WHO IS FREED
For those who don’t know him, Liberato is a singer-songwriter (Italian? Neapolitan? Is this detail really important?), but not only that, he is also the glue between worlds that normally intersect, touch each other, but which really touch and embrace each other only in the passion for football. Having liberated these worlds, he also united them in music. A music that is not at all banal or simple, a refined music that contaminates the traditional Neapolitan song, the high, cultured one of Sergio Bruni, of Roberto Murolo, with electronics, with dub, with rhythm and blues. If they asked me what the reference age range of those who listen to Liberato is, I would use the formula found on the boxes of the fanciest board games: 0-99. Anyone goes to Liberato’s concerts, from newborns in strollers to seventy-year-olds, no one is upset by bad words but everyone sings; he sings who knows Neapolitan and in those words he retraces his origins and gets excited thinking about the Scalinatella, and laughs his ass off at Cicirinella’s cufanaturo; and those who do not understand Neapolitan with their head do not understand it with their reason, but feel it with their heart. This is why, whether Liberato is an Italian or Neapolitan singer-songwriter It’s a minor difference: Liberato everyone understands why speaks a universal language.
NEAPOLITAN, UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
Personal note: Geolier meeting who, with his sweet smile and childish look, tells me « Robbè, don’t worry, Neapolitan». She broke my heart. Curtain.
Neapolitan is an ancient, codified language, but it is also a living, non-crystallized language. It is a language that is spoken and not studied, that is rarely spoken and written. Neapolitan belongs to the present time and belongs to those who use it. Every community has its Neapolitan, every generation has its Neapolitan. Every family has its Neapolitan. Every project has its Neapolitan. You have to hear Neapolitan, you don’t have to understand it, that’s why it’s a universal language. It is the language of poignant feeling, of always melancholy feeling. Of eyes that glaze over because the sun reflecting in the sea blinds, but also because what surrounds you always deserves a tear. Neapolitan music is a flat music, of minor scales, of people who suffer for love or poverty. This is what Liberato tells us: the poignant suffering necessary to feel empathy. Woe to those who do not cry, they will not be able to rejoice. Woe to those who do not understand Neapolitan, their heart is lethargy.
O CORE NUN TEN MASTER
If your heart is awake instead, your heart travels and, between words and images – the words of Liberato and the images of Francesco Lettieri’s videos – it tells stories. And your heart tells itself the story of a city that is universal, and therefore always exaggerated, because it wants to contain everything, because almost by tradition it must contain everything. Your heart tells itself the story of a city that pays six months of celebrations to a championship, of a city that even when it welcomes tourists it does so in an immoderate way, without understanding anything, without knowing how to live with this river of people who seem to be at the mercy of a love potion. Of people who buy small vials with the air of Naples, who invade the streets, who ask for information just to see if what they say is true, that is, that the Neapolitans, if you ask them, then tell you about life, death and miracles, especially miracles. A flood of visitors that cannot be explained by looking at Venice or Florence; a river that shouldn’t even be stopped because the city is young and wants to work. He needs to work. But what does Liberato have to do with all this? Liberato is part of falling in love, he is even a little responsible for it and, in a hypothetical puzzle, his pieces would be the ones that, when he fits them together, the design finally takes shape.
I KNOW LIBERATO’S SECRET
Liberato’s secret it’s a dreamlike film, the ones I like. It’s an intimate story, it’s music and concerts, it’s a documentary, it’s an animated film. It is a dreamlike film because the story of the masked singer is dreamlike, of the artist whose identity no one knows but who really exists because we all see him, because he goes on stage, because he has a voice, because he touches the keys of a piano. I know Liberato’s secret because in recent years I have tried to follow in his footsteps, I have tried to dig among the lyrics of his songs, to pick up the signals he sent, because I know that deep down what Liberato wants more than anything else is that someone, one to whom he did not wish to reveal his secretput a hand on his shoulder and say: « Guagliù, and split it »”.
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
What is generally ignored is that being a known person is damnation. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to those who follow me, to those who read me, to those who appreciate my work, and like me, anyone who enjoys public recognition is grateful. But becoming famous takes away 90 percent of what’s worth living for. Liberato has kept his private sphere intact until now. He allowed only a few people to know his identity and in this he demonstrated great modernity. He understood that today being a public figure means having the vocation of an ascetic. You can be photographed and filmed at any time, while you are doing anything. Any statement can be taken up endlessly, any fall will be held against you. And the fear of making mistakes is the enemy of artistic creation. Compression of the body is the enemy of artistic creation. The construction that the media always makes of a public figure is already in itself character assassinationWhy to build the public profile, they are killing the private one. Because not even your parents will remember what you were like before you became famous, even your brothers and sisters will believe the gossip and fake news that will be created and spread about you and when you tell them that nothing is true, they will find it hard to believe you.
9 MAY, A COMMON PATH
It all started on May 9, 2017 and everything will be told to you, finally, on May 9, 2024, seven years later. Liberato is a person called Liberato. Liberato is an ancient name. Liberato is the name of a person who loves music, or maybe two people who love music, that’s up to you to find out. Liberato is also the name of a project which, from 2017 to today, has united old and new friends who have found themselves walking the same path and, in the meantime, making music and telling stories, organizing events and situations. Then everything grew, from concerts at sea to those in stadiums, but nothing got out of hand, and the feeling is that everything remained in balance but just barely, because the face was missing, the identity was missing, the target was missing, to be struck in the heart, to be destroyed and made to fall. And in the story that Liberato and his traveling companions tell of success in the film, I caught a familiar light in their looks, more terror than joy. Or maybe I’m wrong, and instead it’s gratitude towards chance, towards fate, towards ciorta – call it what you want – for the danger averted. The fear of what could have happened if Liberato who loves music, in addition to a name, had also had a face, a body with a target drawn on it.
ADAM’S NOVEL
And then there’s Adam, Adam Jendoubi who was the protagonist of many of the videos shot by Francesco Lettieri for Liberato. Adam who is a synthesis of cultures, half Tunisian, half Polish but perfectly Neapolitan. Adam who arranged life in new and unexpected forms. The first time I saw Adam it was from behind, the sounds of the city silent. Very deep night, almost dawn. He is on the waterfront. The first notes of You’re sorry myself and the show begins: the show of Naples. Adam he is little more than a teenager in Liberato’s videos and is the protagonist of the most classic and beautiful of love stories: a boy from the alleys, clean-faced, beautiful, falls in love with a bourgeois girl, a Posillipina. She cannot help but give in to his love because he and Naples are one. Adam, son of two immigrants, of two distant cultures and who Naples has been able to bring together as this city that brings everything closer always does, giving universal citizenship to anyone who passes through it and lives there. Adam ended up, as they say in Naples, with a delicate expression that doesn’t want to hurt those who loved him. But he is there in the film, with all his tenderness.
WE ARE AT THE END: WHO IS FREE?
We are free, because we understood that incredibly even today you don’t need a face to please others. We are freed because, at the end of everything, we have learned an important lesson: the stories remain, the ones we can identify with, the ones that make us feel good and the ones that remind us of a wound that will never heal. We are free because towards Liberato and his music we can only feel gratitude, pleasure, but not envy, not envy… we wouldn’t know towards whom to direct these feelings which are human, which are common, which are almost obvious, but which poison us. Freed are we who must learn to have respect for art, from which we must never ask more than it can and wants to give us. Liberato gave us everything, but not his identity and this deprivation is a gift. Liberato gave us his music, in purity. Everything else away. Away with everything superfluous. Go to the cinema on May 9th to see it Liberato’s secret and then think about your secret and keep it inside, hide it well, where no one will ever find it.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
