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Rating: After attending a showcase of "Il Parto Delle Nuvole Pesanti," I had the chance to exchange a few words with Peppe Voltarelli, who kindly agreed to answer five questions about his work via email, which you can read below along with his answers.
1. Hi Peppe, before starting this small interview, do you want to tell us where you are right now and what you are doing these days?
I'm at the municipal library of San Lazzaro di Savena. I've just returned from a few days of vacation in Lisbon, and I'm writing stories to create a show around them.
2. In my opinion, your latest album is a mature, well-thought-out work, created with care and passion. How long was "Il parto" and what was it like collaborating with so many musicians for its realization?
It was a year-long work filled with clashes, discoveries, egoistic outbursts, collectivist manias, and delusions of creative authority. Working with many guests was beautiful but exhausting; it wasn't easy. The next work, if there will be one, will have to be minimal, with few instruments, few words, an even leaner and more subtle synthesis of the Parto.
3. I saw one of your showcases a few weeks ago. It was a very beautiful evening, I must say. But how did you come up with this unusual idea of promoting the album? I say unusual because more than concerts, your performances are interactive meetings with the audience to get to know you beyond the album. Could it be a way to promote oneself by overcoming the barriers of the media? And how did this experience go in the end?
We have been touring for a few months, meeting many people. The album reached places that would otherwise have been impossible to reach with traditional distribution and visibility. Door-to-door works much better than an advertisement page in the major national newspaper. However, I believe that the cultural limitations and institutional policies in Italy easily nullify all this, in the sense that with a wipe of the slate, you can easily erase a mosaic design that you have patiently built over the years. It's Italy, the Italy of tourist villages, private radios, and schools...
4. In your music, you highlight multiple cultural experiences: theater, cinema, roots, singer-songwriting. Where do you think these various paths you've taken will lead you?
To a nervous breakdown. Just kidding, I hope they will lead us to an artistic and human awareness that keeps us always passionate about things, being sensitive, curious, versatile, and attentive without settling like the old foghorns Guccini, Dalla, and all the others. In a way, we'll need to remain poor while reaching towards wealth.
5. I always like to close an interview with the same question, which concerns the interviewee's musical loves. So, can you tell us about one or more albums that you are particularly attached to and why?
"Aria Pulita" by Luciano Rossi (1975), the album of the Roman cantautore of the separated, we used to listen to it all the time in the car when traveling with my father and mother. "Forza Campione" by Nino D'Angelo because I started appreciating it at the end of the nineties when Coldplay was in fashion. "Transformer" by Lou Reed because it woke me up every morning during my high school years.
Thank you, Peppe.
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