musicians-from-italy

"My roots are important. I think of a blank sheet of paper on which I draw a dot with a pencil. It is essential to be able to recognise oneself in a more general context. But if globalisation means taking into account the positive aspects of many realities, I continue to be Lucano, but I am open to what others can teach me. Therefore, as someone once said, I become a citizen of the world without losing the link with my origins."

"(About Giorgio Gaber) A multifaceted artist to the point of confusing and mixing within himself his being a great actor and great singer, and then a mime, and then a subtle reciter, and then again a man with an unmistakable vocal timbre, marked like the brushstrokes of a great painter."

"I have always respected Mango, a virtuoso and decent singer, always on stage performing his art, right up to the end."

"I didn't know him very well personally. I met him a few times, but I was enchanted by his talent and his unique voice. I saw many of his concerts. Once, at the Sistina in Rome, I was in the audience and at the end his brother Armando, whom I knew better, approached me and took me to his dressing room to meet him. I went in and saw him putting his things in a bag. He smiled at me and shook my hand with simplicity and warmth. My village is 19 km from his, which made him my closest idol. I adore his songs, his inimitable style, his notes that pierce the glass of my soul like diamonds."

"He was a generous artist. He had a kind heart and exceptional sensitivity, as all of Italy saw when he felt ill on stage. He was a true Lucanian, a different kind of artist with a unique quality that cannot be found even in other great artists."

"If you listen to Mango's records now, you realise that he is a world number one."

"Words take up our fears and certainties, organising them in such a way as to give them a completely new life and colour: from time to time, they precipitate and climb them like new rural and urban destinies, as if they were mists drowned by the sun and distributed over the heads of real and uncertain men."

"One of the most beautiful voices in the Mediterranean."

"(About Mango) I started out in the 1980s singing Lei Verrà in piano bars. It was one of the songs that gave me the chance to start my musical career. The news of his death is shocking. Mango will always be remembered as a great artist, because death cannot silence a voice and a song."

"I hate covers and the term “cover” because it means remaking songs. It's a concept that will never work because the comparison with the original, rightly considered untouchable, is inevitable, and it's also a bit stupid to make comparisons [...]. I try to discover the core of songs and make them my own with my style."

"But why, in Italy, does a great artist have to die before he is recognised?"

"Mango's death is one of the most touching moments I can remember. An artist who feels ill on stage, apologises to the audience for the disturbance before dying is absolutely incredible. Of course, Mango's style was far from mine, but I wanted to celebrate the person, the artist who was true to himself until the very last minute, with incredible respect for his audience."

"Metaphorically speaking, one could say that Mango plays the part of an elf who moves nimbly and stealthily in a complex architectural environment, without knocking over the crystal glassware whose exact location only he knows, in a very pictorial and never banal vocal-instrumental ensemble. In his case, one can speak of “a voice that becomes an instrument with special modulations”."

"In Gaber, the solidarity between words and sound becomes a gesture and a place in which to push the song: and thus Teatro Canzone is born, intelligent cabaret made up of sound and satire, daily tears and ancestral smiles, artistic paintings and popular songs. With Giorgio Gaber, words traverse the space of life and passionately engage in dialectical encounter with the voice of the heart: just like those who know that words are silk pyjamas, and the night is the altar that takes on their contours."

"Mango was a unique case in Italian pop music: he was able to combine refined melodies with a touch of vocal experimentalism and a sprinkling of ethnic influences, without losing sight of rock or singer-songwriter music, genres from which he always carefully avoided drawing any effects, chords or practices that were in any way predictable."

"He had a heavenly, world-class voice: if he had been born in a country other than Italy, he could have been even more successful. But he was happy at home, in Lagonegro. He was a quiet guy [...] Italian music has lost something very important, something he perhaps never fully understood. His full potential was never realised."

"I am a believer in my own way: I cannot believe that everything is born and ends, otherwise life would have no reason to exist; I do not bother with divinities, I believe first and foremost in man. I do not choose this or that confession: religions create too many prejudices."

"(About the album entitled L'albero delle Fate) In my mind, the L'Albero delle Fate is a tree that we should all climb to reach the highest branch and pick the most beautiful, most important fruit. All adults should strive to rediscover the Tree of Fairies. It is, if you like, a metaphor for the imagination we have as children but lose as we grow up. Without imagination, man is nothing."

"My relationship with communication is good in some ways and disastrous in others. Those who participate in Sanremo, for example, have four minutes to tell you a little about their world. Television is a truly absurd medium, capable of destroying any type of artist."

