Giargo - Tropicalismo and the periphery

We meet up with Giorgio Michele Longo, aka Giargo, to hear about the genesis and curiosities behind “Boxe“, and also to dive into his sonic world of slow tempos, sensory journeys, cinematic landings, lost spaces, ancient moods, unusual paths, and life-defining albums.

“Gli sguardi dei bagnanti, l’amore scritto sopra un muro stanco”, and I could go on. Where exactly is “Boxe” set? Was there a physical journey, a trip you actually took in order to write it?

Like any work of art, if that's what we want to call an album, the journey is twofold. It's first and foremost a mental, imaginary journey, and then a physical one; the two things obviously aren't separate, but complete each other, so there are imaginary journeys to every place or to none, just as there are physical ones, and yet they are journeys I've actually taken, many of them, especially in Italy or around the Mediterranean, from Sicily to Marseille, which was a key stop on my so-called journey, and then Naples, Foggia, Liguria, Palermo, Catania, Bari - in any case, a lot of the Mediterranean. As Camus wrote, "there is a Mediterranean spirit," and coming from someone born in Algiers, you can't help but believe him. That's it: I have a strong Mediterranean spirit, as I think most of us do.

When and why did the idea come about to sing a song in Neapolitan, as well as to evoke dialect here and there?

I should clarify that it's actually more Foggian than Neapolitan, or rather a kind of Foggia-Neapolitan in the style of Renzo Arbore - they're closely related dialects, though Foggian certainly doesn't have the musical openness that Neapolitan has, so sometimes I use the latter for its musicality. Also, I've been living in Bologna for almost ten years now, and the further I've moved away from Foggia, the more that distance has pushed me to search for my roots, and that search found an outlet in language, since I'm a singer.

In your music, there's a clear affection for Piero Umiliani and his peers, as well as for the funky sounds that Peppino Di Capri and Fred Bongusto - who were actually friends - were putting out in the postwar years. Tell us more.

Fred Bongusto was from Campobasso, so a loser like me, being from Foggia (he smiles, ed.). Umiliani is wonderful, like Trovajoli, Cipriani, Piccioni and the whole school of Italian composers from the 1970s who inspired the sound of "Boxe". The very musicians who played on my record were themselves inspired by them. I then got closer to all these masters through cinema, which is another of my passions alongside literature, which comes first. Di Capri and Bongusto are inevitable masters, who turned lightness of lyrics and experimentation into a winning formula; they carry an old-fashioned, southern romanticism that, after so many years of Milan-centric music, has thankfully been brought back to life. 

An album played the way “Boxe” is, meaning done properly, is a rare thing today. Why do you think your peers, or so many musicians your age in general, prefer to go down other paths? 

For convenience, I'd say. Even I, coming as I do from rap, had a bit of trouble understanding that there were so many different instruments that needed to be tuned to the same level and played within the same emotional sphere. We live in an age close to speed, and we struggle a bit to step away from that shadow that clings to us and makes us run too, and that leads to choices that are sometimes wrong. Many of my peers are often victims of musical consumerism; I could have been too, if I hadn't met so many musicians and mentors. I'm also very fond of slowness - taking two years to make a record inevitably did me good.

You mention Fellini in “Buonasera”. Is there a particular reason?

We're back to cinema and literature, and in this sense Fellini is indeed a master, just as Nino Rota is. I love “8 ½” also because there's that search for silence and wonderful themes blending with the dream that's the defining trait of Fellini's cinema. What I love about Fellini is his oneiric spontaneity that runs through all his films, and then play and childhood, which are two fundamental features of dreams. In “Buonasera” there's a love story that's basically made of childish games, so it all comes together.

The press release says “a generation that turned boredom into a creative drive, the last generation that never wanted to grow up”. But do you feel more like a musician from another era, born and raised in the wrong time, or a timeless romantic who's precisely because of that forced to run backwards, and so to observe and play the world around him drawing sustenance from the musical styles of the past?

Definitely the second one, even though I really like slowness and I'm not that fond of digital. My pursuit of slowness actually comes from the over-stimulation you get both walking down the street and turning on a smartphone. From a musical standpoint, my references are definitely rooted in the past, sometimes even from the 90s, like some singer-songwriters, but the books I read are always by authors from the 60s and 70s, I struggle to go beyond that. As for boredom, that too is timeless, and that's a beautiful thing, because in my view it's necessary to lose yourself in the absence of time. People often say we go to fight boredom, but boredom is fundamental, because it puts us in touch with the worlds inside ourselves, we can't shy away from boredom.

Tell us how you chose the musicians who play with you on the album, and what criteria you followed.

They're the ones who chose me. (he smiles, ed.). It was all down to chance, and chance often brings the best things, so for me giving in to life's randomness is the only way to try to understand it. Thanks to my musical partner Federico I got in touch with all the musicians on the album. We're all united by this passion for the old and antique, none of us would ever dare bring in a trap beat, although life is strange and who knows what the future holds.

“I'd take shelter with them”, referring to the gypsies in “Miracolo”. Do you like gypsy music? How did “Miracolo” come about, and who is it dedicated to?

I love gypsies and homeless people so much, they're ancestral figures, they live in suspension and I'm fascinated by that state of being immersed in the absence of space and time, on the margins, not giving a damn about man and today's society. They're mythological figures, I also love their gazes, the way they dress, and imagining their thoughts. “Miracolo” was inspired while I was coming out of Chiaiano station. That's where I saw these huge Roma families with dogs and fuchsia tracksuits. I love working-class neighborhoods so much, I love walking through them between noon and 3pm.

Why “Boxe”?

Because it's a war, a fight, there was this idea of Saturday nights and small talk as punches that eventually came out, and also over the last two years I've distanced myself from social life, especially on Saturday nights. So I acted like an ex-boxer who gets restless and, when he gets back in the ring, takes punches.

What will the tour be like? Will all the musicians featured on the album be there?

Of course.

Naples keeps coming back at the center of your lyrics. Why is that?

It's an incredible city, it has an underlying mysticism and a power that's hard to explain. Every time I go there I discover something new and yet the same, hence difference and repetition, and in Naples there's a dreamlike logic at work, it's a Felliniesque city.

Has anyone ever told you that you actually sound like you came out of the infamous Roman school of Fabi, Gazzè, and Silvestri?

Much more rarely, it's more common for people to link me to the Neapolitan school. Among the three, though, I like Silvestri best, I love his lightheartedness.

Tell us about five albums that changed your life and briefly why.

To start, “I molteplici mondi” by Neffa, because it's an incredibly powerful record I used to listen to as a kid in my dad's car, it has a super-relaxed mood that I love. It's a record with yellow tones. Next, “An Italian Saturday” by Sergio Caputo: he's always made me sink into an alternate reality, full of tumblers and young ladies phoning from a booth to ask for a weekend date. A fantastical realness, that's it. Then I grew up with the music of Rocco Hunt and Clementino, so I'll say “Spiraglio di periferia”. And then “Il vuoto” by Franco Battiato, which I discovered last spring along with Eastern texts, it's a record that changed my life.  Finally “Amoroso” by João Gilberto, because it has everything, they're not his songs but it's as if they were, an old-fashioned romanticism that's good for the soul, the heart and the mind.

Do you like Sanremo? Do you dream of going there one day?

I don't watch it, it inevitably happens when I'm with friends and when it does it gets on my nerves a lot, because people only pay attention to the songs, and since I don't have a TV at home and I don't watch it on my computer either, for me Sanremo remains one of the few moments when I can discover what TV is feeding people, sure, I'd like to go, mostly to watch myself back.

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