A in the pocket

Paolo Finzi

translation Enrico Massetti

In the general (and a bit suspicious) chorus of regret for the death in 1991 of the most famous singer in Italy, the voice of his friends and fellow anarchists.

"It's a part of me that goes, a piece of my life that I lost forever," said one of our partner at the microphones of who knows what television, which interviewed at the front of the church where Wednesday, January 13 1999 took place the funeral of Genoese Fabrizio De André. And I know many people - of many different "types" - has been acknowledged and recognized in these words.
Of course, one should not underestimate the power of media, their ability to involve, to cause real waves of collective emotion. Yet I was deeply impressed by the thickness, as well as the quantity of the reactions I heard and perceived after the death of Fabrizio.
We were so many to realize, fully, only at his death of what his work has been not so much for the significant moments in the life of each of us that his songs have accompanied and marked (each one has its own: for me is the "Canzone dell’amore perduto" (Love Lost)" the soundtrack of those times), but for the imprint on the cultural and socio-political scene that has marked his work - in many, many people and, consequently, on the Italian society in recent decades.
I believe that - perhaps - only Fabrizio De André was able to exit the world of "songs" and its upper floors (those occupied by the songwriters doc) to enter - through the words and music - in deep tissue of humanity in the hearts and in the brains of many people. What he has done, so uncompromising libertarian knight, the enemy of the conventions and hypocrisies, antiwar, friend and student of the "other" cultures, the desecration of the sacred institutions (like the Catholic Church) - who has done him proud anarchist, is a given fact important to us. It makes him, even today, one of our comrades in the deepest sense of the word: not that of a common "political activism" (which he never was, strictly speaking, although he has always lined, has haunted the libertarian circles and was often surrounded by employees who had to do with anarchism), but that - much more poignant - of the common "libertarian feeling", rebellion against social injustice, the emotional and cultural reference of a utopia world without dogma or wars, of being always the "other side" with respect to power, all powers.

One Myth less

Our first meeting with Fabrizio de André was at the hotel Cavour, in the square with the same name in downtown Milan. We were in the early '70s and for months we of the magazine "A" were trying to get in touch with Fabrizio De André, as in more than one occasion and interview he had described himself as "anarchic." And in those years of great enthusiasm and great economic needs this was more than enough to rock hounds as looking for more direct contacts with the purpose - not so hidden - to "rip" a concert of funding.
We had managed a great time with Francesco De Gregori. The concert with him at the Teatro Uomo during which we provided security service in order to prevent entry to the overflowing crowd that thronged out: if we had allowed all then in, the fire department would suspend the concert, on the stage had risen unexpectedly from the audience, Giorgio Gaber, in an improvised trio - with our Nicolazzi Paola and followed by the audience - singing "Addio Lugano bella".
We would have succeeded a little later with Franco Battiato, an evening with the proceeds should go to solidarity with the anti-Franco Spain (I say "should" because Battiato was then in its infancy and the general public flocked).
After months of tampin the press agent of his record company, we were able to make an appointment with Fabrizio himself, that of anti-militarist and desecrating ballads, which even then many of us was the most beloved and heard singer-songwriter. I remember that my heart was beating while the recorder was ready for the interview that mattered to him, as I walked down the long corridors of the luxurious hotel.
Fabrizio received us with great sympathy, presenting Dori - that we got to know better and appreciate in later years. The impact for me was strong. It was - perhaps - the first time in my life that I knew what was for me (in my early twenties) a Myth. I do not remember well what I expected, but I remember very well that I went out after a few hours from the hotel room with a Myth less in me and one more friend.
Fabrizio explained to us, without any arrogance, his anarchism, made of an original mixture of sympathy (in the etymological sense of the word) for the excluded, the victims of oppression and the injustice, the different, the vanquished and detailed knowledge of the assets of thought and history of anarchism. He had read - and sometimes liked to quote - especially Malatesta, but also Stirner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, the history of written makhnovicina Arshinov. He was well aware of the controversy between authoritarian and libertarian communists, the Marx-Bakunin conflict, persecution of anarchist anti-Bolsheviks in Russia after '17 and the Stalinists in Spain after the '36. We talked about some friends he knew from the historical anarchist venue in the famous Embriaci square (still open), other - completely unknown to us - who knows what he met in taverns and alleys.
There was certainly, in him, a vision of "romantic" of anarchism, sometimes identified tout court with the marginalized, with the outcasts of this planet. But that wasn't the only one. Fabrizio knew our history, and knew he felt part of it: in its way, as each of us do. Although the word sounds a bit today "rhetoric" and helps only a little to understand his human and public figure, I felt he was "un compagno", a comrade.
The conversation went on for a long time, he wanted to know about our policy, about the magazine. We had certainly very different training, lifestyle, frequenting. Yet the desire to communicate was so intense that the recorder was turned off: the interview was not long, it was not. That night, something more important was born: an understanding which would be transformed into friendship.

