“There is also so much more in the book, and not just that highlight of Sanremo which made me go from a student to a very popular girl in the space of a few minutes.” Gigliola Cinquetti leafs through the album of her life, which has now become a book ‘Sometimes you dream’, published by Rizzoli, and at the center of today’s meeting at 6.45pm in the courtyard of Palazzo Buonaccorsi during the Controra, the festival in Music culture festival.
The meeting will be hosted by the poet and writer Ennio Cavalli and will also see the participation of the singer-songwriter Mimmo Locasciulli. At 9.15pm today for the Controra there will be a live performance by Fabio Concato in Piazza della Libertà, free entry, where the public will take a journey into the music of the singer-songwriter who will be accompanied by Ornella D’Urbano (arrangements, piano and keyboards), Stefano Casali (bass), Larry Tomassini (guitars) and Gabriele Palazzi (drums).
Cinquetti, what pushed you to sit in front of a blank sheet of paper and write down some phases of your life?
“I like to write – says the winner of two Sanremos – and Rizzoli invited me to a wedding when they asked for my availability. I didn’t think of a celebratory or promotional autobiography, it’s a story from my point of view, starting with a rather bizarre experience, that of a high school student who finds herself very popular for a song (“I’m not old enough”) and for a three-minute television appearance. That highlight episode is an opportunity to then move on to something else.” .
What was the effect of reliving certain moments while you were recording them on paper?
“A great emotional richness. As I wrote, people came to life, the book overflows with affection, given and received.”
At 16 she won Sanremo with a song that made her known throughout the world, she was admired, sought after, what was it like to discover that there was also the other side of the coin when Luigi Tenco told her he hated her?
“I wrote it to talk about the double effect of success: love and hate. It is also a way to talk about an era in which young people had an absolute role: in that moment the economic power had chosen them as protagonists and as consumers Those were the years in which there were no nuances but also slogans to adapt to: breaking down taboos, sexual freedom”.
And she sings “I’m not old enough”.
“It was not a hymn to chastity as perceived by some, but just a song by a woman who says no, by a girl who has the right to choose. Tenco was a young man like many others, the spokesperson for a way of thinking widespread among a certain type of kids of the time. I just tried to make people understand the climate of that period.”
But many others followed her with admiration and even today that thread has not been broken.
“There were many people who followed me with affection. Since then a relationship of kinship and deep sympathy has been established between me and them if after 60 years I find someone who remembers that moment and me”.
How did you manage not to be overwhelmed by an enormous and perhaps even sudden success?
“I was partly overwhelmed, but I returned to balance, I put my feet back on the ground. In a few minutes I became famous, my life changed irreversibly in a traumatic way. But after a trauma there can also be growth, renewal, an improvement. It’s a great life lesson, a great opportunity. That’s the focal point of the book: but it’s done in a light and ironic way.”
Excited, scared, anxious: how did you experience the release of your book?
“Very happy because the book is beautiful, I am the harshest judge towards myself and if I like it it is more than enough.”
