When faced with a hit, you’re first to ask yourself if it’s “not” by Davide Petrella. «Sesso e samba» and «Italo disco», just to say the most recent ones, among the oldest ones range from «Vorrei ma non posto» (Fedez & J-Ax) to «Logico#1 (Cesare Cremonini), from « Two lives” (Marco Mengoni) to “Cenere” (Lazza). When he makes the music he wants and tells the stories he feels inside Davide Petrella, 38 years old, a certified street urchin, calls himself Tropic, «stage name born in Cuba and imposed from below. Now Spotify and the radios give us a little more space and showcase than in the past, but only because people have chosen my project”, explains he, a dandy of the porous city, retromodernist enough to be fashionable, expected Friday on the stage in Piazza del Plebiscito.
Performance anxiety, Davide? Excited? Scared? Calm?
«All this together, but not calmly. If an artist doesn’t feel the stage shaking under his feet when he starts singing, he’s no longer an artist, he sells bars of soap.”
And you don’t sell bars of soap.
“I don’t sell anything, I write songs and sing them, with a real band that is an integral part of the project. In a square that I respect, indeed I venerate. I know who has been there, I know what this good living room of the city means to all of us. So I put together the show thinking of the legendary concert of Pino Daniele on September 19, 1981: I wasn’t there, of course, but I saw the photos and some videos, the square could be seen, it wasn’t hidden by colossal staging. And, with me, the square will be seen and, I hope, will also be heard.”
You announced some of the guests you wanted by your side. Achille Lauro (for whom like Petrella you wrote «Rolls Royce»), Ghali (for whom like Petrella you wrote «Barcelona»), Elisa (with whom as Tropico you duetted «C’erariamo tanto amati»), Franco 126 (with whom as Tropico you duetted «Piazza Garibaldi). Will Petrella and Tropico shake hands on stage?
«No, this is the scene of Tropico, who only sings personal things, which he feels, which he lives, which suit him».
And what does Petrella do? Is it sold to the highest bidder?
«No, but he learned to put himself in other people’s shoes. To enhance voices and sensitivity, to think of a song also as a collective birth. But a diary, a memoir, is one thing, fiction is another.”
Certain. But a little bird tells me that the list of your “friends” is not finished with the names mentioned so far.
“You are right. There’s another big one, but I’m not authorized to reveal his name.”
Unfortunately, without taking anything away from the mysterious singer in question, it won’t be Madame: with her, in your second album, «Call me when the magic ends», you created an absolute gem, the guitar and voice version of «Anema e notte», exciting madeleine muroliana.
«Wow, what a compliment! Franci was very good, exciting, fragile and intense. And then, a Venetian who sings like this in Neapolitan!
What else should we expect from your live show, compared to the one seen in winter at the Palapartenope?
«We have expanded further, we have become even more in tune with each other in the band, we have an even better understanding with those who follow us».
A dedication?
«At home, to my family, to my band, to my management, but above all to my audience. And then, to those who believed in me when no one believed in me.”
Like Cesare Cremonini?
«Of course: I do this job thanks to him, he invited me to collaborate with him when I didn’t even know what Siae was, when I didn’t even believe you could earn money without singing your own songs. I started in the basements, I didn’t think I’d be a songwriter.”
«Come and live in Naples, come and see the city of miracles», you sang, not without painful sarcasm at that time, when you led the group Le Scimmie. What has changed since 2011?
“Everything, well, we do a lot. Today everyone wants to come to Naples, see Naples, sing Naples, sing in Neapolitan. I like this fact, also because in the midst of all this Tropic you feel very comfortable.”
Tropico looks at classic black music as well as urban sound, at singer-songwriter as well as pop, as confirmed by the latest single, «Ammore pe na sera». Is this also thanks to Petrella?
«This yes. She opened my eyes to the thousand possible musical suggestions. But Petrella wants everything right away, she wants to talk to most people about her, she takes advantage of the fame and contacts of her interpreters. She tropes, she goes more slowly, she wants to speak to those who want to listen to something that moves away from the routine of the mainstream, without ever demonizing the public.”
But do you really want to keep Morricone and Merola together like you sing in «Int o dark»?
“I wish I could.”