Rebellious and anarchic

Since then, for a quarter of a century, we've seen over and over again - sometimes frequently, sometimes for years ever. His busy life, his habits, his profession, a provision - at least I think so - the precariousness and instability, have made our friendship a very strange thing. But the relationship was there and was strong.
Fabrizio regularly received the magazine, more than a few times it shoved it into his pocket, so visible during the concerts. I remembered a few days ago Victor, a comrade of Cremona, who noticed the first time in '74 during a concert in Casalmaggiore: "I do not know if in this city there is an anarchist group, if there is I extend my greeting and an invitation to its members to visit me in the dressing room after the concert." Fabrizio has usually done from the stage this and many other statements of commitment and sympathy for anarchism and anarchists in the flesh. Giorgio of Arezzo was telling me about a concert in Florence during which De André, at some point, saluted "the anarchist Barsella", a fellow railroad worker who he had got to know. Not so and so or Communist Democrat whatsoever. No, the anarchist.
And among the many entertainers that I happened to know (or read) related to anarchism, Fabrizio is certainly among the very few who, like Leo Ferre and Julian Beck, wanted to link his name to support concrete anarchist initiatives. Fabrizio did concerts openly, publicly in support of the anarchist press, gave money, he has followed with interest and participation in some of our initiatives. And he did - I already knew that first time at the hotel Cavour - modestly, with deep respect for our engagement militant, always rejecting the sender of our "thanks!" specifying that the case was that he would thank us for our work.
I wanted to remember these issues, little known even in our environment, because even in the large space that rightly - inevitably, I would say - the media have devoted to him in the days of the death and funeral, his anarchism seems to have been presented under very low light, if not incorrect. "Rebel and anarchist, but with feeling" - he headlines around the Corriere della Sera, which also in Mario Luzzatto Fegiz recalled his youthful acquaintances (and not only) the anarchist circles of Genoa and Carrara. Instead of that "but" should have written "Rebel and anarchist, therefore with feeling", if you do not understand it, you can not understand anything about the anarchists and the same Fabrizio De André.

Walking Tall

"In The Wind" is the subtitle chosen by Fabrizio de André for his poem on the Gypsies, "anime salve (saved souls)". It strike me, even today, having listened to it countless times, the density of the selected words, the careful study and especially the demonstration of the understanding of the story of a people almost unknown to our culture and yet, when mentioned, wrapped in a haze of rhetoric and platitudes. If this happens in the world of "culture", let alone that of pop music.
I consider just this song - and the choice of combining Fabrizio's poetry withf the chorus khorakhané (with the poignant voice of Dori) - to consider Fabrizio something radically different than the world of "singers" from which he also came, and consider him the most incisive and original voices of the libertarian culture in Italy.
Other, more well-prepared than myself, I hope will analyze in depth the profoundly libertarian, anarchist essence of his production (as does Mark Pandin in his fine article). Far from fashion, deep understanding, with a density equal to the cultural refinement of feeling, Fabrizio De Andre has helped to give life and dignity to individuals, peoples, ideas that thanks to him - and partners with great depth of which he knew to be surrounded - could find in his poems to music a lawyer, a "propagandist" honest, an avenger against the wrongs of history.
Sardi, American Indians, toxic, drug addicts, whores, poets, anarchists, prisoners, the suffering, the rebels, gypsies: they are part of that humanity subjugated but not tamed, often only strong for his dignity and coherence, which cross-head high his entire work. Expressing themselves in Genoese or Italian, Sardinian or romanesh, they are to have the last word.
And we, with our commitment to publishing, we are on the same wavelength. As our friend, companion, advocate Fabrizio felt and knew.

Paolo Finzi

rivista anarchica
anno 29 n.252
marzo 1999