From Carimate to Genoa via the Maghreb

interview with Mauro Pagani
by Paolo Finzi

translation Enrico Massetti

From a long-term research on sound material Mediterranean song was born "Creuza de mä" and "Clouds." A conversation with one of the most interesting people of the Italian music scene, a close associate and a friend of De André..

"Fabrizio was an anarchist as a boy. There was in him an indisputable position of feeling, but there was also a cultural study, precise readings were behind him. Sure, his anarchism has gone over the years by changing the light of his experiences. At the beginning its was an individualist anarchism, Stirner, then problems, implications, discussions, considerations have led to a more structured, socially."
Mauro Pagani, 53 at the time of the interview in 1999, one of the most interesting figures of Italian music, a great friend and close associate of Fabrizio (Creuza de mä" and "Nuvole - Clouds" are the main result of their association) reminds his friend who just died. And it does so with measured words, precise, deep, behind which it is easy to grasp the depth of a great, unspoken nostalgia.
Personally I have met Mauro sometimes, always accomplice De André. The last time nearly in 1991, during the Neapolitan concert of Fabrizio in support of this magazine and the weekly Umanitá Nova: Mauro played various instruments, with great skill. And it was - with Morgia (then the lighting technician) - the only crew to refrain for the evening, for his compensation, donating it to our magazine.
I remember another time was in the making of "Nuvole - Clouds". Aurora and I arrived at the home of Dori and Fabrizio shortly after him. Mauro was telling Fabrizio about one of his recent trip to North Africa in search of new sounds. We hit her culture, fascinated to find out how much work there was a music search, which became an opportunity to learn about other cultures and other approaches.
"For Fabrizio - explains Mauro - anarchy was a collection of many small companies, based on direct relations between people. An Italy of Commons, we could say, as opposed to that of the great powers. It is precisely this conception which derived his genuine passion and his great respect for minorities, for the protection of ethnic groups, for each individual."

 Mutual fascinations

Pagani recalls his own path in many ways similar, after its exit from the PFM (Premiata Fonderia Marconi) in '77: the work undertaken in the context of Mediterranean culture, based on the work already done by the likes of Demetrio Stratos, and the Canzoniere del Lazio Teresa de Sio. Pagani is more interested in the "subsidiaries illegitimate" (so defined) of Turkish culture in contact with indigenous cultures, in the Slavic countries, such as in southern Italy in North Africa. And when by chance he met Fabrizio in a recording studio at the castle of Carimate, began to speak, occurred just as many similarities: thus was born the project of "Creuza de mä. "At the beginning- he remembers - it would be the record of a traveler, a sailor who returns home after many years and speaks a language that is a mixture of a thousand tongues - those he met in his travels. With Fabrizio, the project was therefore to write it in an invented language. It happened then that, three quarters of operation, with Fabrizio was the brilliant idea of making the record in Genoa (a language that already has 1.000/1.200 words of Arabic origin).
Pagani is about "a perfect moment of needed expression, coincident between me and Fabrizio. "Creuza de mä" if on one side could use 5 or 6 years of my work on the sound Mediterranean material, on the other had the advantage of being very fresh because we threw down on the spot." It was the beginning of their collaboration based on a clear division of labor (Mauro took care of the musical project, Fabrizio of the texts and the overall supervision), but above all of a fascinating one another: that - Mauro does not say, but it understand from a mile away - has never failed.
Even more intense and profound is the cooperation between the two for the next album "Nuvole (Clouds)". "Back - he would point out - there are the social meanings of the world". Pagani draws a parallel between the disintegration of the old world immediately after the Congress of Vienna of 1814 and the socio-political situation which emerges in the folds of the disc: the collapse of an empire, the resurgence of ethnic specificity, etc. .. It focuses on "La domenica delle salme (Sunday of remains)", read as an acknowledging the event, silent coup, the emptiness of consciousness, the whole wave of nothingness, the empty and appearance - with a parallel disappearance values of solidarity.
The conversation moves on issues of social, voluntary, social transformation. Pagani recalls that both he and Fabrizio were far from political, feeling both unrelated to that way of communicating political cold sloganistic, starting from the greatest systems to "cut" the reality and to paint their own use. "If you tell the things that occurred summary, even verbal, you can never communicate the procedures that have a true relationship with life and suffering", he clarifies. According to him, a more authentically "anarchist" to communicate would be to do a summary or major considerations, but telling stories of people, providing each the elements to understand and draw their own conclusions.
Pagani notes that this has been a constant feature in the production of Fabrizio. He cites, for example, a song of the beginning as "Bocca di Rosa" and one of his maturity as "Don Raffaè" no opinion on them, nor on those around them. Then I note that, however, even the mere description captures a very specific message, a statement of position. Mauro agrees, but wishes to stress once again the importance of Fabrizio (and his). Although it is well aware of the risk of trivializing, however, is inevitable in those "songs". "The boundary between ease and banality can be very thin - says Pagani - Fabrizio knew it and used the full attention".

A little 'nomadic

Life has, at times, the strange coincidences. In 1996, I was leaving for the summer holidays at the height of my interest in the Gypsy world. Dozens of books and magazines in the trunk, a kind of love that for a few weeks leaves almost no space to other topics. In the port of Livorno, before taking the ferry to Corsica, I buy "Anime Salve (Saved Souls)", the last CD of De André: and I find that a piece contains beautiful, poetic and biting at the same time on the gipsies. A coincidence, of course. And I remember that first meeting with Fabrizio at the Hotel Cavour, in his statement "because I am an anarchist from the gypsies, whores, objectors ...". Then I had a little 'smile, inside me, for those combinations that seemed to me brave.
Twenty years later, those words took on a more precise meaning and uncover the arrival to common ground, even from locations and paths as diverse as ours.
I speak with Pagani, I ask him if and how he crossed the Gypsy culture and thorough in his Mediterranean travels. He replied in the affirmative and I find that even in this field, he knows more than me. It speaks of the "Black Madonna" in the Camargue, but also of his research in Bulgaria, in southern Hungary, his relations - this just in his personall research - since the 70s with Moni Ovadia (then in the Folk Group Inter-national).
Then he tells me of his Croatian grandfather, who was born on a ship (which was therefore considered as "stateless") and whom - typically profession (though not exclusively) Gypsy - had a circus. "A little 'spirit of gypsy, nomad, I carry inside me" -he smiles.
A jlittle oke, in closing, to Fabrizio, the beloved friend that brought us together then. And even today. "Much debate on the poetry of De André makes me smile. For years, his lyrics are part of many school anthologies - Pagani notes - I do not think it happened to others".

rivista anarchica
       anno 30 n.262
       novembre 2000