Anarchists,
poets &
others

translation Enrico Massetti

Interview to Fabrizio de André
By Luciano Lanza (1993)

In 1993, on the success of the album "The Clouds", De André was interviewed by the magazine quarterly anarchist "Volontá". And he explains - among other things - the roots of his anarchism.

What does music do for you?

Until not long ago it meant first of all to have fun: it was a way to distract, to deal with anything. That is also a need to communicate with others, this remains to be seen. I would say above all is a necessity of communication with oneself.

Right from your first songs you've dealt with social problems. Why?

I was interested in telling stories of ordinary people to understand more about the world in which I lived. It was a kind of self-analysis. Then I found other people involved in this, the first four, then forty, then four thousand.

How come you autoanalyzed on social problems of the marginalized, the whores, or about problems such as of anti-war (think "The war of Piero")?

How come you became a libertarian? Either have you attended a libertarian environment, which I have done since the age of eighteen, or otherwise because you have an impulse to think that the world should be fair, that everyone should have at least the same conditions, this opportunity to express themselves and evolve. I remember my attitude to the micro when I lived in the country, when I was four years old. I was always from the peasants, treated much better by them than by my parents, I was among the beasts, I loved both the farmers and the cows, there was good, they felt part of me, more real. The discussion then evolved when I started talking to people of faith who were avowedly anarchist.

What influence had these contacts?

Certainly critical to my cultural background, just kind of libertarian. My father brought to me more recklessly the early records of George Brassens because he had several contacts with France. And Brassens was also a libertarian, his songs were digging in social work. Brassens was not just a teacher from the educational point of view, for what may be the technique for making a song, it was also a master of thought and life. He taught me such a rush to leave the thieves of apples, as he said. He taught me that after all, the reason and social harmony are more authentic in that part humiliated and marginalized of our society, than among the powerful.

And there are others that you recognize as well as teachers in addition to Brassens?

Not really. There are sporadic and temporary care for other great authors such as Jacques Brel. He also made many social songs, just think of "Les Bourgeois". But I had an interest, more of aesthetic and socio-political type, also for Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

Compared to your first songs, what has changed in the 1993 De André. Do you see the big difference?

In terms of content I would say that has not changed anything. From the formal point of view I certainly evolved, because in the meantime I went to the musicians of relief. I started with Giampiero Reverberi, who was already a great player, I continued with Nicola Piovani, who now is making the best music for films that come out in Italy, and Mauro Pagani, who isn't a musician from the conservatory, like the other two, but is a very creative musician.

What does mean your collaboration with Mauro Pagani?

With Pagani I gave birth to the desire to return to speak in an ethnic way. We used a language no longer in use, with tools that were abandoned. I think "Creuza de mä" and those four pieces of ethnic matrix that can be found in "Nuvole (Clouds)". Trying not to be confused with the ethnic folk music, because folk music is what the people makes to enjoy the higher social classes. Ethnic music instead is what the people makes for himself. From a musical standpoint Mauro had this cultural background, because he was a researcher. But I am a researcher of language and more in the Genovese that I know since when I was a child, it was pretty easy.

What was your intent doing "Creuza de mä", which basically was one of your biggest successes?

From a sales point of view I would say that was the most poor, because we were aiming to fifty thousand copies in order to survive. In fact they have been sold to date more than three hundred and fifty thousand, but it has been an increasing like wildfire. At first there was a terrible impact. I remember that I met the agent in Liguria and he said, but what have you done? Not even the Genoese did understand that record.

If I remember correctly "Creuza de mä" was named best album of the eighties.

It was award-winning critical acclaim. I had a deluge of pats on the back. The intention was to invent a world music, with a language and tools definitely of ethnic matrix. Just this. We had no more desire to follow the trail of the Americans, the Anglophone world and also their music. And so we wanted to make a change that in part has been there. Because after that record, many have started playing ethnic music with local languages, especially in the south of Italy.

So also was the rediscovery of an authentic language and independent from what is the globalization of society?

Yes, it was the desire to escape the dependency culture of those who have more breath to sound the trumpets of publicity.

In the record, "Clouds", 1991, there is a song particularly pessimistic or despairing, "La domenica delle salme (The Sunday of remains)". Why have you written it?

We wanted to express our disappointment with democracy that was becoming less and less demo cracy. Real democracy it has never been, but at least you could hold out hope that as a formal democracy, and instead we are discovering that it's an oligarchy. We all knew, but nobody ventured to say. It's a song of desperate people who believed they could at least live in a democracy and have noticed that this democracy does not exist.

It is therefore an indictment.

Sure, and so is also against us. There is a tirade against the singer-songwriter who had a powerful voice for the fuck off, and instead have not done it in due course. I believe that somehow the song could affect the social conscience, at least in the epidermis. Note that there are many people who are in the dressing room at the end of each show and they tell me we grew up with your songs and we made our children grow up with your songs. And I do not know to what extent is the right thing. I think to some extent the songs can steer people to think in a certain way and behave accordingly. I know I did with Brassens, do not see why others can not happen.

Today, if you were to give a definition of De André, what would you say, in music, politics and society.

