GALLARATE, 20 June 2024-by GIANNI BERALDO-
Many wanted to say goodbye this afternoon for the last time Paolo Carù, died in his home in via Postoporta last Friday due to a sudden illness, with the Gallarate basilica overflowing with people.
Carù was a well-known character throughout Italy (but not only), for having founded over forty years ago the Buscadero music magazine and have been the owner of the historic record shop and bookshop, located in Piazza Garibaldi, a true mecca for thousands of enthusiasts who filled it especially every weekend from all over the country.
Paolo and his wife Anna (not present at the funeral ceremony as she was hospitalized), an indissoluble combination made even stronger by the common passion for rock, folk, blues and American music, lived at full capacity with memorable trips to the States or England to attend dozens of concerts, then documenting them with memorable reports on the Buscadero. Magazine that has resisted up to now against all commercial logic, renewing the editorial team as well as the collaborators or making use of welcome returns.
Among those present at the ceremony many over 40s, those who, thanks to Paolo and Buscadero, were lucky enough to get to know a musical world otherwise unknown outside the US market.
Some of them came from outside the region showing up with t-shirts featuring artists or groups that Paolo favored. Others, however, to better remember him, have decided to wear a t-shirt with the Buscadero logo.
This is also called affection which everyone can and must express as they see fit based on the emotions of the moment.
Emotions indeed. In our opinion, the protagonist of the ceremony should have been folk music, folk rock, the one so loved by Paolo. Instead, the parish priest who commemorated the ceremony did not allow any musicians to play inside the Basilica, not even acoustically.
However, at the end of the mass, the coffin was placed on the churchyard where at that point the
famous harmonica player Fabrizio Poggi sang a moving version of Amazing Grace, with heartfelt applause from the small crowd that gathered around the coffin.
There were few musicians present, including the aforementioned Poggi Andrea Parodi (a very good friend of Paolo for whom he curated and will also curate in the future the Buscadero Day festival in Ternate) and the songwriter Massimo Privierothe latter linked by a sincere affection and friendship both with Paolo Carù and with Guido Giazzi, editorial director of Buscadero and Paolo’s close friend.
Giazzi who, particularly moved, remembered his friend with a speech at the closing of the ceremony in the Basilica >, this is a passage from Giazzi’s memory.
Then the emotion pervaded the entire churchyard where many Carù admirers were present; simple enthusiasts and consumers of excellent music. Obviously many editors and some collaborators of Buscadero were present, who from today feel lost and perhaps even more alone.
