What does a musician do to a TED?
Usually it should play, in fact I will play a little.
First thing,
I will betray what the title is
that I gave to this meeting, to this speech,
because it seemed a bit ‘too “sectoral”
talk only about music.
I was interested,
since the title of this meeting, in general, is “return to believe”,
I was interested in talking about what I understood in life,
of some values that I understood through music.
I do a lucky job
because I can work with emotionality, with a very deep part of me
and therefore I would like to be able to transmit
a series of things that can be important,
both for creative work, for those lucky enough to do so
that, in general, maybe even for life itself.
Music is usually seen
as a very emotional, irrational, inspirational discipline.
One stands at the window,
watching the sunset, with migrating birds.
Here, that’s 1% and it’s very fast.
One must be capable,
and over time I understood it, I codified this way of working,
at that 1% to correspond a 99% of perspiration,
that is work, awareness, search for solutions.
This is a beautiful metaphor also for life in general:
if one has a dream to pursue, a vision of the world,
it is important to understand what are the concrete steps that one can do
to realize that dream, to have that vision in reality.
But above all in a moment
where we are, let’s say, very focused on individualism,
it is important, instead of looking downwards, towards oneself,
look towards the horizon, which is more interesting, surely.
The music, let’s say,
has a series of values that are transposable in everyday life.
The first is transversality.
It is also almost trivial to say that music is a universal language.
I have experienced it on my skin, just,
working with musicians from different countries, from different continents.
I worked with English, Icelandic, American musicians,
Algerians who spoke only the Algerian.
And I spent two wonderful days talking to them, on a par.
This is another type of transversality.
In addition to the geographical one,
the transversality is interesting, too,
of class, of the possibility that one has had in life.
I had the chance to study, so I have a certain kind of language.
But there are people who may not have had this luck.
But when you start playing together, you make music together,
these differences disappear completely
and we all apply equally, we dialogue in the same way.
It seems a banality,
but when one lives on her skin, she understands the power of these things.
Another aspect,
besides this transversality in general, which is also generational,
that is, with old people and young people who can talk quietly,
it’s the fact that music is a sort of emotional, very powerful trojan horse.
If I had to describe a feeling – nostalgia, I mean to say,
I should write many pages with a language that is quite “high”,
so I would already reduce the ability to communicate this thing.
Instead, through music, without any kind of reasoning,
bypasses the rational part.
If I do, if I play this very simple thing.
(Music)
already immediately one puts himself in a state of mind
which makes us think of something past, which is missing, but also without rationalizing it.
This is nostalgia for music.
And it takes 10 seconds to explain it,
while instead it would require a very specific treatise
and it would not come so deeply, [with words].
This thing also led me to think that another very important value
is to question yourself.
In any project I have done, in general, in music,
I saw that it’s important
do not get fossilized on an acquired model,
in the musical field but also in life.
We all joined a model: it’s simpler, it’s reassuring.
Who was fricchettone, who was dark, the paninari.
This betrays my age a little bit.
Perhaps the paninari not everybody knows them.
However, in short, they are models to which it is also necessary,
– I think in adolescence, in youth –
adhere to a model
Tell you what you have to do, to exist, to live.
Slowly, one should get rid of this cage,
that reassures on one side but imprisons you too.
So, “questioning” means every time
look for something different,
stay on the edge, not on the known road.
And here I come to the rescue, always by synthesis,
a dear friend of mine, Eugenio Finardi
who wrote a song, very beautiful years ago
which is called “Do not grow up ever”.
I mention it with my voice …
(MUSIC)
“Do not grow big, you do not need anything you know.
Keep growing as long as you can, but never stop.
Because, you see, being right is not a static dogma, a religion.
But it is to follow the dynamics of history and always question ourselves … “
See what summary, in ten seconds,
he explained something that I, already badly, took more time
and I probably did not arrive as deeply as he did.
By the way, a little cut:
one can also speak of something other than adolescent love,
in the songs.
This was in the rankings in the 70s.
Here, these values.
Through this path,
I managed to code these values,
which are, in fact, transversality – and we have talked about this before –
and I’ve done several projects of this kind,
in which musicians of very different origins crossed paths.
This is the Night of the Taranta
with Stewart Copeland, one of The Police;
with the Area bassist;
Raìs by Alma Megretta;
a quartet of percussionists working with Philip Glass;
and a series of roots musicians, as you can see, very popular
who play the tambourine and play traditional Salento music.
Here, in this babel of languages, you managed to find a North,
to carry out a project
in which everyone talked and all were worth the same.
So transversality in a geographical sense.
Now let’s see …
This instead is La Grande Orchestra Rock
which is another project I did for May Day in Rome
in which I have combined, in fact, always for the transversality,
many musicians of different backgrounds:
classical music, jazz, all the most representative of Italy.
There was Boost of the Subsonic; James Senese;
Stefano Di Battista, a great jazz musician;
the guitarist of Vasco Rossi and the guitarist of Ligabue.
And all this happened with the greatest serenity,
precisely because there is this democracy inherent in music.
Another value,
perhaps even more important, of course, of which I have spoken,
it is inclusiveness.
Inclusiveness as the exact opposite of exclusivity.
That is, there is usually an etymology of words
which has some negative values in itself.
‘Exclusive’ is seen as a beautiful thing, a cool thing,
just for a few.
In reality it is a negative value,
a bit like ‘private’, whose root is ‘to deprive’.
Instead, one of the goals that I have pursued musically,
but then I realized that it’s a beautiful thing also in life,
it’s just to communicate things to as many people as possible,
avoiding cryptic or elitist languages,
that reassure you, make you feel ‘special’,
but which in reality show a great weakness.
The thing to do, however,
it’s trying to communicate important things to everyone.
And it’s a lie that the public wants this
and the public must be given simple things.
It’s not true!
I have proof of this in my personal experience,
that is with the Deproducers, always to get in trouble,
I have put together three other producers and a scientist as a producer.
For a producer,
who is used to entering the recording studio
and say “You do that!”, [because] you are the absolute leader,
it’s a nice training for dialogue
get together with three other fairly developed egos like mine
it makes you understand what your boundaries are,
it makes you understand what are the least important things,
which you can renounce,
and it makes you leave, on a creative level,
just the idea, the strongest, most important thing
to put it together with the others that will also be important.
So, it also makes you understand what the boundaries are
and where your freedom ends and where that of others begins.
But returning to the exclusivity, the textual part,
the idea was to make Science the textual part,
not to mention love again, for the umpteenth time,
but to talk about something substantial, philosophical, even everyday.
So, my goal, our goal,
it was that just to do yes
that people see a good concert, I hope.
In short, we are old enough to be pretty sure.
One comes out, gets excited,
but then he also understood what the Big Bang is,
what is chlorophyll photosynthesis.
And finally, let’s say that …
I’m talking about something that has nothing to do with it, apparently,
that is the message from Arecibo.
Arecibo is a radio telescope in South America
from which he was sent, 35 years ago, a message to the boundaries of space.
In reality, this message is really a sort of cry:
We’re here, we’re here to look for extraterrestrial lives!
And for 35 years the man has sent this message
which is a mixture of binary language, scientific terms
but also very naive parts
like the drawing of a man, the little drawing of DNA.
Why do I talk about Arecibo?
Because, in my opinion, being able to communicate the culture,
– I’m lucky to do it through music –
but, in general, be able to communicate
to the people we care about, to our children,
it is a bit like the legacy we give to future generations.
And the most important thing we leave to future generations, in my opinion,
is that just this new way to collaborate
it means that there is a different way of organizing human beings,
that is, this system is not the only system possible.
Thank you.
(Applause)
”
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