I have clear ideals, those libertarians who I have always had, I would say only that I'm waiting to occur at least for the decentralization of power, in order to manage this power to create small islands of libertarianism. Give a definition is difficult because so many things, but also a cattle rancher, I am a person in love of trees, clean water.

To what extent has your being libertarian influenced your music making?

Probably for the attention that I had for the social. I realized the vast differences that exist. I've always tried to justify and excuse socially certain actions that were clearly delinquent maybe the fact that the people who had not committed to that opportunity to be equal to others, especially from an economic standpoint, but also for the impossibility to study.

Also in the "Nuvole (Clouds)" is a song where you talk about a jailer. Give voice to the jailer and there is a note of sympathy for him.

Definitely yes, because it is a bit 'illiterate, in fact I am speaking in the song in a macaroni Neapolitan. I think he is a victim of political circumstances.

A somewhat different position from that expressed in another song, the album "Storia di un impiegato (The Story of a clerk)", where you say: "to breathe the same air of a jailer does not suit me."

The difference is that in this case the jailer is directed to a boss of the Camorra, the other case was a militant of the extreme left who spoke to a jailer. The positions are completely reversed. There was no power that turned to the power in this case instead of the real power belongs to the jailed, the warden has none. However, it is funny that the jailer is in any case, a state representative. It is the organization that is aimed at delinquent for favors. This is to be emphasized.

But this is the last step of the state power.

Now it turns out that it was done, even at high levels, not only by a poor jailer.

What is happening in Italy, both the prosecution of political leaders, both industry leaders, what inspires you? You will make a song about Tangentopoli?

I think not, because I'm not going to stab the corpses. I do not like raging.

What is your opinion on what is happening?

It is a big clean-up that makes us just fine. The problem is twofold: to force to see people going in and out of jail it is possible that there may be more appropriate, will probably make going to jail, in collective memory, normal. Secondly, the fact of putting these people in jail who have committed crimes is not a moral or reconstituted, is simply a deterrent. A moral is reconstructed in a hundred years. Now there is a new morality that is based on perverse values: the immediate enrichment, do not look at anyone but to accumulate capital.

You're not very optimistic about the future.

Not much. I think now are simply doing investigations on people who have had to do with public procurement, but if they were going to dig, I believe that 50-60 percent of Italians have committed crimes of this type, that has been enriched improperly. The rules that we thought were the basis of civilized life are skipped, to reconstitute it will probably take a very long time. And with the new economic crisis will resurface poverty, and through poverty perhaps we will rediscover the values of solidarity.

Is that possible?

Probably not, why not go down so as to reconstitute the social fabric on values convincing.

But we must recognize that what he did in a year a judge was not obtained with decades of political opposition and that restoring confidence in the power of the state.

The problem is that this change did not come from a broad mass movement but as a state power. Judges are simply delegates to use this deterrent power that the constitution of morality. The judge is an expert paid by the state that applies the code, made by the head of the State to impose a penalty. The task of the left should be to rebuild morale. (...)

You're not a musician who publishes the bagful. You have planned something new?

Right now I have a project for something new, but it's so smoky and messy that before talking about who should make order in my head. And now that I am involved in concerts with fatigue, with a certain awe for the public, for fear of making mistakes. And a task that tires me out a lot and does not leave me time to think quietly.

So it is likely that it will be a few years.

At least two years, I think. Why not just think about a new disc I'm not a chicken farm. I hope I can think of other things that allow me to evolve in other directions. I do not like to think that my life should be made simply by writing songs and go on stage. I have a farm, friends, different interests.

Trends in contemporary music, which interests you most?

I would say that at this moment there is very little. There is, for example, the metal, I am little inclined to this music you can sing a little. I would say that they are more inclined to listen to young people who are recovering ancient traditions, especially in Puglia. Through a music that in some cases is rap, then import, but in other cases has roots in musical culture. Some young people are telling stories of everyday life in their original language. There's a bit 'all over the world and this is perhaps the most interesting thing. And keep in mind that a song should be able to have two possible readings. So wthen there are songs that seem to escape songs, love, digging you can find even the social. Maybe those who wrote it, did it unconsciously.

Can you give some examples referring to your songs?

For example, the Song of Marinella. It is not born by chance, simply because I wanted to tell a tale of love. It is quite the opposite. It is the story of a girl who at sixteen lost her parents, a country girl from the parts of Asti. She was driven by her uncles and started to prostitute on the banks of the Tanaro and one day she found one that took away her purse from her arm and broke it throwing her into the river and couldn't do anything to bring her back to life, I tried to change her death. This is called the "Marinella's Song", that also has the social motivations, very deeply buried. I wanted to completely mystify the fate of Marinella. You have no key to understanding but to an unfortunate love, and if you do not tell that the background is not what one thinks, you don't understand that at the origin there was a serious social problem. Certain facts of reality, especially when I was young, gave me a big hassle, then I tried to change the reality.

interview with Fabrizio by Luciano Lanza
(From Volontà "Note di rivolta", 1993)

Photos of the dossier are Reinhold Kohl.

Thanks also to Ares and Gianfranco Bruno Sconocchia.

rivista anarchica
anno 29 n.252
marzo 1999