Grazia Di Michele - Music from the heart and "Poesie di carta"

“Poesie di carta” is a show that marks the meeting point between Grazia Di Michele and Marisa Sannia, a special friendship born out of time and only after the Sardinian artist's death. Ahead of the date at Teatro Golden in Rome, via Taranto 36, at 9pm on January 12, 2022, we spoke by phone with the Roman singer-songwriter and teacher whom the wider public came to know through the elegant, intimate style of “Le ragazze di Gauguin” and “L'amore è un pericolo”.

Grazia Di Michele was a singer-songwriter before Italy had even coined the term. Music historians recall that in 1975, three years before her debut album “Cliché”, Rca released a record titled “Le Cantautori. Settembre 1975: musica dal pianeta donna” featuring Roberta D'Angelo, Nicoletta Bauce, Simo & Susi and Silvia Draghi, produced by Vincenzo Micocci for It, with contributions (among others) from former Pierrot Lunaire member Gaio Chiocchio (later co-writer for Amedeo Minghi, Paola Turci and Riccardo Cocciante) and Arturo Stàlteri. And the year before, in 1974, a then little-known Donatella Rettore released “…ogni giorno si cantano canzoni d'amore…”, with seven out of ten tracks bearing her own credit. But up to that point there had been no female reference points in Italian singer-songwriter music.

One had to look beyond our borders – Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell. The latter is precisely one of Grazia's touchstones, an original guitar-wielding songwriter who managed to emerge after the (Italian too) synthesizer binge with evocative lyrics and classy performances. She appeared at Sanremo four times: 1990 and 1991 were years when the main competitors were paired with international stars, so “Io e mio padre” was performed in English by Nicolette Larson and “Se io fossi un uomo” by Randy Crawford, who would include it on “Through The Eyes Of Love”. In 1993 she made the podium with “Gli amori diversi”, alongside Rossana Casale, and the fruits of their collaboration can be found on their respective albums “Confini” and “Alba Argentina”. In 2015 she took part with Mauro Coruzzi/Platinette with “Io sono una finestra” (paying tribute, during the "covers night", to Giuni Russo, the original performer of “Alghero”).

After more than forty years of music and many years spent on "Amici" as a vocal coach, we find a Di Michele who's warm, enthusiastic and still full of projects (not only musical ones, as she told us), free to take on other people's repertoires and study them in depth. That's how “Poesie di carta” came about, a tribute from one singer-songwriter to another – even though Marisa Sannia is remembered by the general public mainly as the "gazelle of Cagliari" who appeared at Sanremo and Canzonissima and took part in teen musical films (“I ragazzi di Bandiera Gialla” and “Stasera mi butto”). A performer of songs by Don Backy and Sergio Endrigo, as well as Disney classics, she was the first to record Mogol and Donida's “La compagnia”, later covered by Lucio Battisti on “La batteria, il contrabbasso eccetera” and subsequently by Vasco Rossi. Between 1993 and 2003 Sannia produced a fascinating trilogy in the Sardinian language, little known to most (“Sa oghe de su entu e de su mare”, “Melagranàda” and “Nanas e janas”). Released posthumously instead – just a few months after her death in April 2008 – was her tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca, “Rosa de papel”, featuring eleven of his poems set to music by the artist herself and a rendition of “Pequeño vals vienés”, set to music by Leonard Cohen himself (as “Take This Waltz”).

How did the idea come about to dedicate your new show, “Poesie di carta”, to Marisa Sannia?

It all started by chance. There was the opening of an exhibition dedicated to Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dalí, about their relationship, their correspondence and their friendship, and the curator of the exhibition asked me – before the first wave of the pandemic – to take part by singing one or two of Garcia Lorca's songs. When I said, "okay, let me look into it a bit more", he suggested I listen to Marisa's album “Rosa de Papel”, a wonderful work released posthumously, telling me I'd surely find something there. So I ordered it, it arrived at home, and from there it was love at first listen. As immersed as I am in music, I can't keep up with everything, and that record had slipped past me at the time. Once I heard it, I fell in love with it, and a journey began.

