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"Jannacci? Ah yes, yes I've heard of him before, the one with "Vengo anch’io no tu no? Ma perché? Perché no!" Oh yes, wait, also that other one that goes, "Perché ci vuole orèèècchioooooo, tarattatatterooooo, tarattattaaaa, dentro al secchio..." Yes, yes Jannacci, ha ha ha, he's funny... Oh he was? Why? Is he dead? Ha ha ha, I didn't know, I'm sorry." He didn’t know, this idiot. And laughs... But then what the hell are you laughing at? (I think to myself) And then?… What are you sorry for? And then that's it, they don't know anything else. And "Ho visto un re"? Not at all. Not even Dario Fo, never heard of... Nobel Prize for Literature in the nineties and something? Oh no? Idiot twice!
Indeed, because Jannacci remains and will always remain, for the indiscriminate mediaclassmasspausinianiancovascofapifierce, a random idiot (as he would say), who passed through the black and white of the cathode ray tube, in now distant times, singing something funny. And that’s just how it is. It's the label that counts in the former Beautiful Country.
Jannacci? (I think again) Is it possible they know nothing about Jannacci? The one from “Vincenzina e la fabbrica”, “Il volatore di aquiloni“, “Musical“, “Io e te”, “Lettera da lontano“, “Parlare con i limoni“, “Sei minuti all’alba”, “Il gruista“, “Ragazzo padre“, “Quando il sipario calerà“, “Soldato Nencini”, “Giovanni Telegrafista”, “Il Duomo di Milano“, “La fotografia“ “Come gli aeroplani”, “El me indiriss”. But yes, of course, Jannacci (I think and double down), the one of the wretched, the workers at the lathe, the mafia victims, the prostitutes, the misfits, the homeless, the semi-criminals, the differently equal. The inconvenient ones, in short.
This one was a genius, with the sensitivity of a heart surgeon, he spat it out right on the plate, from his 59 teeth, a bit cunningly naive but evident, with that brazen and authentic smile of his. Starry-eyed but determined. Energetic but a dreamer. Another misunderstood one, snubbed and branded as a jester, inept and grammatically dyslexic, who can't be understood when he talks and sings. Idiots five times! It's not that he's not understandable, if for the last forty years you'd been quiet, you would have understood well. It's just that you didn't want to understand... as usual. He was mentally jazz, a master of improvisation.
So misunderstood that he even scared Mamma Rai, who to withstand the autumn heat, didn't even let him sing “Ho visto un re” during the elimination phases of Canzonissima 1968. Too politicized; better “Gli zingari”, so beautiful and heartrending but so cryptic and indecipherable as not to pass the round. Tze... not understandable... Idiots twenty times! It's just that you did not want to understand... as usual. As usual the same narrow-minded, catechist and sickeningly sweet little Italy of Al Bano, Morandi, Reuccio and Orietta Berti.
"Get lost you and Canzonissima!" This guy too was ahead, rather than just someone who always plays the fool.
And then between one appearance and another a little time passes. Those who... the spotlights timidly return to illuminate Enzo's star before reconsecrating it at the beginning of the eighties. Those who... in 1977 “Secondo te… che gusto c’è?”. A fruit salad of good humor and reflection, variety show and theatricality, goliardic spirit and drama, glimpses of the outskirts, urban and suburban of the Milan of workers, and poor Christs, of those who kill themselves and those who die of misfortune or disease and those who scrape by, of those who, however, manage to have a laugh and make love to dispel the sadness.
A little half-hour disc or a little more, played by simple, but professional people like Enzo, a disc of music not really prolix and redundant, music for everyone, pleasant, with two spartan splashes of jazz (because, after all, it’s correct to prove to be jazz even outside) to reset the disengagement. The octopus De Piscopo on percussion, the masterful De Filippi on string instruments, and Dario's lesser-known brother, Alberto Baldan Bembo on keyboards. Some other not too well-known names mentioned on the back cover of the LP to fill in with wind instruments and bass, but basically yes, I'd say you can trust them.
And then who knows why everything always inevitably brings me back to that guy from some years before who saw that king not to be saddened, because you always have to stay cheerful.
It’s his huge and bittersweet smile that taught me to be cheerful. Or at least to try.
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