fine albums: Pino Daniele

Showing posts with label Pino Daniele. Show all posts

2026/06/20

pino daniele: medina

album rating: ★★★★☆

Genre

World music, blues, and Mediterranean folk. Described by the artist as a meditation on the shared cultural roots of Naples and the broader Mediterranean and African worlds, the album weaves blues guitar, Neapolitan song, North African percussion, and Middle Eastern tonalities into a fluid whole, in texts sung in Neapolitan dialect, Italian, Arabic, English, and French.

Release

Released on February 16, 2001, by RCA Records / BMG Ricordi, under the Blast Records Ltd production imprint. It was Daniele's seventeenth studio album. Guest collaborators include Lotfi Bouchnak, Faudel, 99 Posse, Salif Keita, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and Mike Mainieri.

Production

Produced and arranged by Pino Daniele; Mike Mainieri co-produced eight tracks. String arrangements by Gianluca Podio. Recording engineers were Fabrizio Facioni; digital editing by Fabio Massimo Colasanti and Vittorio Iuè; mixing and mastering by Tommy Vicari at SDR Studio, Rome, and Bernie Grundman Mastering, Hollywood, California. Recorded at Midophone Studios, Tunis, Tunisia; CDM Suono and SDR Studio, Rome; strings at Forum and Plastic Studios, Rome.

Reception

Medina was a major commercial success, becoming the eleventh best-selling album in Italy in 2001, peaking at number two on the FIMI chart, and selling over 300,000 copies. The opening track "Gente di frontiera" entered Italian radio at number one immediately upon release in January 2001. Three singles were extracted: "Sara," "Mareluna," and "Tempo di cambiare." Legacy Recordings described the album as an encounter between "the Neapolitan passion, the blues soul, the Middle Eastern influences, the warm breath of deserts and distant Mediterranean sister lands."

Pino Daniele

Giuseppe "Pino" Daniele (March 19, 1955, Naples – January 4, 2015, Rome) was an Italian singer-songwriter and guitarist, widely regarded as the most important musical figure to emerge from Naples in the second half of the twentieth century. His style — which he termed "taramblu," a portmanteau of tarantella, blues, and rumba — first found expression in his landmark debut Terra mia (1977) and reached its defining form with Nero a metà (1980). Over his career he collaborated with Eric Clapton, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, and Caetano Veloso, and composed scores for three films by Massimo Troisi. Medina represented the culmination of his decades-long engagement with the musical cultures of the Mediterranean, expressed in a cast of internationally celebrated collaborators spanning West Africa, the Arab world and the United States. His funeral in the Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples, was attended by tens of thousands of mourners.

This text was generated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence.

mareluna

2026/03/12

pino daniele: dimmi cosa succede sulla terra

album rating: ★★★★★

Genre

Neapolitan pop-blues and soul. The album balances polished mid-tempo pop tracks with the blues-inflected guitar work and Neapolitan sensibility that defines Daniele's style, enriched by three notable collaborations — "Scirocco d'Africa" with Giorgia, "The Desert in My Head" with Noa, and "Canto do Mar" with the Neapolitan hip-hop group Almamegretta and rapper Raiss — that extend the album's thematic and sonic range.

Release

Released on March 12, 1997, by CGD East West. It was Daniele's fifteenth studio album.

Production

Produced and arranged by Pino Daniele. All lyrics and music by Pino Daniele, except "The Desert in My Head" (lyrics by Noa) and "Canto do Mar" (Daniele and Raiss). Recorded and mixed at Plastic Studios, Rome.

Reception

Dimmi cosa succede sulla terra was the best-selling Italian album of 1997, with over 900,000 copies sold during the year — finishing second in the annual chart — and ultimately exceeding one million copies, earning ten platinum discs. It debuted at number two on the FIMI chart and reached number one the following week. At the Premio Italiano della Musica 1998, it received a nomination as Album of the Year and "Che male c'è" was nominated as Song of the Year; Daniele also won the special Artist of the Year prize from the magazine Musica!. The album won the Festivalbar 1997.

Pino Daniele

Giuseppe "Pino" Daniele (March 19, 1955, Naples – January 4, 2015, Rome) was an Italian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and composer, widely regarded as the most important musical figure to emerge from Naples in the second half of the twentieth century. The son of a harbour worker, raised in the Sanità neighbourhood, he was a self-taught guitarist who forged a distinctive style he termed "taramblu" — a portmanteau of tarantella, blues, and rumba. His landmark debut Terra mia (1977) fused Neapolitan dialect poetry with blues guitar, and Nero a metà (1980) became a touchstone of Italian popular music. He collaborated with Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, and Eric Clapton and composed the music for three films by Massimo Troisi. The President of Italy and the Mayor of Naples both paid tribute at his death; his funeral, initially planned for a basilica, had to be moved to the Piazza del Plebiscito to accommodate the tens of thousands of mourners.

This text was generated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence.