In the silence of the corridors of the Guggenheim art school in Venice, under the arches of the ancient Carmini convent, there is a school collaborator that everyone knows. Rasta hat, white mustache and goatee, dialect voice and slow walk: it is Oliviero Scardicchiofor decades on stage as Sir Oliver Skardyicon of Venetian reggae and frontman of Pitura Frescothe band that in the 90s made the lagoon burst into Italian music with irony, social denunciation and rebellious spirit.
Today Skardy cleans, supervises, talks to students and professors.
But behind that coat remains the protagonist of songs like “Papa Nero”, the song that split Sanremo and the public in 1997: loved and contested, between misunderstandings and accusations, when in reality – he says today – it carried an anti-racist and prophetic message.
“I never left my job as a janitor,” he says in an interview with Corriere della Sera. «Whoever comes from a proletarian family like mine must think about bread first. The music was okay, but not enough to risk it. So I kept my salary fixed.” With the earnings from years of touring and half a million records sold, he confesses, he managed to buy a small apartment in Marghera, where he lives with his Brazilian wife. «The rest? Divided among everyone there was little left.”
Work and retirement
After forty years of service at school, Skardy now looks ahead: retirement arrives in June and for him it is not a point of arrival, but a new beginning. «I will make up for it as a pensioner: I want to go back to writing, playing, being in the square, making live music. I will produce fewer records, they cost too much, but creativity doesn’t go away.”
The look back remains lucid. He remembers the adventure of Pitura Freska, the internal tensions, the dissolution in 2002: «We were divisive, they loved us or hated us. After Sanremo we understood that they would kick us out of the system. And so it was.” Today the other members of the group have taken different paths, while he continues to spread his idea of free, social, spiritual music.
Reggae, he says, was a revelation born at the concerts of Peter Tosh in 1979 and Bob Marley in 1980: since then “the heart started beating upbeat and has never stopped”. A musical and cultural language which, he says, unites, speaks of peace, coexistence, spirituality. Very far from the world of trap and a certain contemporary rap scene, which Skardy judges to be “too individualistic, an imitation of Americans, without a collective message”.
Meanwhile, in high school, students and teachers consider him a point of reference. «I’m not the protagonist – he comments ironically – it’s that today there is a lack of charismatic figures in schools. Once upon a time there were great masters. Now kids have technology, tools, but fewer shared dreams.”
In recent years Skardy has released four solo albums, a book and, recently, the new single “Feragni”, a bittersweet satire on the culture of appearance and the cult of public figures. “I’m not making fun of her, but of the system,” he clarifies.
His story is made of stages and corridors, reggae and service hours, hunger for art and a secure salary. A double life lived without regrets. «I was an alcoholic, depressed, full of vices. Then they told me: enough, or you’ll break. I’m done with the past and started again. Now comes retirement: and it’s my new debut.”
Related News :