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Klick auf die Bilder zum
Zoomen...
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Konversation mit Claudio Baglioni
- New York - 16.12.2010
Eine
Konversation mit Claudio Baglioni:
Klick auf das Bild zum
Zoomen...
Claudio
Baglioni, einer der beliebtesten Künstler in der Geschichte
der
populären italienischen Musik, tourt um den Globus mit seiner
"Un
Solo Mondo - One World 2010" und wird in New York City am Freitag, 17.
Dezember (Angel Orensanz Stiftung) auftreten. Bei dieser Gelegenheit
wird Claudio die Öffentlichkeit treffen, um das Thema "Musik als universelle
Sprache, die die Welt vereinen kann" zu
diskutieren. Die Diskussion wird geleitet vonLetizia Airos, Journalist
(i-Italien), Mario Platero Journalist (Il Sole 24ore) und Tiziana
Rinadi (Journalistin).
Wann: 16.Dezember 16, 2010, 18:00
Uhr,
Adresse: Casa
Italian Zerilli Marimò - 24W, 12th St, Manhattan, New York,
NY10011 - Google maps
Telefon: +1-212- 998-8730
Organisator: www.CasaItalianaNYU.org
A. C. (January
4, 2011)
Photos by Laura Razzano
Friendly, ironic, critical and fun. Claudio Baglioni met his fans at
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò of New York University on the
eve of his final American concert of his world tour 'One World', at the
Angel Orensanz Foundation. Letizia Airos (Editor in Chief of i-Italy),
Mario Platero (correspondent for Il Sole 24 ore) and writer Tiziana
Rinaldi Castro interviewed his before letting the public ask questions,
as well.
After
120,000 kilometers of traveling around the world, with concerts in five
continents, Baglioni arrived
in New York to perform a solo concert, “because this kind of
theaters has certain acoustics that allow for this kind of choice. I
also wanted to give my musicians a break”.
From Brussels to Tokyo,
from Australia to South America, Baglioni met those Italians that
are spread around the world. “There is a strong
connection, a beautiful sensation. Italy should have a new unification
in this spirit, beginning in 2011”. The author is very
attached to the concept of the voyage and of migrations.
In
Lampedusa he created the O'Scià project, an artistic project
(which up until now saw the participation of over 300 artists and is
supported by many important international organizations, such as the
Red Cross and Amnesty International, as well as many NGOs),
“to promote the culture of dialogue. We live in times of fear
and the real problem is that people lack mutual respect and they tend
to seek refuge with power. I have always preferred thinking about
'power' as an action: the 'power' to do something. Unfortunately, it is
used mainly as an object, 'the power' as a refuge in a temple within
which lies a serious crisis among interpersonal relations”.
Baglioni
underlined how the commitment of artists in good causes should not be
considered an extraordinary fact, or at least worth of merit.
“It must be done. It's like paying taxes. It is necessary. It
is the first form of solidarity. We are only amplifiers of a more
intense work that others do. We are like trumpeters of an army, but the
true battles are won by others”.
The
curiosity of the public concentrated on his lyric writing. With
surprising honesty, the artist admitted how he pays more attention to
the melody of the words than to their content. “When I write
I am terrorized by the words. I would be very happy to not have to use
them. I use words to add musicality to the musical writing. I look for
linguistic games and the idea of narrating something is not a
priority”.
A
warm public supported him for the whole event with applauses, questions
and a lively interest towards the topics. He received a portrait from
an audience member, and many were moved remembering the lyrics of his
songs, the soundtrack of a lifetime.
Interview mit Claudio Baglioni
Letizia
Airos & Maria Rita Latto (December
8, 2010)
Shangai, Expo Padiglione Italia. Claudio Baglioni in concert
One of the most beloved artists in Italian
popular music history speaks with us from Rome about his tour which
will come to New York with a much-anticipated concert at the Angel
Orensanz Foundation. There will also be a talk with Baglioni at Casa
Italiana Zerilli-Marimò on December 16.
His
voice comes on after a brief musical pause. The notes are those of
“there is only one world and it’s only one world
and we are only one world in flight for a
century….”
Unmistakable, he apologizes
for the slight delay. He greets me and dives into the conversation. He
has a full, rich voice which almost makes the distance disappear. Like
a close friend, he talks about his upcoming concert in New York, his
worldwide tour, his return to Italy, emigration, and the world he saw
abroad.
“One
World” is Claudio Baglioni’s first international
tour after about twenty years. Let's begin by asking why. Why did he
wait so long?
“I ask myself that, too.
