About a month ago, I shook hands with Vinicio Capossela. It happened on the streets of a little town called Barolo, near an enormous and unsightly Estathé inflatable. It was around one thirty-five: I've always believed in coincidences. It was also the end of an incredibly long day, full of music, meetings, conferences, beer, friends, discoveries, heatwave, and Bra sausage. The kind you eat raw. And it was the twentieth time I had seen him up close, but the first time I spluttered two utterly unnecessary words with him. A part of me wanted to prolong that moment indefinitely, not wash that hand for weeks, and take a photo to post on Facebook. It's the part of me that doesn't understand a damn thing about how things work in life: it must have happened to you to meet it among your knick-knacks. If not, you are lucky; you are not inhabited by your dumb version.
That meeting, however, made me realize several things about the artist in question, after thousands of listenings (mercilessly certified by my lastfm profile), countless concerts (even abroad, I admit), scattered readings of articles, interviews, and more or less authoritative reviews, where by authoritative I mean those from debaser, of course. I often find myself in the tough position of having to justify my love for this or that band, artist, singer-songwriter, writer, juggler, actor, director, etc. It must have happened to you as well in your conversations among friends, relatives, and acquaintances. If not, you are lucky; sometimes it is hard to feel obliged to justify something, however much it stems from genuine love or passion. That's how it happened: several times, I enthusiastically and with varying degrees of credibility expressed my feelings for the minstrel born in Hannover, today less damned and alcoholic than in not-too-distant times. He often pops into my mind, sweaty, exhausted yet enthusiastic at the end of a concert, lucid and moved, while his deep voice jokes with the audience and with the background of his piano. He didn't do it in Barolo, constrained as he was by the meager hour at his disposal, during which he dispensed music with his usual mastery.
"Ballate" is the name of the tour that started on that very day, immediately following the one dedicated to his latest epic effort, "Marinai, profeti e balene." It was a performance utterly unsuited to the audience of a square packed to the brim, distracted by the heat and the enchanting atmosphere of a village in the Langhe on the verge of twilight, by the rivers of wine poured and drained since morning, and by the anticipation for Patti Smith's concert. Vinicio was accompanied partly by his usual travel companions, partly by a handful of virtuoso Greek musicians, recruited to accompany his new tour inspired by rebetiko. He thus alternated well-known and anticipated pieces with some folk songs he revisited and reinterpreted in a mix of great impact, but certainly too sophisticated for an audience that mostly wanted to move frantically to the notes of Ballo di San Vito or Marajà. But so be it.
Today, Vinicio is all of this, like it or not. Cryptic concept albums and snobbish concerts for the detractors. Masterpieces of creativity and live gems for those who, like me, are each time intoxicated by it. And it doesn't matter if you don't know Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Joseph Conrad, and Greek mythology well enough to correctly carry out the exegesis of the musical and textual contents of his songs. Vinicio's work goes beyond all this and is within everyone's reach: intellectuals, alcoholics, musicians, dance hall leftovers, fans of Italian singer-songwriters, and people who hang out with Giancarlo until 7 in the morning. Meeting Vinicio, in any way, is always and still a privilege.
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