Giorgio Gaber
La mia generazione ha perso

"And who cares?" will probably be the reaction of most people in their twenties or younger when reading the title of this record, assuming they are aware of Giorgio Gaber's existence. If they are, they'll see his generation, the sixties, as a distant and unknown planet, which is quite natural in a world forced to live in an eternal present, forgetting that who we are depends mostly on our history. But for those of us whose age is somewhere between Gaber and them, it's much harder to ignore that the defeats of that generation, with its utopias and ideals, have prepared for us a world that is anything but comfortable, hostile to those whose only thought is not to grab as much money as possible, preferably by cheating others, which always seems to bring great prestige. That's why when I listen to "La mia generazione ha perso," my participation in this sincere and lucid reflection in the form of a record is total and moved, despite the twenty-plus years that separate me from Gaber.

We are in 2001, but part of the material present belongs to the memorable theatrical seasons of the '70s and '80s: "Signor G" had foresight, and many of the anathemas of those times against the danger of a gradual transformation of men into sheep are still tremendously current, even more so now than then. The songs from those times, along with recent ones, are presented with more than good musical arrangements (produced by Beppe Quirici, the same as Ivano Fossati), but at the center, just like in the old records that captured theatrical performances precisely, is him, the great showman, with his words sometimes ironic, sometimes fierce, other times moving, but always and anyway intelligent. A record that "has pounds of brains," as they would say in my parts. "La razza in estinzione" contains the line that gives the title to the album and is perhaps the darkest moment of despair: Gaber feels truly alone against everybody, not finding any reference in a world he hoped "perhaps with a bit of presumption to change," and finds it indeed changed, but in the opposite direction. He sees terrifyingly grotesque figures advancing, like "Il conformista," a very Italian portrait of a turncoat always ready to "think by hearsay" according to convenience, and "L'obeso," a more universal character, a monstrous human sewer who gulps down tons of data, news, information, one who always knows everything without ever understanding anything. The pessimism in "Verso il terzo millennio" reaches levels akin to Guccini's and is reflected even in the sadness of the music; only in the end, a hope emerges: "but I want to tell you that it's never over, that everything that happens is part of life". The only weapon to combat this state of affairs remains irony, and Gaber has inexhaustible reserves of it. Hence songs like "Si può," where a cheerful South American rhythm accompanies a humorous review of the many "mandatory freedoms" the current world grants us, only for a chilling question to hit like a slap: "But how, with all the freedoms you have, do you also want the freedom to think?". And don't think that, being a man of the left, Gaber's criticism is one-sided: anyone who hears "Il potere dei più buoni" will find it easy to recognize the many social professionals, "enrolled in a thousand associations", who especially infest the left.

But fundamentally what is right, and what is left? "Destra-Sinistra," with a series of paradoxical examples, tries to explain the potential differences, but what emerges is a highly entertaining nonsense, where the two sides appear far too similar. "Quando sarò capace d'amare" and "Un uomo e una donna" are two very tender love songs, and at the same time two bitter reflections on how current society heavily conditions the relationships between men and women. "Canzone dell'appartenenza" is instead a profound representation of the drama of a free man who, by definition, finds no correspondence in most others. The revealing line is at the end: "I would be certain to change my life if I could start saying WE". But the most engaging moment is a monologue taken from a theatrical performance: "Qualcuno era comunista." Hearing Gaber's words listing the thousand reasons why someone was communist first makes you laugh ("someone was communist because Berlinguer was a good person... someone because Andreotti was not a good person"), then it makes you angry ("someone was communist because of Piazza Fontana, then Italicus, Ustica, the Bologna massacre, etc., etc., etc.!"), and in the end, it makes you cry because the discourse becomes universal and applies even to those (like me) who have never been communists. In the end, the person remains alone, with no more Utopia (whatever form it may take), with a dream that "has shriveled." And this is the worst of defeats: here, all generations have lost.