It’s a shame. I stopped touring for a long time, or at least
I have worked on more local projects. About twenty years ago I had a
sort of identity crisis. One can decide to go, moving from one part of
the world to another, but still fail to capture the different
sensations that every single place offers. The world seemed the same to
me in every city – no surprises, no particular emotion. So I
said, better to cultivate a closer relationship with audiences nearby.
And then finally the tour in 2010...so there’s a bit of
regret but there’s also a reason related to having an
identity crisis in both artistic and human terms.
And so this tour came about. Why did
you choose the name "One World?"
I
like to think that there can be only one world. The title is taken from
a song chosen as a symbol of the world swimming championships that were
held in Rome. I’ve written many anthems for sporting and
music events. There’s a verse that says, “There is
only one world,” which expresses this feeling of how close we
are in this global world.
In
“One World,” there is also the concept of a
musician as one world with one orchestra – the orchestra of
humanity, of all the people who play the same symphony with their own
instruments.
Five continents. So we can say that you
took physically but also mentally. What inspired you after all this
time?
The
idea of going around the world to perform concerts in seventy-nine days
– it’s been quite a challenge. To tackle eighty
days, that is, Jules Verne’s famous trip around the world,
and then beat that record. Let’s say that these emotions
became superimposed on the journey.
It
was a very quick trip, and so at the end of it I'll need to review
everything to go deeper. It revved me up a lot because the trip was so
demanding. On the one hand it took a lot of stamina, but it also
inspired me and my friends to go on new adventures.
On
this tour you met ordinary people, but you also met representatives
from institutions and international cultural initiatives. Did you feel
a little like an ambassador with the mission of helping to share rather
than divide the world?
I wanted to experience the trip both as a musician and as a world
citizen; I wanted to delve deeper into the itinerary. Every place can
give you an understanding and awareness that you did not have before,
and so everywhere I went, I tried to meet with representatives,
especially from Italian cultural institutes.
The role of ambassador is a great responsibility. More than anything,
like any other traveler, I was motivated to share rather than divide.
And I really experienced a great deal of satisfaction, sometimes even
greater than a round of applause. On the whole, it was very positive
– not so much as an ambassador but as someone who traveled
and experienced many different situations.
What
do you think about before a concert, just before going on stage?
It depends. There is never a concert that is exactly like another, and
there is never a situation that is the same as another. Sometimes
things happen and you cannot predict their magnitude and so the
unexpected creates a bit of fear.
Let’s say that there is a responsibility to be there. Whether
it’s a small place or a large stadium, there are always other
people on the other side of the curtain.
You feel that someone has already given you his or her trust and love,
and therefore you have the responsibility to respond to so much
friendship, curiosity, respect. You must also be physically fit; a
concert is like a sports competition – you have to be in top
shape.
And I always feel this great privilege and honor every time I go
onstage. I say, “It went really well. The heavens smiled down
on me because I was given the opportunity to have a beautiful career
– the honor of playing for the people.”
It
seems that the emotion you felt the first few times has hardly
changed...
The thrill has remained the same. The attitude is a little different.
Let’s say that the general emotion now is no longer panic. It
helps to focus, to be there at that place, to make every show as unique
as possible. Never the same as before.
From the stage
to the street. You’ve also organized special events, given
away albums in airports, performed impromptu concerts, and played on
public busses. Would you like to do something like that in New York?
I
once dressed in drag as a sort of “macaroni
Canadian,” and I sang in the central gallery in Naples,
opening my guitar case like a street musician. I pulled several like
these. Once in a truck driving through the Roman suburbs….
I did it for the sake of the game. In a career like this,
it’s very important. Success is likely to go to your head,
and it’s not easy to manage.
After forty years it can also get repetitive. But it should be
extremely varied, artistic, passionate work. And so levity is
necessary, and that you don’t take it too seriously.
And so in New
York, where would you do it?
The subway is always possible. But it would be a less of a challenge
because of the lack of popularity. In a country where you are not as
recognizable, it doesn’t work as well.
How
did you choose your songs for the tour?
There’s
a basic repertoire that I change a little from country to country. For
example, in South America there are songs that are part of the
collective memory. The basic criterion is that of a concert anthology.
It's like taking forty years of songs, music, words, arrangements and
styles, the recognizable and popular tunes. All of this goes along with
the possibility of inventing something at the last minute.
What do you think about the Italians
abroad who you’ve met on this tour?
Sometimes one feels a strong sense of being Italian more so
outside of Italy. Italians abroad seem to be more Italian than those of
us who live in Italy permanently. There is a huge community all over,
in North and South America, in Australia, as well as in Europe.
