Luigi Tenco
Inediti

My generation, born in the nineties, must be grateful for a site like YouTube. No, I don't want to do subliminal advertising, but simply underline a fact. Thanks to YouTube, we have been able to enjoy almost all the music of the past, from Bach to the records of Enzo Carella. Sure, the charm of the record store was missing, the careful selection of a product that had its own price, but we literally had the world at our feet. This is somewhat the advantage of technology, as we know. The fact is that in a sea of infinity, it may happen that in your personal search, you stumble upon someone who impacts your life a little more than others. Like when you find yourself facing a Van Gogh masterpiece in Amsterdam for the first time, or like when you see a rainbow behind a hill to which you had never given neither weight nor color. In music, this happened to me, for example, with Luigi Tenco, an artist whose song I downloaded almost by accident about fifteen years ago. The song was titled Averti Tra Le Braccia, and it seemed to be sung by the voice of an adult man, worn out, with plenty of life experiences behind him; yet, no, the one who wrote such songs wasn't even thirty years old. As mentioned, YouTube. An inexhaustible source of music, unreleased videos, rarities. Among all these segments, one day I stumbled upon a black-and-white film featuring two characters from 1960s Italy. The two were Giorgio Gaber and Luigi Tenco. The first presented the second and let him sit at a piano to play his song. That song was called Non Sono Io. So I came across this track, a sober performance with just piano and voice, while a young woman contemplates with eyes full of serious detachment as he plays and sings his song. An intense performance by this young man, as mentioned, not yet thirty but with the face and vocal tone of a man from another era. The song is nothing but the confession of a simple man, who, putting his hands forward, tells the beloved woman not to live on promises and incredible gestures; he simply cares for her, a love you that for the English is both caring and love, in the tenderest and most profound meaning of the term. The version of the song I'm talking about is a delight to the ears, but unfortunately, there is no album it is contained in, or rather, it was never recorded. I give my soul, curse the devil, but nothing, it doesn't exist. I have to "settle" for the studio version from 1965, overabundant with female choirs and orchestra. Then one fine day, thanks to technology, that does damage but also brings vast knowledge, I discover this 2009 collection simply called Inediti: inside it, there's the crystalline pure jewel I desired with all my heart. And boom, there's also Vedrai Vedrai, my favorite song by Luigi in its live version from the famous video always floating around on YouTube. In short, two such pieces in a single album-collection. And then other gems like Guarda Se Io (in this case a real unreleased track), Ragazzo Mio, segments of interviews, but above all her, the only Luigi's song with lyrics by Mogol, released posthumously in 1967 with an orchestral arrangement that made some people turn up their noses, even here on Deb: Se Stasera Sono Qui. But here's the surprise, the version from the 2009 collection is nothing else but the first draft of the track, the nowadays rare version of Luigi singing, accompanied only by the piano.

It seems I've illustrated good reasons for you to praise this compilation, surely made with a sensible criterion for all of us lovers of Luigi Tenco and great Italian singer-songwriter music.