Singer Songwriters From Italy

"He deserves a place in the pantheon of Italian popular music from the 1960s onwards."

"His unique interpretation of nursery rhymes in pop, reggae, whatever you want... is exclusively his, by right."

"[In 2007] He is among us in some way and therefore he is in compilations, he is in fiction, he is in television commercials, he is everywhere."

"From the authors he read, Dante, Pavese, Palazzeschi, from the music he listened to, from his appearances on television. I wanted to bring out a side of him that had never been seen before, his most poetic and fragile side."

"At this point, I would like to mention an important figure, Aldo Moro, who was born a short distance from here, in Maglie... He is one of the biggest shoe manufacturers, someone who has made shoes for the whole of Italy. [...] I know very well that he uses very clear language, he invented several terms, in fact he is a great philologist, he invented parallel convergences, the economic situation, all these things... Once I heard him make some very strange speeches, such as: “These ferments of dissolution, I would not say iconoclastic but projected towards new hypertrophic temptations that bring me back to a new universal pragmatism and new dimensions yet to be discovered...” and there are all these things that make it impossible to clarify anything at all. It's very distracting, and last year I wrote an even more distracting piece dedicated to these enigmatic figures from the world of politics and other worlds as well. Anyway, tonight I want to dedicate it to this character who has outsmarted the whole of Italy."

"Even when I was singing at Folkstudio, I was at the center of certain discussions... in short, many didn't want me to perform my songs because, they said, it seemed like I was making fun of everyone."

"Ahó, look, songs are not political texts and I don't give speeches. This is just a joke. In short, for me, ‘'Nuntereggae più’' is the lightest song I've ever written."

"There are people who are paid to report news, others to keep it hidden, and others to falsify it. I am not paid to do any of these things."

"The dog has a lot to do with it! The new LP is called ‘'Mio fratello è figlio unico’' (My Brother Is an Only Child), and I think nothing expresses the concept of being marginalized and excluded better than a dog. That is, the dog is the epitome of loneliness. The point is basically that we are all poor dogs, quite detached from human contact and quite lonely... That is, we are basically quite isolated from each other."

"I try to write songs inspired by the conversations you can have on the tram, among people, where you immediately realize the state of society. I don't want to teach, I just want to be a chronicler."

"The effendi is that gentleman who habitually consumes a cup of petroleum at five in the afternoon."

"The next piece I'm doing [Aida] is the story of the last 50 years in Italy, told through the loves and moods of a woman named Aida."

"Rino mi dà tuttora energia e rabbia. Aveva attitudine rock e voce roca, era un outsider anche a livello compositivo."

"I believe that young people today continue to love him or, in some cases, to rediscover him, because of his great simplicity. So generations are clearly renewing themselves through his repertoire."

"His biography is emblematic, beautiful, interesting to tell. Everything about him deserves attention. Even the car accident that caused his death."

"In some cities in the north, I have met people who are upset when you tell them you are Calabrian: they still expect to see a dark, short man with a moustache and a shotgun, a grim look on his face and a big hat. I think Puerto Ricans are better off than us. (p. 51)"

"Claudia Mori, quoted in Emilia Costantini, Rino Gaetano, fiction su un cantautore-eroe, Corriere della Sera, 20 January 2007."

"(About ‘'Gianna’') She is a girl, perhaps a little grown up, who is looking for a lot of things, looking for her Prince Charming, and this time she identifies him in the unions, in other things around her, but since she is a little tired in the evening, she looks for love. If in Sei ottavi she was masturbating, here she is looking for love with others. These are the contradictions of today's girls, and not only girls, but all of us. I believe that we are all a little confused, so we too are inclined to stand on the podium and say: “Stop, now I will explain my theories to you.” Which clearly correspond to my illusions. (p. 45)"

"(About the reason for the title ‘'Aida’') Aida is a typical Italian name and because it represents all those women from the last seventy years, so my grandmother, my mother, my girlfriend, and possibly my future daughter. They are all Aidas, who have suffered as I have suffered over the last 28 years and as my mother has suffered in recent years. (p. 33)"

"(Talking about ‘'Sfiorivano le viole’') The meaning of the song is: let's get a move on; while I was waiting for her, everything happened in the world and I didn't notice. Everything happened while I was waiting for you."