"Naples is not a city, it is a world. Naples is not only in Naples, you can find it everywhere, even in Germany. The ‘Neapolitan spirit’ is unique. It is clear that every city has its own warmth, Naples has it but in a different way, this city experiences things passionately, with a love that is different from all others. I cannot say whether it is better or worse than other places, but Naples is certainly different."

"I started out in the 1980s singing “Lei Verrà” in piano bars. It was one of the songs that gave me the chance to start my musical career. The news of his death is shocking. Mango will always be remembered as a great artist, because death cannot silence a voice and a song."

"What is produced today is mostly modest. Music has become tribal: fewer and fewer elements are used, and songs are monotonous."

"(About the Sanremo Festival) It has gone from being a song festival to a product festival. This is a consequence of the rapid obsolescence of lyrics: once upon a time, an artist dreamed of finding a song that would remain in their repertoire forever. Today, what matters is doing something that works immediately."

"(About the song Ti lascio una canzone) Gino wanted to pay tribute to Ornella Vanoni as a seal on their story. I loved the idea: even before it was born, that song already had a life of its own. He wrote the lyrics, I wrote the music. Paoli was like a cat: you never knew whether he was going to scratch you or purr."

"In Neapolitan tradition, mandolins, guitars and accordions were part of everyday life, just like kitchen utensils."

"As a composer, he enriched violin music by his numerous concertos and sonatas, and by a few dainty songs. However, it is as a virtuoso and as the founder of modern violin playing that Viotti will be remembered."

"Pippo was powerful, demanding and competent. If he didn't like one of the arrangements, we would go back and write until late at night. [The Sanremo Festival] was his home: just think, one morning I caught him moving a flower box at the theatre entrance."

"(Speaking of Giorgio Gaber) In the mid-1970s, we spent wonderful evenings talking and playing poker until morning. Giorgio was an impressive listener. He was extremely intelligent, curious, and open-minded. Being a perfectionist, he could not stand (and in this he was fierce) incivility, incompetence, sloppiness, delinquency as a philosophy of life... And then there was corrupt politics. [...] The passing of such a man in our midst was, for me, yet another proof that life is not a matter of chance."

"The crisis in human beings is decisive, otherwise existence is useless. I have taken refuge in what is called metaphysics because I am someone who believes that human beings are immortal."

"Inner evolution has no party. Those who want me on one side or the other do not appreciate my music, and if they think they do, it is a misunderstanding. In 1982, during a concert in Verona, I sang “Centro di gravita' permanente” and found myself surrounded by four thousand outstretched arms: it was mind-blowing. However, the left has committed crimes as horrible as those of the right throughout the world."

"I came to understand certain things after many years of study and research, and through my experiences. Afterwards, reintroducing myself to society was not easy. I had trouble recognizing human beings when I was on the street or on the tram. It was strange: I didn't understand if I was crazy or a mystic. But I realized that the journey on this planet is decisive. We must escape the rules of the universe."

"If you are unable to watch something different from yourself, it is because you need an enemy. Italian politics has influenced certain attitudes in this regard. In Venice, it has always been this way since Fellini onwards. Once, the police had to rescue Carmelo Bene because they wanted to kill him. They uprooted the chairs in the cinema."

"I am naturally a contemplative person. Scents and the air are like a remote control that turns off the world for me."

"Morgan is a very knowledgeable guy, I would say a complete musician because he also has a classical background, and this helps a lot, because as the saying goes, “the more you know, the more you're worth,” and if you also have talent, as in his case, that's it."

"Interviewer: “How much did Battiato influence your career?” Alice: A great deal. Before meeting Franco, I probably would have stopped singing because I had already tried twice and failed to achieve what I wanted."

"In the 1980s, Franco and I had common interests beyond music. We had both arrived, by different paths, at the teachings of the philosopher and mystic Gurdjieff. In 1981, I was given his book ‘'Meetings with Remarkable Men’', and it took me two years before I opened it: I read it in one sitting. I was finally ready."

"My desire was to be an instrument of what Franco conveyed musically and what he communicated. This is fundamental for me: what Franco left us is a precious gift that must be watered, nourished, and kept alive forever, even if there were no need to do so. His records, his films, and his paintings bear witness to his thoughts and his culture. He called himself a “man of music.” He was unique."

"He is a great personality, a national treasure, the representative of the best Sicilian and Italian culture."

"Battiato [...] is considered an intellectual author, but if you analyze his lyrics, they are complete nonsense: quotes upon quotes with no real meaning."

