Alessandra Trirè

Even today, when she thinks back on it, she can't help but smile. It was 1972, and on the radio an Italian band was singing: "nel suo corpo nasce un fiore, per sbaglio o per amore...". Even then, her mother, torn between rather conflicting musical passions, decided that the title of that song would also become the name of the baby girl who, at that moment, was just a sweet wish to dream about, but who within a few years would open her wide, wondering eyes onto the world around her. Although Facchinetti's band is about as far as you can get from her musical tastes (both early and current), there's no denying that the Pooh's "Alessandra" represents her first symbolic bond with music, dating back to her earliest childhood. Raised on Fabbri's Fiabe Sonore and the theme tunes of old cartoons, which took turns spinning on her small, voracious red record player, after a musically confused adolescence dominated mostly by pop-rock and American rock, her path only turned toward independent music during her university years — helped along, perhaps, by the artistically stimulating environment of Bologna's alternative club scene. A devotee of folk music in all its many facets, from the roots-y rawness of Americana to the minimal elegy of country, her greatest love nonetheless remains songwriting, especially the kind built on the "less is more" formula, favoring melancholically lunar tones, while not turning her nose up at winking nods to pop or clever hints of psychedelia or other kinds of contamination, as long as they're well-crafted and never overbearing. Having found her way into music writing in 2005, partly by chance and partly for fun, she began taking reviewing seriously starting in 2007, the same year that marked the start of her collaboration with Ondarock. Firmly convinced that free dissemination, unconditioned by outside influence, is not only one of the most effective ways to spread knowledge but also (and above all) one of the finest and most wholesome ways of giving, in her writing she mainly tries to drag out of the shadows of anonymity those artists who, in her view, deserve it but struggle harder than others to reach even a mirage of "recognition" — in a world like the independent scene where, not unlike the mainstream, an artist's promotion all too often depends on factors that have little to do with music and a lot to do with other kinds of interests. This approach, by allowing her to connect more easily with the artists she cares about, has already brought her, on more than one occasion, a precious (if unplanned) reward: seeing the genuine passion she pours into her writing repaid with equally genuine, affectionate gratitude. And in times like these, when the road to success is all too often strewn with greedy aridity, that's no small achievement.