Rino Gaetano
La Storia

THE REVIEW

Rome 1981. It's early morning, Rino is returning home. He wandered around clubs, searching for that genuine humanity that gave him the reason for being both a man and an artist at the same time. A moment of sleepiness and a truck passing by hit his Volvo 343 head-on, just a few meters from his home.
An ungrateful death, a punishment often paid by those who do not compromise with reality.

Rino simply couldn't tolerate Italian misconduct, but unlike his singer-songwriter colleagues, "the elected group" of Guccinian memory, he knew how to expose scandals and subterfuges with a cheerful and carefree appearance. "Ma il cielo è sempre più blu" is somewhat his manifesto song, a cheerful refrain to sing in the shower, a text narrating various humanity, of Italian vices and virtues, without declarations, without politics.
A modern storyteller who openly recognized being on the side of the "sole brothers" trampled and hated, oppressed and fragmented.
Rino had certainties, he loved the South and its practical people; he provides an passionate portrait of this world in "La festa di Maria" and "I tuoi occhi sono pieni di sale," songs that imply his love for a barren and fascinating land, a heartfelt and due tribute free from accommodating rhetoric. In "E cantava le canzoni" the folk approach fits well with the figure of the immigrant, in this Rino proves to be a pioneer of a new way of experimenting with folk in singer-songwriter music ahead of his time, a model that today is adopted by many new groups.
"Gianna" has become a classic of Italian music, here too a cheerful and seemingly trivial tune hides the theme of female emancipation against the prevailing morals.

We all need Rino a little, he left alone but his light and his great humanity didn't die with him.