Nel Mondo, Una Cosa and singles like “Donna Sola” that became immensely popular with the Sanremo crowd (while keeping young rockin’ Italians equally interested). It wouldn’t be until 1974, when Mia scaled to such heights of Italian pop culture to be considered their Edith Piaf, that we’d get to hear anything from her sister, Loredana.
As Loredana understood herself, she’d never fall into whatever category a “lady” should be. Call her what you want: sexualized, crude, dramatic, and temperamental, but you couldn’t deny one thing — Loredana understood exactly how she wanted to make herself out to be. Her debut, 1974’s Streaking, set the tone. Sporting a risque album design featuring Loredana outside of clothes more than in them, Streaking introduced Italian audiences to her frank songs about love and hate (and all the gratuitous shots in between) setting herself up to be an Italian answer to America’s Betty Davis. Here we get to listen to her first full-throated deep-throated vocal eze come into its foray; favoring smokey, raspy campari-tinged chops to set her musical mood. She’d never be anyone else’s lady thereafter.
As her sister explored whatever reach Italy’s canzone could take, Loredana would take a more experimental tone, holding into her breath influences from glam rock, funk, disco, reggae, and prog. Early albums like Normale O Super, T.I.R., Bandabertè and Loredanaberte’ being absolute barnburners introducing the wider European world to the talents of Pino Daniele, Mogol + Battisti, Mario Lavezzi, Mango and countless other, future, Italian greats.
Somehow, this wild-haired, physically striking upstart became a star on her terms, taking full command of the stage, promoting a dramatically different female stardom than few could properly appreciate then. Was she a rocker, a femme fatale, or something else? She was all of that and more.
The early ‘80s brought the world a small peak of her full ascent. Loredana took a sojourn to the U.S. somehow befriending and beguiling America’s de facto pop artist Andy Warhol. From designers Carlo Benetton and Gianni Versace, to Andy Warhol and friends, everyone seemed utterly under the spell of Loredana. Loredana herself, wisely, used her clout to explore the outer reaches of urban music, jettisoning off her rock-oriented Bandabertè and inviting American funk band Platinum Hook from New York City to Milano to help her create a new shape for Italian pop music.
On Made In Italy the strains of post-disco dance music and electro-funk under the production of Mario Lavezzi, present an unfiltered strain of Loredana that is totally her — raw, hard-nosed, etc. — and entirely universal. These songs would usher in her visionary ideas forecasting/influencing whole careers others would run with. Loredana was an artist made for this era. Loredana, herself, began to be the one featured on the covers of fashion magazines and be one of the paparazzi’ed glitterati, albeit one still amazingly in touch with her decidedly more cotidian roots.
A year later, Loredana would enlist Ivano Fossati to help create her most ambitious album yet of that decade. Sophisticated in a way many were probably surprised with, befitting the perfect album cover for this music, Translocando gave you a deeper look under the surface by staying (somewhat) over the surface. And for once, in a long while, her sister contributed vocals to one of hers. It all kicked off with the single “Non Sono Una Signora”.
More than just a rousing feminist anthem, it was an affirmation (in the most Dylan-like way) of her worth in a world trying to parcel out and diminish her values. Rightfully, it quickly became Loredana’s iconic song, setting expectations high for the album. Musically, it was something else, a bracing, country-lilting bit of anthemic New Wave pop. Surely, Loredana, in full-flight, would deliver?
Moving in more ways than you think, Traslocando is an album that’s hard to pigeonhole. Album opener “Per I Tuoi Occhi” takes inspiration from the equally innovative work of Franco Battiatio from that period. “Stare Fuori” seems to build on her fellow compatriot, Gianna Nannini, ideas of mixing heavy, “open road” motorik pop with moody torch balladry, showing Loredana’s full range of inspiring phrasing. Credit goes to the musicians of Platinum Hook and Bobby Douglas (from Change, one of the quiet secret weapons on this album) who completely understand what Loredana wanted.
Playing out with the highest drama, Traslocando was meant to be heard in the highest rafters and sound like Loredana was right in front of you, stringing you along. “I Ragazzi Di Qui” couldn’t have done it better. Living in a parallel world with the work of Grace Jones and Sly & Robbie, so too do all involved fully work a one-drop groove that works Loredana’s strengths to their fullest. Witness Loredana adopt a flow that predicts some future. Witness an angular music that beats stronger than any heart of glass caught in some rapture.
The flipside takes you back to the wonderful, smoothness that can exist in the world of Loredana. The title track, “Traslocando”, toys with jazz-funk only to let Loredana burn it to ashes, giving it a weight not easily predicted in the beginning. “Notte Che Verrà” invites comparisons to Bowie’s Let’s Dance-era by predicting the swinging Euro-funk possible using Loredana’s fiery delivery to mutate its funk further forward. “J’adore Venice” comes across as catwalk music for a style that had yet to be fashioned, signalling an Italian sophistication drawn from its own far more calorific palette history. Traslocando ends as it should end.
Rather than strike a down note it surges towards its finality with “Una” a song co-written by longtime friend Renato Zero that’s a non-conformist rallying song signalling her choice not to follow any trend or to be just another pretty face in a hit parade. To the very end, Loredana has to be herself regardless of where the chips fall. And with that voice that still knows no equal, on Traslocando no moving target isn’t hers to take.