

MASSIMO ZAMBONI :: P.P.P. PROFEZIA E’ PREDIRE IL PRESENTE :: CD WITH 32-PAGE BOOKLET :: LE VELE – IGEA RECORDS / TERRE NATIVE :: 2025
More than an album, a literary work transposed into music. More than songs, chapters that retrace and reconstruct a unique and controversial story, both precious and dramatic. The story of one of the greatest Italian intellectuals of all time, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
P.P.P. Profezia è Predire il Presente is the new album by Massimo Zamboni, set to be released on Friday, January 31, by Le Vele – Egea Records, in a special CD edition with a DVD-format digipack containing a 32-page booklet.
A multifaceted and richly textured album, reflecting the soul and thought of Pier Paolo Pasolini, to whom it is dedicated on the 50th anniversary of his death. An album imbued with the profound civic pain that incessantly accompanies P.P.P.’s journey as a man and intellectual, who was able to prophesy and perceive the dramatic and wrenching transformation of Italy.
Born from the homonymous reading-concert project that alternates songs, readings from Pasolini‘s works, and texts written by Zamboni, P.P.P. Profezia è Predire il Presente is composed of thirteen tracks: folk songs, a tribute to Giovanna Marini, pieces drawn from Zamboni’s extensive musical journey, and three unreleased tracks (La rabbia e l’hashish, Cantico cristiano, and Tu muori). These lead listeners through an increasingly dark, almost desolate path to accompany Pasolini’s thought and the ultimate cessation of his reflections.
A multifaceted, elusive Pasolini emerges—one who faced irreparable, inhuman animosities and fierce isolation. Yet, even today, 50 years after his murder, we cannot overlook his intelligence, that piercing gaze capable of slicing through reality like a laser, offering glimpses of profound compassion, Zamboni concludes.
Thematically, the narrative begins in Pasolini’s Friuli, in the language he fought to restore dignity to, erased by modernity. It moves through his despair at humanity’s blindness, placing a pre-political hope in the regenerative power of a people who can no longer even be called such. It captures his enthusiasm for the Portuguese revolution—one of the last positive surges of a crumbling continent—and then the decline, the fall, and the diminishing. A final infatuation with defeat culminates in that fateful November 2, 1975, when the night in Ostia definitively shattered what so many had long desired to see destroyed: an unwelcome voice to be silenced.
Yet, Pasolini’s words remain more present and necessary than ever. His thought, despite repeated attempts to crush, reduce, impoverish, and simplify it, endures. Today, it resonates with an urgency that makes it more relevant than ever before.
tradizionale, voce Carlotta Del Bianco
Massimo Zamboni
Massimo Zamboni
Massimo Zamboni
José Afonso
Massimo Zamboni
Massimo Zamboni
Massimo Zamboni
Massimo Zamboni
Giovanna Marini
Massimo Zamboni
Massimo Zamboni
ALBUM OVERVIEW
The album opens with E jo canti, a traditional Friulian villotta recited by Carlotta Del Bianco, taken from Canzoniere Italiano, la poesia dell’altra Italia curated by Pasolini—a declaration of love for a form of popular expression already teetering on the brink of extinction. It is followed by a solemn and powerful unreleased piece, blending spoken word and melody: La rabbia e l’hashish, a signal of a despair that is not only Pasolini’s but reflects the collective haze that has led us to today’s disastrous condition. A lament for a beautiful country—plundered, stripped bare, and wept over, buried while still alive.
Canto degli sciagurati is the song of the insurrection of that “dog-like people” evoked by Pasolini: fierce, vital, archaic, always defeated but never vanquished. A popular ballad paced by a two-voice chorus, it gives voice to a pre-political, disorganized, and compulsive plea.
Ora ancora is a musical response to a 1954 rally, when in a silent Rome, Pasolini encounters a procession in which “the fascist flame” flickers at its center. As then, the question arises: should one stay or leave once and for all? Rootedness prevails, but not without expressing all the hardship and bitterness that this country imposes on its citizens.
