Francesco De Gregori
La Storia

In the 800s, King Charles is crowned emperor by the Pope, thus giving rise to the Holy Roman Empire, which survived for about a thousand years. On October 31, 1517, the monk Martin Luther publishes a document on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, condemning the sale of indulgences through 95 theses. In 1793, Louis XVI is convicted of high treason by the National Convention, sentenced to death and guillotined in the Place de la Révolution. In 1921, Lenin dies in Russia, and Stalin succeeds him in power. On March 16, 1978, Aldo Moro is kidnapped by the Red Brigades and killed on May 9 of the same year. The Second Triumvirate, the Hundred Years' War, Christopher Columbus, the Storming of the Bastille, the Peace of Westphalia, the March on Rome, the Yalta Conference, the fall of Napoleon, Italy at war.

De Gregori in the '80s was different, more polished in style and less interesting than he might have been in the past. It seemed that his singer-songwriter nature, so intimate and rich in metaphors, was destined to be confined to a handful of albums that became emblematic of a musical era. His unique way of dressing songs through an excessive use of synesthesias and intimate verses became a double-edged sword. A style too hermetic to please everyone, at times less direct unlike a colleague like De André, and too subject to a skewed comparison such as the one with Dylan. And especially since after 'Generale,' it was difficult to reach the same artistic peaks of equal success.

But in 1985, riding the success of "La donna cannone," the man who had become known as 'Il Principe' recorded his eleventh solo album, excluding the debut with Venditti, 'Scacchi e Tarocchi.' An album rather understated according to critics, supported by the collaboration of Ivano Fossati, a track dedicated to Pasolini, but containing one of the most groundbreaking cultural manifestos of the singer-songwriter era, the 'Storia' that remains today one of the most successful tracks of the Roman singer-songwriter. Discussing history was not an innovative operation. Years earlier, Eugenio Montale had already desacralized and analyzed it, accompanied by that pessimism that led the entire collection 'Satura.' The title, once again, 'La Storia', simple and direct, stripped of its more internal meanings and brought back to light through its destructive power and benevolent capabilities. An indomitable bulldozer, to which after all, there are those who survive.

Francesco does nothing but overturn what is the essence of history to which we are most accustomed. He brings what can be defined as an Enlightenment conception of the concept of 'history', contrasting it with the more purely classical and Latin one, which saw in the prominent figures of the past, such as politicians or emperors, the true protagonists of our past. What De Gregori launches is a message that is frightening. History is us. Turn off the television and close the books, everything you have studied and learned about the past so far doesn't hold up to the historiography of our lives. It's a revolutionary message that scares. Being this silence so hard to chew implies having responsibilities of no small account. We are those waves in the sea, symbolizing something in constant motion, never static and never still as our existential laziness forces us to believe. And may nobody feel excluded from this truth that reflects all of us as human beings, and not as names and surnames, that nobody feel offended.

De Gregori disguises himself as Galileo Galilei, stating what is an uncomfortable truth and going against the thought of thousands and thousands of years. Because when you discover that you are those people, - because it is people who make history -, you can no longer hide. You make history every day, you live it constantly through the purest and most naïve everyday gesture that you end up taking for granted. You trace history with a finger every moment without the need to launch a crusade or take down an aircraft carrier. The variety of this beauty is dictated by our being each deeply different from the other, and not all the same as they want you to believe. Because we are not caged as someone insists on saying: those who have read a million books and those who don't even know how to speak, history makes no distinctions. It always sees us the same way, like a multitude of blades of grass, like a field of needles under the sky.

History breaks in everywhere. It enters into rooms and burns them, and is a ruthless regulator: history judges who is right or wrong. But people have this inside, even if they are unconscious of it. People, when it's time to choose and go, you find them all with open eyes knowing exactly what to do.
Starting from those who have everything to win, ending with those who believe they don't count and who think they have everything to lose. We are all light as feathers, no longer at the mercy of the wind but strong in the awareness of having the duty to carve out a space. And so the abstraction that wanders in our conception of the past fades more and more, assuming sincere and concrete connotations, like the gestures that compose it and of which we know ourselves to be conscious protagonists. And here is where the first paragraph of the review in Francesco loses credibility: they terribly lose value in the face of a gesture that saves a life, that doesn't feel the need to be reported to the general public.

History is made by Alfredo, who every morning puts on surgical gloves and plunges his hands into his patients. It’s made by Jessica, who with the help of her sister tries to get out of the tunnel of drug addiction. It’s made by Ernesto, who fights every day against cancer, it’s made by his wife who does not stop fighting together with him, it’s made by the young people striking for their rights, it’s made by Roseline when she returns home after a night's work on the streets. It’s made by Alfredo and Rosaria when they discover they are soon to become parents, it’s made by Gloria and Antonio when they decide their love is stronger than their social differences. It’s made by Aldo, a widower museum guard, when he brings a flower to his wife's grave in the morning. History is made by Fabio, who adopts a stray dog, by Debora, a victim of domestic violence, who finds the courage to report it. It’s made by Roberto who returns money to someone who dropped it by mistake, by Valerio who refuses silence against the mafia, by Fernando who doesn’t make it to the end of the month, by Giovanna who never knew her mother, by Cristian who watches the stars looking for a loved one who is no longer there. It’s made by two young people who fall in love, it’s made by those who wake up every day at a quarter past six to go to work, two children holding hands, it’s made by a caress, a flower, or a glance.

History is made by De Gregori when he takes the stage, history is made by me as I write, and by you as you read, regardless of the pleasure of reading. And if each of us were a history book, what would we find inside? I sometimes wonder that and don’t always find the content I’m looking for. But maybe this is just the beginning. Perhaps beautifying this book should be my, our goal. To see it one day festooned and colored with the colors we like. So as to finally make it generous this plate of grain.

Francesco De Gregori (1951 - 201... Oh but is he still alive? Better so)