In his life Giovanni Caccamo he thought of everything except that one day he would speak at the United Nations and on the campuses of the most prestigious universities in America, from Harvard to Berkeley, which, he adds, “looks a bit like Harry Potter’s college”. It happens because, for two years now, Caccamo has combined the commitment of music with the social and civic one, giving life to a project born first in Italy and then extended internationally. Is called Word to the young people, and on April 5 he arrived at the UN headquarters in New York together with Jesse Paris Smith – Patti Smith’s daughter -, Antonio Spadaro, Rebecca Foon and Alessia Zanelli. The aim was simple: to present a performance during which dozens of artists from all over the world showed to over five thousand children Youth and future, a competition of ideas aimed at young people to create together a cultural manifesto on change. The project, created with the support of Banca Ifis, Pulsee Luce e Gas and Alessia Zanelli herself, starts from a question: What would you change about the society you live in and in what way? What is your word of change? A question that Giovanni Caccamo himself asked himself before starting this intergenerational dialogue.
Had he taken into account that his singing career would evolve into an institutional role like the one he has been embodying for two years now?
«No, even if it’s a definition I like. I feel like the class representative of this project, not to mention that all this has to do with something that is also part of my first field, namely writing, which is my center. In this I felt in my habitat, trying to establish a dialogue with the kids capable of eliminating barriers and not creating new ones. I create bridges, and I think this is beautiful.”
Marco Anelli
Where do you think your generation, the Under 35s you are targeting, is going?
«Towards a world that tells us that at our age we are still young, as if ours were the age of non-responsibility, as if enjoying life did not necessarily have to correspond to pursuing one’s ambitions and dreams to achieve something that last over time. After discovering that Michael Jackson wrote at 24 years old Thrillerthat Michelangelo sculpted La Pietà at 23, that Steve Jobs founded Apple at 21, that James Watt invented the steam engine at 20, and that Walt Disney invented Mickey Mouse at 27, I thought: what can we do? ».
What do you think you have accomplished so far?
«I think I have given many reflections of my soul to others. I did this through my songs, striving to create a little kindness and a little light around me. I tried to light a few candles in a dark room, joyfully sharing even the most painful parts of my life because the moments of suffering were the most uplifting of my journey. I think that sharing the fragility and pain as well as the beauty and emotions that move us is very precious: without the seams the cut of the dress won’t hold up, and sometimes sharing them can allow someone else to think they are not alone.”
Do you think you have made peace with your pain?
“Yes. The two words of change in my life were death and dream. When my father passed away I was faced with failure, because death after all seems like this to us: a failure. I was 10 years old, he died on May 13, the day of Our Lady of Fatima, and I remember that a few weeks before he died some nuns came to our house and told my mother that her husband’s suffering was a gift for our family. My mother took them out by force: this sentence was a stab for many years because I asked myself how the suffering of a young father could be a gift. Then I read a book, Another round of the carousel by Tiziano Terzani, in which the author says that the years of his illness were the most intense and lively of his life. It was the piece I was missing: the illness forced him to do only what I really wanted to do, starting to hang out only with the people he really loved and pruning all the dry branches he had brought with him.”
What awareness did you come to after reading that book?
«That the gift that my father left me was understanding right away that it wasn’t necessary to wait for a timer to turn on next to my head to really start living, but to do it right away. Without waiting for death to remind you.”
What does death mean to you?
«To answer you I resort to the image of diamonds and iron. Death, by placing a limit on the infinite number of days we will have available, transforms them from iron days to diamond days, increasing their quality. Love, dreams, ambitions, wonder and contemplation exist because our time is finite and because we know that only by perceiving and enjoying that moment in our soul will we be happy.”
