“That song applies to all eras,” he says Antonella Ruggierowhich tonight atEvergreen Fest he will play several immortal ones in Genoa, the Superb, a concert in which his classics will mix with the tribute to the school of Genoese singer-songwriters. But the reference is not to a ballad by Tenco or De André, but to a song also born under the Lanterna but with a more rock matrix: A mine by the New Trolls.
«I’ve always been singing it. Since I was a little girl, when I listened to her on the radio and she made me think of the Italsider workers. Since the beginning of my solo career, in 1996, I have also often done it at concerts. There will be in Turin. For me it is “the” song about deaths at work, an unfortunately ever-current theme.”
The evening at Treasurer promises multiple forms and nuances of sound: it will be what the Ligurian singer – first dizzying voice of the sophisticated pop of Matia Bazar, then solitary explorer of very broad musical horizons, from sacred music to electronics – defines a “versatile concert”. With the traces of the great Genoese authors (De André, Tenco, Lauzi, Bindito which Ruggiero dedicated the album that gives the show its title in 2007), but also excursions in prog rock (via i New Trolls and the Pfm) and a space left for personal successes with and without Matia Bazar.
Seven centuries ago, it was Francesco Petrarca who was the first to call Genoa “Superb” (“You will see a regal city, leaning against an Alpine hill, superb for its men and walls, whose appearance alone indicates it as the lady of the sea”). «I think the definition stuck to her due to the character of the Genoese, who are certainly not extroverted», says the singer. «It’s a city that requires commitment if you want to get to know it well. But then it leaves you in ecstasy.”
An ecstasy that she has experienced at a distance for half a century.
“I left Genoa in 1975, when I left for Milan with Matia Bazar. Then I moved in Brianzathen a Berlin, where I have lived for twenty years. But she will always remain inside me, with memories of childhood and adolescence. And some personal memories also link me to Turin, where as a child I often came to visit an aunt. Extraordinary citynoble, precious, but also the cradle of the workers’ movement.”
Tonight Antonella Ruggiero will present herself at the Evergreen Fest together with her partner-producer Roberto Colombo (vocoder, synth) ea Roberto Olzer (piano, liturgical organ, harmonium). An unusual instrumental configuration, based «on a suggestive interweaving of classical and electronic», which reflects that approach to music as a continuous laboratory which is the prerogative of his second artistic life. «Repeating everything in the same way over and over again would be useless and boring. Each new arrangement is a change of clothes that keeps the intensity high.”
Yet, even wearing ancient guises, some of his songs from the 1980s continue to win over new listeners. On YouTube reactions are all the rage I hear youvideos in which young listeners film themselves listening to Matia Bazar’s hit for the first time in 1985released many years before they were born, and they are invariably struck by the peaks scaled by Ruggiero’s voice.
«Their astonished reaction is a bit like mine when I discover certain wonders in ancient music, compositions from many centuries ago in which you glimpse traces of jazz. This connection between sensitive people who love different music is beautiful, just as it is to continue to propose on stage certain songs that have marked the lives and memories of spectators who then – immediately after the concert – come to tell you about it. Music is like this, a strange plot that becomes a memory of everyday life. There is always something good in her, both yesterday and today. You just have to have the desire to go and look for it and be lucky enough to find it.”