"Una canzone del 1991 del cantautore Battiato, intitolata Povera patria, riuscì a cogliere in anticipo lo spirito dei tempi. L'Italia vi era rappresentata «schiacciata dagli abusi del potere | di gente infame che non sa cos'è il pudore», abitata da «governanti, quanti perfetti e inutili buffoni!», ma «la primavera tarda ad arrivare [...] non cambierà, non cambierà, | no cambierà, forse cambierà». Dalla canzone Viva l'Italia del 1979 di De Gregori, in cui era orgogliosamente rivendicata, con esplicito riferimento alla strage di piazza Fontana, «l'Italia del 12 dicembre, | l'Italia con le bandiere, l'Italia nuda come sempre, | l'Italia con gli occhi aperti nella notte triste, | viva l'Italia, l'Italia che resiste», erano trascorsi soltanto dodici anni, ma quelle parole sembravano provenire da un'altra epoca. La percezione di questa sfasatura temporale derivava dal fatto che la canzone di De Gregori illuminava il passato della nazione mentre quella di Battiato il suo futuro: come se in quell'arco di tempo sospeso e improvvisamente dilatato, l'Italia fosse stata presa in un vortice, sollevata da un turbine e poi precipitata giù."

"And then culture is a difficult word to interpret. We are one of those countries that has only thought about stealing."

"‘’Il Gioco dell'Eroe‘’ by Gianluca Magi is a large stone thrown into a still pond. An invitation to inner life and its (inevitable) evolutionary transmutation."

"The extraordinary and disastrous event, albeit pleasantly bizarre, is death. One day I will die silently, I will enter esoteric and synoptic spaces, moving in siderurgical and negotiable conditions. Farewell world, I will say then. I am dead forever."

"He once came to visit us in Montreux while we were recording Zero, and we spent two wonderful days with him, during which he taught us so much. I, [...] am always looking for a father figure. Not only in music: he took us to a Middle Eastern restaurant, where he ordered in Arabic. But somehow, we managed to take him to McDonald's: he had never been there before. We let him try fries with ketchup. At first he was suspicious, but he took a fry, dipped it in ketchup, and said, “Guys, this is delicious! What have I been missing...”"

"Morgan is not a carbon copy of the Americans or the British, but an independent thinker, and it's nice to hear him speak."

"I have been a committed vegetarian for many years, I can't even remember how many. Even as a child I refused to eat meat, I just didn't like it. [...] Over time, being vegetarian has become an existential necessity. I can no longer eat something that is close to human sensitivity. And one day, long ago, I realized that my choice was irreversible. [...] Also because I see the results on my health and my mental state. Since I banned meat and fish, I have had better dreams, and I know for sure that it depends on the food I eat."

"There are storytellers from the island, such as Bufalino, Sgalambro, Tomasi di Lampedusa, who made their debut late in life. It is as if, for years, they had pointed a large telescope at the surrounding world. Then, drawing on their reserves and giving us, as Bufalino does, novels of overflowing sensuality, a Dionysian Sicily, full of flavors and colors."

"The bad moments I've had in my life have only been cosmological in nature. Once during the night I got up, came into this room and looked my fear in the face, carefully, and the crisis was resolved. It's not easy, because at that moment you feel like a being thrown into nothingness, you have no ties to anything. It is the dark night of St. John of the Cross, suffering that seems insurmountable, unbearable, and yet you can overcome it in the blink of an eye. Just remember that we are impermanent. We think we are eternal, and that is our misfortune. They don't teach us how to die in school; the ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, built a civilization around death."

"(Speaking of the reality show ‘'L'isola dei famosi’') I don't want to feel intelligent watching idiots, I want to feel like an idiot watching intelligent people."

"We are faced with a double temptation when viewing his [pictorial] works: on the one hand, we would like to indulge in a naive judgment, unaccompanied by the clamor that comes from his legend as a musician, singer, and poet; on the other hand, we feel that we cannot escape this legend, as it necessarily conspires to give us the complete portrait of the man. In other words, if we were to try to channel Battiato's painting into a convenient bed of neo-primitivism, forgetting the operational and intellectual richness that underpins it, it would risk appearing to us as the hobby of an episodic and half-hearted artist; whereas, on the contrary, observing it with both eyes, those of nature and those of culture, we will see its colors marry affectionately with the notes, words, and meditations of the author, and in this alliance, not to say connivance, explain to us the unmistakable signature of a soul."