Magazine

it's the emigrated dark miner down there

his song is the song of an exile.

 
A felt homage to De Andrè with Hotel Supramonte precedes Gianmaria's last song, Come al cielo gli aeroplani [Like the Planes to the Sky], the only unpublished piece from his album Da Solo.

We say goodbye to Gianmaria, calmy, without rushing to go away. 
 
A breath of fresh air in front of Joe's Pub brings us back to the previous day, when we met for a long chat and a glass of wine at Epistrophy, a small Sardinian restaurant in SoHo, owned by Luca Fadda...

There are two Americas for me. The first one is relatable to a typical expression from Piedmont: when someone suddenly gains a fortune, he is asked if he discovered America. Or else we say “you were lucky, you discovered America”... Because America is synonymous to emigration, fortune seeking... 

The other one, namely the United States, is the one I saw when I came here for the first time in 2005. I went on tour and played in Chicago, Cleveland and Los Angeles. I was strongly prejudiced about everything America represents: imperialism, capitalism... then when I got to New York I had to change my mind. I took in its beauty: I would never have imagined, beyond scenes from movies that I knew, that a series of huge boxes apparently randomly placed in Manhattan, could touch me like that. It's the fourth time I return here and I'm always bewildered. 
 

What made you decide to do your album launching here?

Curiosity. A good part of my musical education derives from the American musical culture. From Leonard Cohen to Bob Dylan: I had trouble understanding the lyrics, but the emotional charge of their music pushed me to reflect upon them and understand their message. You could feel that those songs were deep just by hearing the music.

Singer-songwriter, poet, or artist?

I'm not an artist, who is able to look at the world and narrate it to people. An artist is someone like Van Gogh who paints sunflowers. When you look at them, you find them exactly how you always imagined them. But he is the one who is giving shape to your fantasy: without him, you would never have seen them like that.

Today the word “artist”  is strongly misunderstood... and devaluated. Today, anyone who goes on television is defined as “artist”, while maybe he is only doing correct communication or, worse, saying what he is told to say, lies. Artists, on the contrary, usually disregard any kind of rule and follow an impulse that is almost a disease. That is why they are usually poor and sad, because they aren't similar to anyone, they are outside of their own time, are already “beyond” present. 
 

Speaking about artists, how do you think the Italian musical panorama is changing, even considering the latest Sanremos?

Music has become the mirror of the disastrous Italian situation. This was confirmed by the latest regional elections. It's as if people have lost contact with idealism and – for example – turn to realities such as the Lega Nord. I don't know why all this is happening, but luckily there are still a few who resist and manifest their ideas.

Sanremo is a mirror of this decadence, although it isn't masquerades like this that worry me. They are only the reflection of an existing stagnant situation. The music known in Italy is the one that appears, that goes on television and on the radio and surely it's a victim of a market force which is much stronger than the idea of creativity and communication. If my pieces aren't played often on the radio it's because they aren't radio-friendly. But it doesn't worry me, because often the radio-friendliness of a song is inversely proportional to its quality.

Luckily there are still Italian singers and musicians that express quality and sincerity. I'm thinking, for example, of Vinicio Capossela who often surprises me. He is one of those who have brought back dignity into Italian music. 
 

Piracy is damaging the recording industry in Italy and abroad. There's no doubt about the fact that this phenomenon is hurting this slice of the market, but what effects does this have on the actual music?

To begin with, I want to make it clear that I cannot have anything against piracy. I'm convinced that if you like a piece or an album, even if you have downloaded it, you will then go out and buy it. On the contrary, I might even say that it would be terrific if piracy could help the listener to skim through what is available, giving him the opportunity to download, before buying only the discs he actually likes.

 
I've been insulted by many people in the industry who accused me of biting the hand that was feeding me, but I believe that if something is possible and accessible, a person will do it and do it well. I don't see why I should spend 20 Euros to buy an album, when I can download it, especially if I then discover I don't like it.

I would like to talk about one last thing, immigration, a theme which is very present in your music and the subject of a whole album of yours, Da questa parte del mare. To begin with, you have been traveling with your music for years. Would you define yourself as a migrant?

There is no possible comparison between myself and the people I write about in my music. To move about is a choice of mine, while for them it's an imposition.

I wrote an album about this theme to remind Italians about their past as immigrants during now that Italy has become a country that receives migratory flows.

Between 1870 and 1960 fifty million Italians left the country. This means that there is another Italy outside of Italy and that there is more Italian blood in Toronto than in Bologna, more in Sau Paulo in Brazil than in Cremona. And this is not because Italians were great navigators, but simply because they were hungry, had to feed their children, and went where this was possible.

We all know that they had to suffer insults and abuses practically everywhere and this is exactly why I expected that Italians themselves would behave differently than they are in fact behaving.

Of course I'm not so naïve to think that such a massive immigration doesn't create problems, but I thought that these people would have been welcomed with open arms, without prejudices and discriminatory behaviors. I imagined that they would have been treated as decent people, which they are, until told otherwise.