They are all there, the protagonists of the songs of our youth, the songwriters who marked an unrepeatable period, between the 60s and the 80s of the last century: an explosion of new singing impetus compared to the now repetitive melodic vein of previous years, and where the music is the extension of the written word, of the meaning of the text, which is somewhat reminiscent of the great nineteenth-century season of the German “Lied”, where the one and the other appear in a union indissoluble.
Passion
We owe it to the initiative, passion and competence of Massimo Papini, a scholar from Ancona known to the public for his caliber as a historian linked to the territory, but also an enamored participant (because he himself is an instrumentalist in a youth group) of the world of pop music, with a reductive term (only to distinguish it from the classical), because it is not separated, especially in the production of our unforgettable singer-songwriters, from deeper meanings linked to the composition, the publication, due to the “elective affinities” of Ancona, of a book which in the title defines the content: “The music that goes around – The story of the songwriters 1960-1980”. It is the summary of the lessons of the course he recently held at the Unitre (University of the Three Ages) in Ancona. Papini speaks of his protagonists with a simple, clear, documented and engaging language, linking their role and “committed” artistic expressiveness to the political, social and cultural events that followed one another in those years, up to the vital hub of the youth protest of ‘ 68, which certainly offers new stimuli to the inspiration of our authors, the creators of the song defined as “different” (by Umberto Eco) or in any case “busy”.
The 33 laps
The 45 rpm record (which can also be used with a simple portable record player) is accompanied and established by the diffusion of the 33 rpm record, certainly more suitable, with the dozen songs it contains, to fully convey the general meaning of the text to the public. In the so-called, more targeted “concept album” that characterizes the album there is indeed a common thread, a theme on which the path of music and lyrics followed by the author is coherently outlined. Those famous “four friends at the bar” who met to spend the evening in the taverns of Bologna and Milan, in the bars of Genoa or in the clubs in Rome, “often tipsy, if not drunk”, gave rise to real schools, which Papini describes with careful and never outsized emotional participation.
The schools
The Genoese school of Bindi, Paoli, Endrigo (although Istrian by birth), Tenco, Lauzi, De André flow upon reading, in a well-crafted descriptive synthesis that arouses vivid memories reflected in the reader. Then the Bolognese school of Guccini, Lolli, Dalla, the Milanese school of Vecchioni and Gaber and the Roman one of Venditti and De Gregori.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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