(Feb 13) – “When I made my first concert in France, they gave me a large venue, with 1200 seats. I immediately asked the director: “How do I fill it?” Nobody knew me. And he quietly answered “People will be here for the music not for you”. And the room was filled”. So begins the story of Gianmaria Testa, one of the most popular Italian songwriters abroad, which across national borders has built a career that took him in few years to become a symbol of Italian music in the world. A story of passion, “even if i just call it instinct”, he told us, and perseverance, because in 1995, when he recorded his first album, he was 37 years old. He never stopped believing in his dream, working as a railway worker to the bills and singing to be happy. The turning point after winning the Recanati Prize. “I receive several offers from Italian record labels – he recounted from Nuremberg, where he will be in concert tonight -. None of these, however, convinced me. I wanted be free and do my music without boundaries, so I accepted the one from Harmonia Mundi”. We asked him why you musician are not free in Italy and why young people have difficulties to emerge: “Because there is no room for new faces – said -. Sometimes someone bet on a young and wins, as happened to Raphael Gualazzi, but more often there is not a real generational turnover”. Lot of his songs talks about emigration, not only the Italian one. “In 2006 I published ‘Da questa parte del mare’, a musical anthology dedicated to the emigrants. We must remember that Italy is the European country with the largest number of emigrants and yet, when the foreigners come Italy, we forget it”. (Ram/Peg)
