Enzo Jannacci - Sense and Nonsense

Enzo Jannacci is not one for interviews. He admits as much himself: "I don't have interlocutors." That it might be a waste of time to say "things that are incomprehensible to people who don't understand them" is something he lets you sense with an expression that discourages any intruder determined to penetrate the mystery that keeps the author of the most ineffable Italian tall tales floating in rarefied layers. "Don't apologize for the bother, I've been giving interviews for thirty years," he offers, without enthusiasm. But in reality he gives nothing away, because this hounded man manages to dissolve the concreteness of any question with cloud-like answers that leave no trace even on tape. And that he doesn't like being scrutinized, a face still strikingly handsome ("not handsome, no, I was just photogenic"), is proven by the way he sits so as to offer only a profile.

That's how Enzo is, an author unlike any other, who has turned cabaret and songwriting into an art steeped in gruff tenderness and transparent, surreal poetry. He's prickly, but without a trace of misanthropy. "I'm attentive to others, I feel available and close to people's emotions." He complains, but he loves everyone, even politicians, whom he mentions one by one without distinction of party affiliation ("But I don't excuse them"). What drags him into total disagreement is the drift of the times, and the thing that most stirs his indignation, too often called upon to mobilize, is selfishness, "the most convenient refuge into which all the Italians who reject the rule of paying taxes are throwing themselves, uninterested in others and, armed with all the familiar maniacal trappings, looking for a leader who will guarantee them this peace of mind." Is it to shake up this indifference that his sarcastic streak occasionally spurts out here and there? "Sarcasm is cruelty, I'd rather land a kick in the face than resort to that kind of expression, which only wounds and nothing more." Better, then, to sharpen the allusions and paradoxes of nonsense, which weave through his little stories full of life and color and transfigure them with that touch that "messes with your head." The relationship between you and forays into the surreal is a happy union. Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," performed with Giorgio Gaber ten years ago, found in you a performer who still lingers in the memory of theatre lovers. But it's not easy to understand what goes on inside his songs. Is there such a thing as pure nonsense, an end in itself? Jannacci says no: "those things" that seem tossed off at random have a meaning of their own, as intangible as emotions.

Skimming through his biography, you learn that he dodged trends, conventions and commercialization, and that he threw a few acts of defiance at the omnipotence of RAI, of "Canzonissima," of Sanremo. Can he say today that he missed out on opportunities? "I have nothing to regret. I've been consistent." And yet a few contradictions stand out: the Conservatory, the natural path of a child prodigy, alongside nighttime forays into popular-music venues; cabaret and the hospital; successes and sudden withdrawals from the spotlight. But isn't even a sovereign of nonsense bound by loyalty to consistency? The question almost makes him bristle. "There's no contradiction at all in what I say and in how I lead my life, whether I'm working as a doctor, or going around collecting donations for the blind, or singing about emotions even now that my hair has gone grey. This consistency with my own way of feeling is one more reason to have no regrets."

In the story of his life, mention is made of Toni Dallara in the days of Rocky Mountains, Giorgio Gaber at the time of Corsari, and a 1962 show, Milanin Milanon, directed by Filippo Crivelli, with Tino Carraro and Milly, in which he, a twenty-two-year-old student, sang traditional Milanese songs. What is the first flash of memory that lights up when he thinks of that show, the one that launched him into Milanese cabaret? "I still see Milly, forever unchanged, a phenomenon of survival, and Carraro with his raised eyebrow. But it's the genesis of very serious events that stayed etched in my mind from that period."

Dario Fo, Umberto Eco, Beppe Viola, Paolo Rossi, Cochi e Renato are among the figures and personalities who, in one way or another, crossed paths with Enzo Jannacci, an author of vignettes in which music and comedy merge in an intangible atmosphere dotted with irony, where he moves about with ease. Everyone knows that this cultured, eccentric musician, sharp and impatient, has his thorns, but it's just as well known that he keeps generosity and warmth in reserve and expresses them in unpredictable ways; for instance when he offers his songs to help those who can't manage on their own, or writes a piece for the Luna Rossa team, or wraps the members of his band in a very special gaze - among them his son Paolo, who shows real talent on keyboards - and above all in the moments when he showers the audience with gusts of warmth, granting them smiles not so easily handed out on other occasions.

The show, Enzo Jannacci's first after an operation on his spine - suffered, not inflicted - is about to begin. The interview, gathered backstage at the Folk Club in Turin, is, like the kind of song the singer would like to perform, not exactly "intelligent, doesn't follow a logical, guiding thread, and isn't full of fine reasoning." But the real exchange of questions and answers happens during the concert, which marks the start of a summer tour. Beneath the vaults of the old cellar venue, a connection and understanding take shape between the audience and the ineffable chronicler of tiny, smiling, melancholy tales. Lit up by his well-known smile, the current flows, carrying along with its denunciations Jannacci's solidarity with the simple, the weak, the defenseless, the down-and-out. And also his affection for his audience, which isn't made up only of listeners from another era. Amid conversational interludes, cheeky and just the right amount of disjointed, and jazz pieces performed with skill, the songs come pouring out: the old ones that time hasn't swept away, like "La vita l'è bela" and "El purtava i scarp del tennis," the borrowed compositions ("Via del Campo" by Fabrizio De André and "Sotto le stelle del jazz" by Paolo Conte) and the newly arrived, like that small masterpiece of nimble, intelligent nonsense that is "Nebbia in Val Padana." The songs, which of course don't follow the setlist in order or by title, are enjoyed with the same old pleasure, thanks to the renewed expressive intensity of a voice just slightly huskier and deeper ("the will is strong, but age is what it is"), and also thanks to the quality of the musical accompaniment, which, when it doesn't overpower the lyrics, reaches excellent peaks. The four young men, "a cumulative kind of thing," are Marco Brioschi, on caressing, ringing trumpet, Paolo Jannacci, worthy of his father-and-mentor, Roberto Baldan on drums and Marco Ricci, "the poet of the bass."

(Originally published in the weekly magazine "Avvenimenti")

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