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In 1961, with the recklessness of his young age, Umberto Bindi takes the Sanremo stage with ''Non mi dire chi sei'', a song filled with classicist nuances, owing to his more than enviable conservatory background. Only 37,000 votes for a performance that sparked conversation, never for the song in question, but for a conspicuous ring worn by the singer-songwriter from Bogliasco. ''Nobody cared about my song. They just wanted to know if I was gay''.
These were years when bourgeois and moralistic subcultures took root in Italian homes and televisions. What we now define as fear of the different, which is nothing but poor misinformation and triumph of ignorance, was then more prevalent than ever, aided by a cultural deficiency that today, theoretically, is at an all-time high, making any form of discrimination even less justifiable. The risk of jeopardizing a career also passed through such truths, which most often remained hidden over the years, coming to light in later periods or kept secret until the end of days. And perhaps Lucio Dalla was right to separate character and private life, to the point of making his sexuality a taboo and a discussion point for those who believe, after all, there is more behind the lines of his texts. Also through those who, like Renato Zero, made it an integral part of their persona.
Betty Curtis won that edition. Or rather. Mogol won it, who wrote ''Al di là'' for her, foreseeing a wave of Italian successes that featured the best interpreters of our peninsula, of which it is obligatory to mention that Gigliola Cinquetti, who, a few years later, sang about love too young, which, as mentioned earlier, were labeled as immoral by an excessive bigotry, slave to a subculture at the limits of exasperation, expressed through all kinds of censorship, reaping illustrious victims. Also passing through those who, about 10 years later, from the pen of Bigazzi, made ''Montagne Verdi'' their own in 71.
Because everything is a child of its time, and perhaps it was right that this edition was brought home by those who, in the common imagination, best musically embodied that historical period. Italy was not yet ready for the Genoese school, which a few years later would take singer-songwriting by the hand, transforming and shaping it through hundreds of facets. Despite a pioneer like Modugno, who had little to do with Genoa, had already opened the doors to a still raw movement, but whose embryo was that '''Vecchio Frack'' which sparked so much discussion for themes related to an enigmatic suicide, almost definable as a pioneering theme of a movement that was about to see the light. The America of Bob Dylan cedes place to France and its chansonnier, through the hermeticism and surrealism of those who, a few kilometers up, gave space to a marked commitment in texts, like Brassens and Aznavour, passing through Brel. In a conversion reminiscent at times of that between Naturalism and Verismo, which saw in Verga the greatest exponent of a literary genre child but never twin of what preceded it.
An exasperating change of course, which drew roots in the suffering of everyday life, in love lived on one's own body and sung through the author's experience. The goal was to stir consciences, and it was often reached through an inner turmoil that in some cases led to tragic epilogues. And such is the case of the tragic 67, when the inhumane sensitivity of Tenco led him to suicide, after experiencing first-hand that connecting heart and piano was foreign to an audience unable to identify its poetic fragility and compositional intensity. In 63 Gino Paoli attempted suicide, shooting himself in the heart, a bullet still residing in his body today due to the impossibility of extraction. Piero Ciampi, genius and unruliness, a personality that over the years became famous for complexity and inadequacy to any social context, slowly let himself die in alcohol and his liver cirrhosis. A movement taking greater shape in the figure of Fabrizio De André, in his marginalized, misfits, prostitutes, the last ones. A figure so heavy as to detach from that matrix, embodying the anarchic icon of the following decade, and in that ''bad teacher'' who made verse and rhyme his strongest weapon.
Everything was questioned: politics, love, education, social extraction, religion, and that cherished feeling of freedom. The conservative and retrograde atmosphere of the time quickly pointed fingers at the bad teachers, responsible, perhaps, only for shaking the consciousnesses of those who, for some, it was better kept quiet. Even in virtue of those who, seemingly innocently, dreamed of ''a different world, different from here''.
Umberto Bindi was a perfect member of the Genoese school, for intimacy and approach to songwriting. He differed from the context as a lover of researched musical structure and classicist refinement more than words. A reserved and shy character, he listened to 7 hours of classical music a day, as friends who knew him say. A sublime and never banal composer, long sidelined for a homosexuality that put him on the ropes. He wrote numerous songs for other artists. In 59 ''Arrivederci'', also sung by Mia Martini, another character with whom the environment was never kind. With friend Gino Paoli, he publishes a handful of songs, and then Califano, Ornella Vanoni, Iva Zanicchi. ''Il mio mondo'' travels the globe, through the English interpretation by Cilla Black. And again ''La musica è finita'', quickly becoming a classic of his repertoire, for the daring intimacy of its words, making it almost a sad omen.
But it is with ''Il nostro concerto'' that Umberto composes a track that is an icon not only of a controversial historical period but of a musical character to rediscover. And the first notes of the track are anything but pop. Umberto teleports the listener into a dimension made of pianos and strings, into classical, his classical, cross and delight as well as a turning point of his approach to song. Something so elegant as to crush the Canzonissima stage. But the voice that complements the music enriches the composition, does not dissonate nor exaggerate it. Distant glances and hands seeking each other, a lost love that surpasses space and time in a whirlwind of notes exuding elegance and poetry through a precise and poignant voice. The evanescent and blurred figure of a woman who seems almost to come to life among the piano keys. You glimpse her and pass through her, but she vanishes in the noise of applause after the final verses:
Next to you, you will find me
and you will find a bit of me
in a concert dedicated to you
Ten consecutive weeks first on the charts. Bindi's delicate notes did not survive the 70s, remembered as a child of a bygone period and a character never fully accepted. He, who defined himself as a cicada, and not an ant, for his tendency to squander money, a victim of a world that never hesitated to target the different, the presumed ambiguous, the unknown, prioritizing the composer's music. In 1988, at the Maurizio Costanzo Show, Umberto decides to come out, denouncing the insults he was forced to endure over the years. He fell into disgrace in the 90s, without a dime, to the point that friend Gino Paoli requested the application of the Bacchelli law for him, which provided economic support for those, famous, who experienced economic difficulties. He, who never asked anything from anyone. Embodying, thus, the perfect figure of the Genoese singer-songwriter.
On May 23, 2002, 'the music really is over'. But never the notes of his concert. And it becomes natural to wonder how Umberto could remain in the shadow of stifling respectability for so long. But his greatness comes to life precisely in the delicacy and silent way, almost tiptoeing, with which his music, over the years, has risen above any criticism and any outrage. Because if the right to be different is lost, the right to be free is lost.
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