There are several generations who often do not even speak Italian but
have the same bond in spite of the language, which has receded a bit.
Next year we are celebrating 150 years since the unification of Italy.
But in Italy there is a sense of alienation that is still very
palpable.
And
Italians abroad have been abandoned long ago. They didn’t
have the proper tools to better cultivate this bond. For example, they
still don’t get much of contemporary Italian culture, popular
culture, cinema, theater, and popular music itself.
This is a shame for many reasons, and it’s not just
nostalgia. The affection for one’s country of origin is
forever repaid because the feeling remains very intense.
On the other hand, I’ve had many surprises like the concert
in Tokyo with 85% of the Japanese audience singing my songs in Italian,
as well as in the United States, Canada, and South America. There are
so many Italians who do not speak Italian but who still know the words
to my songs.
It’s
a pity to lose the language; it’s not just a matter of
communication, it’s also a question of culture, lifestyle.
You like to
quote the Seneca tribe: “The earth is only one country: we
are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same
garden.” Your sensitivity towards emigration has inspired you
to become the promoter of “O’
Scià,” an initiative that could be defined as a
music festival in the most simplistic terms. Can you tell our
Italian-American readers about “O’
Scià?”
It’s hard to explain it even after eight festivals.
It’s a musical event that has social, political significance.
Usually artists are accustomed to a “one shot”
deal. This event began underground; I started it on a small beach on
Lampedusa, the most southern island in Italy and probably in Europe,
the closest to Africa. It began with the idea of getting involved to
promote integration and interaction, to work together, and to get along
together. And all this happened on Lampedusa because Lampedusa has
become something of a geographic symbol of illegal immigration.
So
I started calling many of my colleagues, not just singers, but also
musicians, actors. They wanted to witness landing on the island, this
joyous landing in which we declared a culture of peaceful coexistence
and solidarity, of looking at the integration of cultures as enrichment.
The United States is a classic example where they have worked on
integration albeit with many difficulties. It’s not easy but
it’s an undertaking that can succeed in Europe with
intelligence and patience.
And
then there are places where many different cultures and ethnicities
have become a treasure. And so we brought together more than three
hundred artists from all over the world.
In dialect,
“o’scià” means
“my breath,” breath like the wind, like something
that tickles the heart, that inspires emotion.
I’m so proud of this event. I even brought it to the European
Parliament with a debate, an international press conference. We also
organized several special concerts on Malta and we plan to go to Africa
in the next few years.
It’s a non-stop music festival that takes place over five
days and nights, a sort of Italian-style Woodstock Italian with music
and spoken word on a crowded beach.
We artists are very lucky people, and so we put into practice the idea
of a more peaceful world that looks confidently toward the future.
Music can
break down barriers but your music has something special. It has
succeeded in uniting different cultures but also the varied tastes of
different generations. What’s the secret?
This
is a kind of miracle that I will never understand. I’ve
always done this work thinking that it wasn’t a job, so I
continued as an amateur who had to learn more. But I have also tried to
put everything I knew into it – the emotions I felt,
attention to the details of every performance. I’ve tried to
change the invitation every time, as if I were a travel agent who
didn’t want to bring people to the same place.
Every trip has to have a different destination, with a different idea
for its structure. And my music has withstood the test of time. Indeed,
I have seen it; sometimes there are four or five generations at one
concert. Clearly, the younger ones may have been forced to go by their
parents or older siblings.... But I think this is also due to the fact
that I have not followed trends, and I have always done what I thought
was best and what I could succeed in doing.
Another reason for my success is that I’ve worked with very
diverse musicians, from different genres and from many countries around
the world.
What advice would you give to a young
Italian who wants to become a musician?
It’s a difficult time, certainly because there is a crisis of
creativity in general around the world. In the last twenty, thirty
years things have happened that have revolutionized modern art and
artistic discipline. Everything that happens now is a revised repeat of
what has already happened in the last century.
But
there are many talented performers in Italy even though there are fewer
composers. Italian music, especially in South America, Spain, and Japan
in the ‘70s had a strong influence. We were almost considered
masters.
Giving advice today is not easy; there are so many avenues that
it’s not hard to get noticed but it’s hard to have
staying power. There is a sort of bulimia where a little bit of
everything is consumed at top speed.
First, you must be very well prepared to do this job, very curious, a
little courageous and not just do what works but sometimes defy public
taste. You have to be as honest as possible – this is
fundamental. When you begin a career like this, in the long run,
something that is not true does not last.
Is there a premise for your creative
process on this trip?