I got in touch with Marisa's family to find out what had become of all that material, and I discovered that not only had she devoted the last part of her life to setting Lorca's poems to music, but she had also written a theatrical show that unfortunately she never managed to stage. The work she had put together over three years, meticulously and with so much passion and love, had never seen the light of day. I received a kind of legacy from Marisa – exclusive rights to the script she had written – and I began contacting her musicians, starting with Marco Piras, who was her arranger and producer for a long time. I told him the story, and in the meantime I listened to the albums in which Marisa had set Sardinian poets Antìoco Casula (Montanaru) and Francesco Masala (to whom “Melagranada” is dedicated) to music, and I asked him, "why don't we bring all this wonderful material back out into the world?" Marisa is remembered far more for her hits of the Sixties and Seventies, but hardly anyone knows this story of Marisa the singer-songwriter in love with poetry. We put together her longtime band, we found her cellist, her percussionist, and on my end, "on the mainland", I brought in a guitarist and a double bass player – given the difficulties caused by the pandemic, we worked on one side and they on the other. Just think, we all met together for the first time the day before the show in San Teodoro in September…

Besides the script of the show and the songs from the Sardinian artist's last album, was any other material of hers included? Any unreleased tracks, perhaps?

There are no unreleased tracks in the concert; the show includes the songs from “Rosa de Papel”, but I also wanted to dip here and there into her output in Sardinian, and I chose to include two very beautiful songs written by Sergio Endrigo. It's something of a journey through Sannia's final period and through her story. An extraordinary artist who isn't very well known, a bit more so in Sardinia, even though it isn't easy to find much of her material.

Do you find there are points of contact between you and Marisa, as an artist and as a woman? In what way do you recognize yourself in her, in terms of writing and performing?

In some way I found common ground; character-wise and artistically we're two very similar figures. We're not people who shout, but who weigh our words, who give words their due importance. We don't need to resort to choreographic strategies to be heard, so to speak. Marisa Sannia was an extremely reserved and elegant woman, she had no love at all for gossip. Musically, as I learned talking with Marco Piras, she was an extremely hands-on artist even in the recording studio, present from the first moment to the last. She did a kind of world music work; the sonic world found on her last records is a work of research into Sardinian roots, and I love going back to the roots of sound myself, partly because I'm a music therapist and partly because I'm fascinated by an ethnic approach to music. Another thing that brings me close to Marisa is that she composed while playing guitar; I have my own guitar, I love ballads just as she did, I love Spanish very much and she made an entire album in Spanish. It's strange, because while Marisa was alive I hadn't noticed how close we were. Today it feels natural that I should be the one to take up this legacy of hers.

You debuted as a singer-songwriter in 1978, but achieved real popular success with your third record, “Le ragazze di Gauguin”. What's most fascinating about your career is that you found fame at just the right moment with an intimate, refined style, offering music that nobody else was making in Italy at the time, recalling Joni Mitchell, with well-crafted, well-played records with folk influences, which nevertheless found their way onto TV and radio playlists without any trouble…

I managed to do something that hadn't existed before. Back then there were men writing for women, and their lyrics revealed their own way of thinking about women, which was in fact a male projection. Even when it came to telling stories about life, love, motherhood. The word cantautrice [female singer-songwriter] came into use only after I showed up at It with a guitar and songs I'd sketched out, meeting Vincenzo Micocci. I've always been interested in following my own instinct, without wanting to copy anyone or chase musical trends. Together with my sister Joanna, who wrote with me, I told the story of what I was living through.

“Cliché”, in 1978, was a feminist record that tackled subjects like abortion or female homosexuality, that spoke of the need to break free from having to have a man in order to feel fulfilled – a whole series of themes that I lived through in everyday life and brought into my songs. I asked myself whether it would ever have occurred to a man to sing about a woman on the verge of having an abortion, or questioning herself. On the contrary, that was a period when women only sang about submission to men, songs told of tormented, doomed love affairs, painting men as unfaithful but ultimately "likeable rogues" – they did all sorts of things but were never the ones left behind. We came from football matches and "why do you always leave me alone on Sundays", from "Bugiardo e incosciente" and "vieni qui, te ne vai, sono sempre fatti tuoi…". The men came across as charming, the women as whiny troublemakers. All I did was tell what I was actually living through, I talked about my real needs and not the ones imagined by others, and I did it accompanying myself on guitar. I loved Joni Mitchell, the artist I've followed most closely because she was able to reinvent herself over time. I listened to her but also to Carole King, Carly Simon, Kate Bush. Foreign artists, whose lyrics I would translate, because I had no reference models here in Italy.