"Aida is not one woman, but all the women who tell their stories, each for five minutes. The result is the story of the last seventy years of Italy. (p. 33)"

"Sanremo means nothing, and it is no coincidence that I participated with ‘Gianna’, which means nothing. (p. 46)"

"(About ‘'Escluso il cane’') The dog, the more it gets beaten, the more loyal it is: a politically absurd figure for the times we live in. The song was born from this consideration. (p. 37)"

"(About the final part of ‘'Nuntereggae più’') It's just another way of saying: “Oh well, since I've told you these things, since the song isn't political, the song isn't a rally, the singer-songwriter isn't Enrico Berlinguer or Marco Pannella, then at this point those who only write love songs are right.” (p. 41)"

"(About the role of the songwriter) To expect to give people something more than a smile, albeit a bitter one, something that starts a concrete process, through a song is pure illusion. This is the thesis of many singer-songwriters and also mine: in Italy, something that has always worked is irony, satire (even if no one has ever identified with the characters who have been the subject of it), the “we can't take it anymore, simplified and without dramatic consequences.”"

"What interests me most is that sarcasm, the way I make fun of certain cornerstones of society, is easily understood by the public and taken for what it is; I have never tried to sugarcoat things or overdo it. (p. 49)"

"I have written several pieces about emigration, but I have always placed this scourge within the broader and more alienating concept of marginalization and, above all, I have not portrayed the emigrant in the usual, trite iconography (teary eyes, cardboard suitcase, and mother dressed in black), trying instead to capture more of the turmoil of his emotions and affections. (p. 61)"

"(About the miniseries “Rino Gaetano - Ma il cielo è sempre più blu” (Rino Gaetano - But the sky is always bluer) that he produced) I had had the subject in mind for some time. I knew Rino Gaetano well because, as a girl, I was friends with his sister Anna, and we used to hang out in Rome. I liked his music and I liked him, a deeply intelligent guy. His is the story of a modern-day hero, as relevant today as his songs are. Stories about young people are rarely told on TV: this one aims to be."

"The life of the solitary and tormented singer-songwriter (who died in a car accident) was short but intense in terms of the creativity of his compositions, which ranged from paradox to sarcasm. An exuberant and satirical artist with a captivating musical vein, Rino Gaetano played a witty and irreverent role that was unusual in the Italian music scene."

"In the end, Rino's beautiful songs, almost Battistian in style, work. Not only because they remind us of the atmosphere of the late 1970s, but also because the musical obviousness proposed today makes them even more of a model. “‘'Nuntereggae più’'” is very topical: Costanzo and Bongiorno are still there, you just need to change the name of a few politicians."

"I will say right away that Rino Gaetano was an artist, and I would add that this cannot be said of everyone. He was an artist, with all the fragility of artists, with a presence and an often decisive desire to provoke. Nuntereggae più is more than a song, it is a manifesto, a chorus of protest."

"He was physically different from us, he didn't have the aplomb of university students that we had, even though we tried to act like freaks. Then there was Rino's gypsy-like appearance, he was a kind of loose cannon, he had enormous talent and boundless imagination. I remember his mocking, provocative gaze, but also his great sweetness. His songs had the formal appearance of nonsense, but they had content, they made you think. Rino knew what songs were and how to write them. He was a man of the South and you could sense that, I mean that in a positive way."

"Rino's songs are not songs of remembrance, they are songs of the present and the future. The first word I associate with him is: forward. And the Rino of thirty years ago, that Rino, even today, would be one step ahead of all of us."

