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Rating: Dear all, those who have read some of my reviews on "minor" Italian art over the past year may have understood how, at times, the theme of migrants has been very dear to my heart, and, in general, those who are forced by life to become something other than what they hoped to be or planned to become, finding themselves "new" or "different" from their expectations, but sometimes also from the expectations and hopes placed on them by others, carrying the weight of the responsibilities that mark the growth and crises of every individual who lives and does not merely exist.
Migrations that, in an old review of Nicola Di Bari, I had perhaps emphatically defined as "of the soul," and anyway forced, unlike the trips to America or the snow-covered landscapes in the films of the Vanzina brothers, which represented the cheerful counterpoint to certain reflections that could be gleaned between the lines of some of my writings hosted by the kind editors of the site.
I would like to dedicate, with and for you, the last of my reviews on Debaser, before migrating myself, to a decidedly minor singer-songwriter, to the point of being almost forgotten by his fellow citizens and contemporaries, but not by the young people who return home for the Christmas holidays, thus rewinding their life, almost like a film: Gino Pastore, a folksinger from Barletta who, on the evening of December 29th, thanks to the initiative of a site that gathers the thoughts of many young people from that South forced to leave home and a brilliant speaker of the city's stadium, returned to the stage after about eight years of silence, but not of absolute oblivion, to delight numerous adherents of his music and texts. Among them was I, forced to be in Puglia a few days before leaving for my beloved Sharm El Sheik.
Before telling you about the concert, and the experience, the sensations felt, I would like to frame the singer-songwriter I am writing about: from Barletta, a migrant himself, then returned home, active mainly in the '70s and '80s, gradually disappearing from the scene, Pastore has a language that blends aesthetics and, at the same time, a particular ethics.
Pastore's music, valid in my opinion in absolute terms, without distinctions of labels, genres, or artificial distinctions between "minor" or "major" art (compared to what, then?), skillfully mixes a Dylan-influenced folk, akin to the mood of many authors in vogue in the '70s, with Mediterranean tones that emerge from guitar arpeggios, harmonies, and the arrangements of the individual pieces, all of this radicalized by lyrics and singing in a strict Barletta dialect.
Thus the popular music of Anglo-American origin blends with a specific local poetics, becoming a vehicle of communication beyond labels and clichés, creating a product accessible to everyone, which in turn becomes a vehicle to spread, preserve, betray (in the sense of delivering, but also transforming) the memories of a city and its inhabitants, their contradictions, their charm, their memories, their roots, their leaves, and their fruits, often destined to fall far from the tree if they wish to give life in turn.
This, in my opinion, is the aftertaste of the concert, its premise and in certain respects also its purpose: to have fun, to sing together, to stand together with hands on heart, to play to be together and to be together to play a bit like I wrote for Raoul Casadei and the "liscio", looking for something that is no more (the abandoned city, a family disbanded by the growth of its members, friendships and loves of the past), which we can only perceive its mortality, its finiteness, yet hoping, thanks to music, its feelings, to what stirs in anyone with a passion for art as an expression of individuality, that a future is possible, just to have the strength to build it.
The evening of December 29th last was truly successful and invigorating, I think for all attendees: accompanied by two acoustic guitarists, Pastore led his flock with confidence and yearning, now singing of the migrant forced to leave his city by train and singing of its beauty in the yearning of distance that makes reality better than it perhaps is (Barlètt), now the beauty of the city's inhabitants, where people, perhaps through a distorting but affectionate lens, are the mirror of the lived places (I mnènn d Barlètt), now about the village characters, poetic in the very moment one captures their almost sketch-like character, as stereotypes or masks (Piripicchio, U scheicch, Cita Lulù), now about family and lost affections in general (Papagnol, Mammè), now about a classist local policy that in certain periods almost killed the city and its symbols, as well as the hopes of many (A mòrt d'Arè).
Yearning and passions that now bring joy, now make you reflect, intimately mixing joy and sorrow, up to the final catharsis à la "Stairway To Heaven" - where "all is one and one is all" - namely the football anthem "Barletta alè", hoping for the return to series B of a team that Pasquale Zagaria would gladly coach, only to become young and himself once again.
At the end of the concert, amidst the olive trees towards the intersection for Montaltino, as I head home, I think back to what I heard, and, suddenly, also to what I wrote over the months I have been, on this site, "Il_Paolo": and Christian and a Palermo so in love with itself that it considers itself better than Madrid come to mind, the socialist approach to popular music that, in its museality, ends up separating from experience and life, the pan-dimension of Romina and Al Bano Carrisi's transitory happiness shattered by life and the disappearance of a daughter, Nicola Di Bari's daily departure towards somewhere unknown, Jimmy Fontana who travels around the world not to die and not to surrender to old age, the ironic solitude of Fred Buongusto with his last drink and round of pool in one of the suburbs far from his native Molise, the fact that, given infinite time, a piece by the Lorimeri will end up being worth as much as Ludwig Van's ninth symphony, and not least Diego Abatantuono and Teo Teocoli who support Milan, Inter, and Juventus to integrate into a new reality, having lost their roots and origins, experiencing through football a loss of their individuality and past. And everything, somehow, comes together, as if I had written the same thing for a year, in anticipation of a concert I did not yet know I had to see.
Above all, I think about the poster behind "a" Gino Pastore, and suddenly it comes to me that it is Elvis, the guardian deity of all, and then I think that in this parking lot my mission is somehow accomplished, and as I get into my Cadillac with Bobby Solo and all the clones of the Tupelo myth, shooting an imaginary film in which truth and hallucination blend and mix in a night like the previous ones and yet different from all the others.
And so, the mission can be said to be accomplished, and nothing needs to be added to it.
Completely Yours,
Il_Paolo
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