My good fortune was not worrying too much about what was played on the radio – I never asked myself how to win over an audience. I've always thought, "This is my music, and if it works, great." The last time I went to Sanremo it was with an unlikely duet and a difficult lyric that hadn't been written specifically for the festival. "Io sono una finestra" is about prejudice, about gender identity. I pitched it to Carlo Conti and he himself thought the time was right. And when it comes to "Madre Terra", a ten-minute love song to the earth, I certainly didn't have radio airplay in mind when I wrote it. And yet strange things happened: the song ended up on meditation playlists all over the world, people use it for sacred dances, it's taught to children in schools, they've even made earrings with lines from the lyrics taken out of context...

Your music has always shown a strong focus on storytelling. Which authors influenced you most on the literary side? What books have you loved most?

I read a great deal – I love Borges, Amado, Garcia Lorca, but also Italian poets. Years ago I staged a show about Italo Calvino, in which I reworked songs by the group Cantacronache credited to Calvino-Liberovici. And ever since I was a child I've loved De André, Francesco De Gregori, Paolo Conte, Ivano Fossati – I've always paid close attention to Italian singer-songwriters, but I've also devoured books of translated lyrics by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. I've written two books, and in one in particular – "Apollonia", published by Castelvecchi two years ago – people pointed out to me how my love for Borges's dreamlike writing comes through. Then, of course, social commitment also finds its way into the songs: I'm careful to communicate things that matter to me, and titles of artworks I've seen in museums end up in there too, Gauguin's girls... everything.

Over the last twenty years you've also been a TV presence, working as a vocal coach on "Amici". What did that experience leave you with?

That experience is actually still ongoing – after "Amici" I kept teaching at academies, conservatories and music schools. I'm interested in building an artistic personality where it's still in nuce, not yet fully formed, where there's a chance to work alongside something so sensitive. On the show I had a specific role, guiding the kids in the only direction that makes sense to me – knowing yourself deeply in order to be known. I don't see vocal study as mere technique – in some cases technique isn't even what makes someone stand out. Many don't have vocal range, not even perfect pitch, but they have personality and the ability to communicate, to build a bridge with the audience. That's where the interesting work lies: digging into emotions, immersing yourself in stories and narratives. I've always tried to encourage writing, to help people figure out their own style. Another aspect that's essential to me is musical culture. Unlike someone who takes a painting course and inevitably learns about painting styles, or someone who studies dance, singers often sing chasing the dream of getting on a stage. But if you don't know the history of the blues you can't sing it – the same goes for soul, for rap, for any other genre. You have to understand the context you're moving in, which is sociological, historical. I've never stopped doing that.

You've collaborated with many fellow artists – Rossana Casale, with whom you came third at Sanremo in 1993, but also Riccardo Giagni ("Le ragazze di Gauguin"), Ivan Segreto, Arturo Stalteri, Eugenio Finardi. More recently there's been the trio project with Mariella Nava and Rossana Casale. Are you working on something? Is there new music in the pipeline?

We toured the show with Mariella and Rossana for two years, blending our music and our different ways of being on stage, swapping songs, musicians... a truly special experience. In the meantime we've written an album that will come out in spring, composed with all three of us involved – so much so that I honestly couldn't tell you what I wrote and where, because we really mixed everything together, words, music, ideas and arrangements, working with producer Phil De Laura in New York.

In the meantime I'll keep touring "Poesie di carta" with four dates in Sardinia, and I can tell you that, despite the weight of an artistic legacy, it's work I do with great love. In April, moreover, I'll debut in Milan with an intense, beautiful show with Giovanni Nuti, "Una storia d'amore". Then there's Trio Terra, together with Eleonora Bianchini and Fabrizio Mocata, with whom I put together a show in Vicenza based on Christopher Columbus's "musical" voyage. A book of short stories, "Rose principi e serpenti", is also about to come out. After that, though, I'll have to slow down a little (laughs).

One last question: three of your music videos were directed by Gabriele Salvatores. Do you have a particular memory of working with him? Have you ever considered making films, or music for film?

Gabriele wasn't an Oscar winner yet back then, but he was already Gabriele. We worked together on the video for "Mama" and it was a wonderful experience, because he managed to grasp the meaning of the song entirely on his own. Then there was "Sha la la", about journeys, about homecomings... I've been lucky enough to work with great directors and video-makers. As for film, last year my book "La regola del bucaneve" (Castelvecchi) came out, and an agency got in touch asking if I'd be interested in a film adaptation... and that's how another new adventure began.

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