"He used to write down the lyrics to his songs directly on napkins in restaurants, so as not to lose any of his inspiration."

"Our destiny is always in our name. Rino Gaetano has two first names: Rino and Gaetano. When you address someone by their first name, it is because you know them, because they are a friend. He even has two [...] Rino and Gaetano, one cheerful and one sad, one studious and one who ends up behind the blackboard, one tender and one sarcastic, one committed and one who doesn't care. Two brothers, two only children, as we all are in a way. Unique."

"I remember everything. Sanremo, the top hat and striped shirt, the explorer's hat. I love hats, and maybe it's his fault."

"It was precisely this attitude that struck me when I heard the first “things” from a young man from Crotone who, wearing a strange hat, enjoyed teasing people with his own songs, which were beautiful songs. It seems a bit of a jumbled thought, but I hope it conveys the idea of what this young man from Crotone, “named” Rino Gaetano, seemed to me to be doing. So I began to “play him” (radio language of the time...) and talk about him in newspaper columns in the weekly magazines of the same period. I was thrilled once again that Gaetano invented ‘the other song’, the song of the song, that he pursued the rhymes that first came to mind... (and therefore the most inspired...). That he sang everything with ease and lightness; even that some people didn't like Gaetano; this thrilled me."

"Gaetano wrote some of the songs that are part of our country's memory. Songs of memory are important, think, I don't know, ‘Zazà’, ‘I papaveri alti alti’ are songs of memory that were not commercially successful or whatever, but they do not live only in the space of a fashion, of a period, they are the ones that remain in the collective memory, they are handed down orally."

"When I got Rino Gaetano's record, I was delighted because I found someone who was as unconventional as me. In reality, those were years when singer-songwriters were committed; if you weren't “committed”—a cursed word, damnably fashionable—you were out of the loop. But then Rino Gaetano came along with his seemingly uncommitted songs."

"He adopted an atypical, clownish style, but he didn't do cabaret. He constantly desecrated pop music and, for all these reasons, he was unthinkable for the Folkstudio audience."

"It was like this: you sing, sing... say, say... talk... and I'll take you all for..."

"With his guitar, he began to play [Imitating the rhythm of ‘'Ma il cielo è sempre più’'] and began to sing “il cielo è sempre più blu” (the sky is bluer and bluer) and we all went enthusiastically to Vincenzo Micocci: “Vince', look, this guy has written a little piece that could really work,” we told him. Micocci wasn't so convinced."

"I think that in the category of, let's say, “songwriters,” he was the most unusual one."

"He was hitchhiking with his guitar slung over his shoulder, and I gave him a ride to Rome, where he was going to look for a contract. He played me a preview of his songs, and I took him to Vincenzo Micocci, who then launched him."

"I met Rino Gaetano through De Gregori and Venditti, but he started going to the studio without me mentioning him because, how can I put it, he was somewhat protected by the two people I was working with a lot at the time."

"Interviewer: Don't you think that by saying ‘'Nuntereggae più'’ you risk being accused of populism? Gaetano: You risk populism when you attribute the effect of a political rally to a song, not when you think you're writing a song about happy times, evasive [...] My songs are love songs for society."

"He considered himself a songwriter, not a singer. He was convinced he didn't have a good voice, so much so that after the release of ‘I Love You Maryanna’, when it was time to record his first album, he came to me and said it would be better to have a friend sing his songs. Of course, I laughed and sent him to the studio."

"People remember him, the years go by and he becomes important. It's alchemy, it's truly indecipherable. In my opinion, it's his artistic freedom, his refusal to belong to any code."

"There is the song Nuntereggae più, which is also a very entertaining song, but he had the courage of his convictions and never backed down: he named names, at a time when naming names was very difficult."

"(Referring to some of his songs) “Here there is no Gianna, Aida, or Berta spinning | and when the sun sets, Maria is already gone. | Despite the changes, this sky is always blue, | it is always the color you left it.”"