I hope so. I undertook it for that reason, as well.
In the last three or four years, while doing concerts I was working on
a mammoth project, a work inspired by “This Little Big
Love.” I made a double album, I reworked the story, I wrote
many unpublished songs, and I recorded fifty-two songs. It’s
a modern musical work in which I involved another seventy Italian
artists such as Mina, Bocelli, Pausini, Jovanotti – the list
is endless.
So
I really needed a physical journey to find a creative stimulus. I think
my trip will be significant, but I can’t yet say how. On the
31st, I will finish this trip around the world in the city where I
live, where I was born, in Rome on Via dei Fori Imperiali.
They’re expecting nearly a half million people, so it will be
a great end to this whole story. A return home, and then I’ll
disappear, literally, because I’m working on a new project.
After a kind of lethargy in the’90s where I got a little
contemplative, this is my healthy desire to accomplish something.
So the last leg of Baglioni’s world tour will be in New York.
I say good-bye to him after a long conversation that could have easily
continued. The editors say that it’s long, but
they’ll publish it in its entirety.
A voice for three generations.
Claudio Baglioni@the Angel Orensanz Foundation
Maria Rita Latto (November 25, 2010)
 |
| A young Claudio Baglioni |
A
constant protagonist of the Italian musical scene since the late
Sixties, Claudio Baglioni, after 50 years of music and a successful
world tour, finally arrives in New York for a special concert on
December 17 at the Angel Orensanz Foundation.
Describing
Claudio Baglioni is a bit like describing one self, especially if one
was an adolescent during the early Seventies, when Italy was living its
economic boom and was about to enter a difficult era, transitioning
from optimism to the strategy of tension, and finally to the so-called
Years of Lead.
It
was an Italy where the music of the younger generation was still
traditionally melodic, even though some singer-songwriters were
beginning to emerge with a new sound, less catchy, with lyrics that
suggested unusual topics for those years, sometimes intimate, and the
opposite of the then usual “papaveri, papere”
[poppies and ducks] and “mille bolle blu” [a
thousand blue bubbles] sorts. It was in this period of Italian
transition that Claudio Baglioni's brilliant career began. He was a
young singer-songwriter from a common family: his father was a petty
officer of the Carabinieri, and his mother was a housewife who did some
tailoring on the side.
Even as a child Claudio showed a
precocious passion for music and song that convinced him (with the help
of his parents) to participate in many competitions for new voices.
At just age thirteen, in 1964, Baglioni
took part in “Voci nuove di Centocelle” [New voices
of Centocelle], a vocal competition that took place in his own
neighborhood of Centocelle, just outside Rome: on that occasion he
performed “Ogni volta” [Every Time] by Paul Anka.
He tried again the following year and actually won, with “I
tuoi anni più belli” [Your best years], the piece
sung at Sanremo that year by Gene Pitney and Iva Zanicchi. Other
competitions followed, such as the “Festival degli
sconosciuti” [Festival of Unknowns] in Ariccia, Rome, and
performances in small cinemas of the Roman outskirts as well as
parishes, always in front of a really small public, to which he
proposed a mix of protest songs, from the Beatles and Bertolt Brecht,
to the poems of Pablo Neruda and Cesare Pavese.
In
1969 producer Antonio Coggio, for RCA, signed Baglioni for the
recording of his debut disc, a 45 rpm containing “Una favola
blu” [A Blue Fable] and “Signora Lia”
[Mrs. Lia]. The latter was entirely composed by the young artist. After
another single, “Io, una ragazza e la gente” [Me, a
Girl and the People], and the vocal participation in the soundtrack of
Franco Zeffirelli's movie Brother Sun, Siter Moon,
he published his first album which was such a flop that it was
withdrawn from the market after only a few months.
However,
luckily for us, his passion was strong and Baglioni pushed forward
until 1972, when he released “Questo piccolo grande
amore” [This Little Big Love], a concept album in which the
several songs are linked to each other by a single story. It was an
immediate success that reached the top positions of Italy's hit parade
and defined him as the Italian Romantic
Singer-songwriter par excellence. When the 45 rpm reached one million
sold copies, he released a new album entitled “Gira che ti
rigira amore bello” [All Things Considered Beautiful Love].
This was also a great success, with a theme and a prominent song,
“Amore bello” [Beautiful Love]. This time the plot
is a young man traveling aimlessly in a yellow Citroen 2CV named
'Camilla', a car Baglioni actually owns.
