“I am preparing a Spanish adaptation for the lyrics of the show ‘Il viaggio, i padri, l’appartenenza’. There is a lot of attention to an ironic reading of the themes related to migration. I’m trying to recount the Italian spirit, with our fears and our obsessions. I’ll do a week in the capital and then I’ll repeat it in Cordova and other cities. I am working on it together with ‘Los Anos Luz’, our record company in Buenos Aires”. Peppe Voltarelli speaks enthusiastically of his next tour in Argentina, scheduled for next fall. The singer will propose the show “Il viaggio, i padri, l’appartenenza” monologue for musical theater inspired by true events. The founder of the “Il parto delle nuvole pesanti”, an experimental folk-rock band, that he left in 2006 after 15 years to pursue a solo career, he performed abroad for years: in Czech Republic, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Germany. In recent years he toured Canada, the United States and Mexico, and in 2010 he won the Targa Tenco for the best dialect album “Ultima notte a Malà Strana”. The video for “Scarpe rosse impolverate”, from his latest album, was shot recently in Buenos Aires by Tony Gutierres, with the featuring of Kevin Johansen. “I become keen on the music of the place where I am – Voltarelli says -, i like to learn the basics of language with to play with words, making mistakes, doing interviews without a translator, playing with local musicians. I like to talk with the audience in a straightforward manner, without filters. In difficult moments – he adds – i use my origin. There is a poetic world in there, in the Southern Italy: names, nicknames, dialect poetry, fictional and real places, the audience laughs and thinks I’m crazy. It’s nice, isn’t it?”. The former leader of the band from the region of Calabria so said about the videoclip “Scarpe rosse impolverate”: “It was born from a collaboration with the Mexican director Gutierres, who followed me for two weeks during filming almost everything, the tour including concerts, the street dance, the walk in San Telmo. Then he returned to Mexico City and did some editing, inserting cartoons by Andrea Tarli, a talented artist from Ascoli Piceno who collaborates with me. About Kevin Johansen, he says: “I met Kevin in 2009 during his first trip to Argentina and he was a guest in my concert.We sang a few songs together at the Trastienda, a club of the capital, and since then we became friends, so he agreed to participate in the clip. Every time I come back in Buenos Aires, he always comes to listen to me, and if he is in the right mood, he comes up on stage for a jam. Kevin is a very popular artist in Argentina, for his songs and for his personality”. The singer of 4 battute di povertà”, “Lupu”, “Resta sula” and “Riturnella” speaks about the young people leaving Italy to work abroad: “Who leaves Italy, he has a lot of courage, he is curious and doesn’t give up. Today – Voltarelli concludes – they are not escaping but choosing another way, maybe the right one if you have no recommendation. I think it’s a matter of temperament: there are people who reacts and people who don’t. I bring respect for both but I despise who wastes talent or lowers himself as often happens in Italy”. (Gil/Peg)
