Massimo Donelli and Paolo Rossi are a creative duo whose partnership traces back to their youth, when the two played in bands together before going on to build separate careers in journalism and politics. Their new concept album, Adorati Spiriti, released September 18th, reunites them on a project built around prog, jazz fusion, and world music, with Donelli composing the music, refined with the help of artificial intelligence, and Rossi writing the lyrics and co-producing.
Adorati Spiriti
The album uses the story of Native American communities from the Great Lakes region as a way into much larger questions about tradition, identity, and the radical changes reshaping modern life. Chayton, an elderly Cheyenne man nearing the end of his life, sits at the center of that story. Raised in confinement on a reservation, he’s remained deeply tied to his people’s values and traditions throughout his life, and as one of his final acts, he feels driven to pass that inheritance on, particularly to a younger generation now living in a world reshaped almost beyond recognition. It’s less a triumphant handoff than a dutiful, almost desperate effort to keep something essential from disappearing entirely. The recipient of that effort is Tokala, a younger member of the tribe already absorbed into a very different cultural landscape, and across the album Chayton works to pass along a full worldview, covering values, religion, culture, society, and politics all at once.
What keeps the album from turning preachy is Chayton’s approach. He never comes across as dogmatic or intrusive, choosing openness, sensitivity, and genuine intelligence over lecturing. He doesn’t ask Tokala to abandon the life he’s built in favor of some idealized past, instead urging him to hold onto the values still worth keeping. By the album’s final track, that philosophy comes full circle: Chayton encourages Tokala to keep living freely and embracing what’s new, seeing no real conflict between doing that and also carrying forward an older, sturdier inheritance. His closing message argues for genuine integration rather than a forced choice between old and new, insisting that long-standing principles can remain valuable without holding anyone back from moving forward. That’s really the album’s larger point.
The Cheyenne story isn’t treated as an isolated tale about a specific people’s survival, but as a way into a much bigger question that applies well beyond it: whether inherited cultural, religious, or social reference points deserve to be discarded outright in the face of constant change, or whether they can still offer something worth holding onto. It’s a theme that could easily read as small or dated in the wrong hands, but the album treats it as genuinely urgent for anyone thinking about what gets passed down between generations.
Final Thoughts
Adorati Spiriti is a thoughtfully constructed concept album that treats its subject with real care, letting two generations speak honestly to each other instead of reducing their differences to conflict. It’s available now on Spotify. Follow Massimo Donelli on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
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