Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
Italian progressive rock band Metamorfosi released their album Purgatorio on October 14, 2016. The album’s tracklist features several references to the second half of Dante’s Divine Comedy including “Paradiso Terrestre”, “Porta del Purgatorio”, and “Beatrice”. The band previously released albums titled Inferno and Paradiso (see our post on those works here).
Italian death metal band Kyterion released their album titled Inferno I on July 22, 2016. The track titles and songs make frequent reference to the text of the Divine Comedy including “La selva de’ suicidi”, “Limbo”, and “L’etterno dolore”. This album will be discussed by scholar Francesco Ciabattoni in his contribution to the forthcoming volume Dante Alive.
The Metal Archives User “Samtropy” has this to say about the album:
“This is the first of trilogy Black/Death metal interpretation of Dante’s Divine Comedy by a band of anonymous Italians.
“As a concept, it’s pretty interesting: turning Dante’s words (in their original Florentine vernacular) into relentless song-sized chunks furious blackened death metal. If you’re short on time, the takeaway is: listen to this if that idea sounds good to you. Don’t if it doesn’t.” [. . .] –User “Samtropy”, The Metal Archives, June 8th, 2020 (retrieved November 29, 2021)
The full text of this archival review is available here.
A music video for one of the songs (“Gerione”), as well as other videos from the band, can be found here.
See our post about another metal adaptation of the Inferno here.
“A musician from San Diego, [Mosier] grew up playing in punk rock and heavy metal bands. As a composer his Canto 34, a setting of Dante’s Inferno, was performed in Siena, Italy. He has performed with a wide variety of ensembles, and has studied abroad in Italy and France. Jeffrey holds AA degrees in both Classical Music, and Humanities and Fine Arts from Grossmont College, a Bachelor’s in Composition from San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a Master’s in Global Composition from San Diego State University. His major composition teachers were Elinor Armer and Joseph Martin Waters.” —Jeffrey Mosier Musician, Bio
You can stream an excerpt here.
Contributed by Ralph P. Locke
“2025: fourteen years after the failed revolution, Egypt is invaded once more. As traumatized Egyptians eke out a feral existence in Cairo’s dusty downtown, former cop Ahmed Otared joins a group of fellow officers seeking Egypt’s liberation through the barrel of a gun. As Cairo becomes a foul cauldron of drugs, sex, and senseless violence, Otared finally understands his country’s fate. In this unflinching and grisly novel, Mohammad Rabie envisages a grim future for Egypt, where death is the only certainty.” —Amazon. (this dystopian, apocalyptic science fiction novel is organized in line with Dante’s circles of Hell)
“Jazz critic Gary Giddins chortles as he recounts the tale, pointing out that if these American Brahmins had simply deigned to take a train south from Boston to New York City, and stepped into the Roseland Ballroom on a Thursday night, they would have experienced the American Bach, Dante, and Shakespeare all rolled into one: Louis Armstrong.
“Born to a 15-year-old who sometimes worked as a prostitute, raised in a New Orleans neighborhood so violent it was known as ‘the Battlefield,’ sent to a juvenile detention facility at 11 for firing a gun into the street—his early years would surely put him on the pipeline to prison today.
“Had that occurred, the distinctly American music that Louis Armstrong created might never have happened. The American songbook, as we know it today, simply would not exist.” [. . .] –Eboo Patel, SOJOURNERS, July, 2016.
All submissions will be considered for posting. Bibliographic references and scholarly essays are also welcome for consideration.
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante’s Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
