Best wishes Maestrone for your 81 years
"Best wishes, Maestrone 80 + 1 want to congratulate you. But I wonder: To a Teacher of the word what can be written in the original on his birthday?
Probably Nothing. Or maybe So much. A Tanto made up of over 40 years of "elective affinities".
A Tanto that looks like an audio cassette tape that rewinds and takes me back in time.
In fact it is from an audio cassette, which contained your most beautiful songs, that it all began.
We grew up a little bit together. You, who as a young singer-songwriter, have gradually become bigger and bigger
and of fame and I, who as a teenager learning your songs by heart, I found myself to be a liar unrepentant.
I grew up learning about your myths which, little by little, have become mine.
We are both born in June and have the same football faith. As far as politics is concerned, even among many disappointments, there is still an almost absolute cultural affinity.
Dear Francesco I owe you so much, like millions of other people of at least three generations, because you have given us so much with your music.
Words are precious stones, but only a few know how to make them shine. Few know the art of writing. Few know it like you do.
Going backwards in memory, here are some titles of the songs contained in the famous audio cassette, which I jealously keep as a relic:
Side A
God is dead
Auschwitz
The old man and the child
The locomotive
Eskimo
The retired
The poisoned
Side B
We will not be there
In death of SF (Song for a friend)
Roots
Small town
The twelve month song
Song of the Portuguese girl
Small ignoble story
Greetings master. The strong emotions of your words
First, that incessant flow of notes and words that began to find their place in my mind, until it became something deeper.
Something that entered inside and began, unconsciously, to be part of me.
Something that did come from outside, but that seemed to have always been part of my nature.
This something was your ability to tell stories, describing their emotions, even and above all the most intimate ones, those that are not even told to the best friend.
Yours EVERYDAY LIVING ROOMS, which they became even our daily lives, with all their nuances. A little bit of white, a little bit of black and the infinite shades of gray that color our lives.
"I hear it from beyond the wall that every sound lets through,
the almost poor smell of food,
I see it in the light that I too remember well
of a dim light bulb, the one with thirty candles,
among furniture that has never seen other splendor,
old newspapers and corners of dust and odors,
among the used and strange sounds of his daily rituals:
eat, clear out, then wash dishes and hands ".
Fragment from “The Pensionato” Francesco Guccini
Your house. Your roots
“The house on the edge of the evening
Dark and silent it stands
Breathe clear, light air
And you hear voices perhaps of another age
And you hear voices perhaps of another age
The house on the edge of memories
Always the same, as you know it
And you look for your roots there
If you want to understand the soul you have
If you want to understand the soul you have "
Fragment from “Roots” Francesco Guccini
Above all, I would like to thank you for one thing, for always remaining yourself.
Linked to your ROOTS, to your native places, as well as to your ideals.
Now I imagine you celebrating your birthday with the people you care about most.
Between one phone call and another from friends, relatives, fellow songwriters, elected ranks.
Journalists who, making an extraordinary effort of imagination, will ask you how it feels at 81 years old, after asking you last year when you cut the legendary threshold of 80.
And all this in the absolute tranquility of your mythical Pàvana. There where you continue to listen to the incessant and immutable sound of the Limentra, which accompanies your words and your thoughts.
A cordial greeting and let's meet for the next occasion, maybe to talk about your new book.
Greetings master. And thanks
"The belief that those texts,
especially when they came out of the pen of Francesco Guccini,
can autonomously and with good reason
place itself in the poetic panorama of the Italian twentieth century...
All the more in our difficult time,
who makes words instruments of violence or lies
or simulacra of emptiness, Guccini's ethics of the word
can at least ignite the hope that discretion
and coherence may be something other than utopia. "
Taken from Introduction by "Songs" di Gabriella Fenocchio Ed. Bompiani Overlook
Signed
A type lost behind the clouds and poetry
Article by Stefano Vori