From
that moment on Claudio Baglioni's career was unstoppable; album after
album he gained notoriety and within a public that appreciated his
originality, and his attempts to experiment new musical languages,
questioning himself and trying to grow out of the label of
“the singer with the thin t-shirt”. Baglioni speaks
about love, but tries to overcome the typical
“romantic” clichès, digging deeper,
describing melancholies, concerns, and disillusions of those who feel
love.
His
constant research of new expressive methods led to “Ninna
nanna” [Lullaby] in 1974, in which the music accompanied a
poem by Trilussa. In “Poster”, on the other hand,
he introduced the idea of “going far away”, as
expressed by the chorus in which the voice takes flight beyond the
routine in which the protagonists lives day by day.
Baglioni
demonstrated from the start his wish to not only concentrate on the
topic of love, but also on the world around him. In 1981, when the
Berlin wall was still years away from being torn down, he sang tenderly
about the “girls of the East” and of their longing
tears for a “springtime that never came”.
Baglioni's
success didn't diminish even when he focused on far fetched topics such
as “I vecchi” [the elderly], an affectionate
portrait of those who reach the final stages of their life, or in
“Uomini Persi” [Lost Men], in which he leniently
observed those who took wrong turns in their life, but that were
children a long time ago. And finally he composed refined works such as
“Io sono qui” [I am here], “Noi
no” [Not us], “Io dal mare” [I from the
sea], “Acqua dalla luna” [Water from the Moon], and
many others.
It is during the last years that Baglioni re-invented himself, ripening
and holding on to the high places of the hit parade, developing a
direct contact with his fans thanks to his concerts around Italy and
the world. He also collaborated with musicians such as Pino Daniele,
Mia Martini, Paco De Lucia, Phil Palmer, Youssou N’Dour,
Laura Pausini, Irene Grandi, and Andrea Bocelli, demonstrating his
constant research for something new, a research that went beyond the
musical language. He was frequently evolved in cultural panels,
seminars and lectures with the younger generations, frequently in music
schools all over Italy. Baglioni's artistic evolution brought him to
television and in 1997 and 1999 he co-lead shows with Fabio Fazio that
revisited the 1970s in Italy as well as the whole 20 th
century through music and the many social phenomena of the past. This
gave him a chance to show his more ironic side, which amazed those that
only knew him as a romantic singer. In 1998, for the centennial of the
Italian Soccer Federation, he wrote “Da Me a Te”
[From Me to You], which became the official anthem of the azzurrifor the 1998 Fifa World Cup in
France. Baglioni's success was unstoppable and brought him through the
Millennium still as a protagonist. Especially in his live concerts he
showed a constant search for innovation, for something different to
offer the public, with light designs, evocative atmospheres and
essential choreographies. Not stopping at that, a series of concerts in
the most important Italian amphitheaters soon followed, minimalist live
events characterized by the dialogue between the public and himself,
alone, on stage, accompanying himself on the piano. This culminated in
the project of re-proposing a new version of “Questo Piccolo
Grande Amore” from 1972, “Q.P.G.A.”, the
acronym of the song, which brought to theatrical concerts, and album, a
feature film and even a book written by Baglioni himself.
A career of over forty years has allowed Claudio Baglioni to maintain
his original public, which was subsequently joined by the younger
generations. Not many Italian artists today have the opportunity to
perform in front of grandparents, parents, and those kids that today
are the age of those kids that in the 1970s saw the beginning of
Baglioni's career and who today have white hair and the same amount of
enthusiasm, just like their idol.
And
Baglioni's concerts are events in themselves, even if some of them have
been surprises and free, as happened in 2007, when he performed from
the terrace of his house from the 1960s in Centocelle. Or when he got
on the 51 Bus in Rome and improvised on the guitar for a small number
of baffled passengers, a stunt he replicated in Milan on the 24 Tram
and in Naples on a bus in Chiaia!
His
latest large live event was the “One World Tour 2010
– Un solo mondo”, the first part of which ended on
May 29, 2010, with a sold out concert at London's Royal Albert Hall, in
front of 3600 spectators. After the summer Claudio Baglioni has taken
up his voyage through the five continents, playing in Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia and now New York in the States,
after which he will move on to China, Japan and Australia before
returning to Europe in December. A concert that shouldn't be missed:
three hours of music and memories in which Claudio Baglioni is sided by
a group of nine poli-instrumentalists. A unique opportunity for someone
who has never heard his songs, but also for all those fans who wish to
personally meet a friend that shared a large amount of life with them.
Friday, December 17 · 8:00pm - 10:30pm
Angel
Orensanz
172
Norfolk Street New York, NY 10002-1602
New
York, NY
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