Ivan Graziani
Lugano Addio

The anarchist journalist Pietro Gori, at the end of the nineteenth century, was accused by the bourgeois press of having taken part in the murder of the French president Sadi Carnot. To avoid what would have been a severe sentence, he fled Italy, finding refuge in Switzerland, precisely in Lugano. His stay in the country did not last long, and together with seventeen Italian political exiles, he was imprisoned for two weeks before being expelled from Switzerland. During that time, he composed what is defined as one of the manifesto songs of the anarchism of the era, 'Il canto degli anarchici espulsi', which later became the popular 'Addio Lugano bella', in 1895 to be precise. It is said that as he crossed the border, handcuffed, he looked back at Lugano holding back a tear but with hope in his heart, the same hope he sang of in his song. 'Addio Lugano bella' soon became one of the most widespread political songs, which for better or worse represents an icon of the era in which it was composed.

In 1964, the song was featured on Rai, something unlikely today due to choice and courage, by a group of young people with guitars in their hands. They were Giorgio Gaber and his friend Enzo Jannacci, Lino Toffolo, Otello Profazio, and Silverio Pisu. They each sang a verse, comfortably seated on sofas, singing like a group of friends at a bar, with a depth that only a few could muster, defying the lack of age that a then twenty-five-year-old Gaber might have had.

82 years passed since the composition of the song when a young singer-songwriter decided to reintroduce the title of the track with a melodic twist. His name is Ivan Graziani, a virtuoso of the six strings and a formidable lyricist, unique in his musical offering, which involved a fusion of classic singer-songwriter music with the rock of those years. Born in Abruzzo, a character always discreet and never out of place, except perhaps for his choice of glasses, as unique as his approach to songwriting, balancing between humorous and serious without ever becoming banal. A storyteller from another time, a painter of songs, for whom singing was equivalent to painting on canvas, with an amazing ability to bring the story to life in the listener's mind, almost like a documentary or a film of the era. It was 1977 when the young Ivan released 'I lupi' an album containing what can be considered the first successful song of the young singer-songwriter from Teramo, 'Lugano Addio'.

'So the song I am doing now is called Lugano Addio. There is really little to explain, it is a fairly simple story of a boy from the south and a girl from the north, obviously they fall in love which is a very normal thing, but he falls in love especially with what she represents, which is the world, which is totally different from his.'

That's what Ivan said in a Rai documentary, before playing the piece. And yet there is so much to explain, and what seems simple is only superficially so. Those were years when certain topics needed to be handled with caution, and the operation Graziani accomplishes in these barely four minutes is sensational. The heavy anarchist political significance borne by a title like 'Addio Lugano bella' is reduced to a sweet memory of the song of a loved girl, dissolving it all in the purest and most innocent adolescent love. Those naive, almost childish loves, too small or perhaps too big to understand the true meaning of a popular song instilled by parents, that shrinks exponentially, becoming a simple nursery rhyme.

What would Marta know with her heavy breasts, a clear sign of growth and a departure from childhood, candid in her reassuring way of dressing, with white and blue tennis shoes and a windbreaker, about struggles and rights? And what would he know, sitting by the lakeside, holding her hand and dreaming of her red lips while singing songs? Too simple and naive to realize that they belong to two different worlds, diametrically opposed, and too trusting in life to believe that this could represent an obstacle. Marta is the daughter of a man who lived among the battles up in the mountains, amidst financiers and smuggling, described in a way incomprehensible to those who saw their father working among the waves and fishing boats, between the beaches and the stars, in the pain of those who suffer. Too incomprehensible for someone who naively wants to warm up to his stories.

What a hundred years ago was a farewell pregnant with political and social significance, engaged in the sweat of those leaving, has now become a tear of separation from that Marta so well painted in memory, of her unforgettable smile and her hair, still like the lake.

The sweet guitar in an emotional explosion of sounds introduces the end of the song, and questions naturally arise. Who knows if Ivan, in being from Abruzzo and tied to the sea, truly identified with the fisherman's son. And who knows if over the years they learned the meaning of that song, or if Marta already managed to glimpse it, stripped of its content and reduced to a nostalgic memory of those days. But I like to think it's not like that. I like to remember them holding hands and getting lost with their eyes in the lake of Lugano, with the innocence and smile that no social grayness can bend.