Grandola Vila Morena by José Afonso, on the other hand, is the anthem of the Portuguese April 25th Revolution—the 1974 Carnation Revolution. It is a march accompanied by acoustic guitar and accordion, broadcast at midnight on April 24th by Rádio Renascença in Lisbon as the agreed signal for the insurrection of an army that, for once, sided with the people. This marked the fall of Salazar’s dictatorship, when it seemed that the old, decaying Europe of authoritarian regimes was finally coming to an end. An exhilarating forecast—one that proved to be profoundly mistaken.
Vorremmo esserci expresses the need to be present and feel useful, to personally contribute to building tomorrow. Guided by hallucinatory readings, like Pasolini’s Scritti corsari, it moves along provincial roads, through the loves of others, like cosmic exiles, navigating shared joys but, above all, collective struggles.
Sorella Sconfitta, the song with which Zamboni resumed his musical journey after parting ways with CSI, is perhaps the track most closely aligned with Pasolini’s poetics. A song that reflects on the value of defeat as a shared denominator among human beings—the starting point to rise again, a call for a humanism that the new world seeks to erase amidst scientistic delusions and the mechanisms of triumphant technology.
Fermamente collettivamente revives a now-archaic word: comrades—or perhaps, as Pasolini wrote, “comrades who are not comrades, shadows of comrades.” It reflects the awareness of a collective fall, where everything that once belonged to us, to our shared struggle, seems to retreat and dissolve.
This is followed by Cantico cristiano, an unreleased track explicitly dedicated to Pasolini. Accompanied by delicate and melancholic guitar arpeggios in the form of a spiritual, the song brings forth themes from Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew (Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, 1964 movie).
The album then moves to the fusion of two powerful works by Giovanna Marini: Lamento per la morte di Pasolini and Beati noi, from her album I treni per Reggio Calabria. A funeral lament, tolling hour by hour with an increasingly ominous tone, swelling with the weight of his absence. This tension builds further in Tu muori, the third and final unreleased track on the album.
Tu muori is a song with a cold, surgical gaze, marking the minutes immediately after the crash—at the very moment of disappearance. Its clinical, unbearable chill explodes into the reprise of Lamento per la morte di Pasolini, where we are left to confront the stark reality: now, he can no longer speak.
Finally, Persona non grata: the narrative is complete, the persona non grata no longer exists, leaving us with one final warning: “We are all in danger.” These were Pasolini’s last public words—a prophecy unheard and dismissed, feared and condemned to utter solitude. Let the guitars scream.
Credits
Lyrics and music: Massimo Zamboni, Copyright Control, except for:
- Sorella Sconfitta: Ed. Radiofandango
- E jo cânti: Traditional
- Grândola vila morena: Lyrics and music by José Afonso
- Lamento per la morte di Pasolini: Lyrics and music by Giovanna Marini, Edizioni Musicali Ala Bianca Group srl – Bella Ciao srl
- Beati noi: Lyrics and music by Giovanna Marini, Edizioni Musicali Ala Bianca Group srl – Bella Ciao srl
The texts 1975-76-77 and Congresso FGCI are excerpts from the book La trionferà by Massimo Zamboni, courtesy of Einaudi Editore © 2021 Giulio Einaudi Editore S.p.A., Turin. Published by arrangement with the Italian Literary Agency.
The text dedicated to José Afonso is reproduced courtesy of La Lettura, Corriere della Sera, published on April 14, 2024, under the title La canzone che accese la ribellione (The Song That Sparked the Rebellion).
The production of the performance Profezia è Predire il Presente was made possible with the support of the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, with its national premiere held at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence on September 13, 2024, as part of the event La musica dei poeti. I poeti della musica (The Music of Poets. The Poets of Music).
P.P.P. – Profezia è Predire il Presente
Massimo Zamboni, Cristiano Roversi, Erik Montanari
- Massimo Zamboni: vocals, guitar
- Erik Montanari: guitar, backing vocals
- Cristiano Roversi: keyboards, stick, bass, editing
- Vocals on E jo cânti: Carlotta Del Bianco
Recording sessions were held in November and December 2024 at Studio Macchina Magnetica by Romeo Chierici and at End Of The Street Studio by Cristiano Roversi.
Arrangements and production: Massimo Zamboni, Cristiano Roversi, Erik Montanari
- Mixing: Cristiano Roversi at La Sala 1 Studio (Mantua)
- Mastering: Enrico Capalbo at Studio Fonoprint (Bologna)
- Graphic design and photography: Diego Cuoghi