Luigi Tenco

"In un mondo di luci/ sentirsi nessuno"

1967. January 27th. Sanremo. The Festival, the flowers and Nilla Pizzi. And Luigi Tenco. Dead. Killed at twenty-eight by a gunshot.

Suicide, they say and will keep saying, just as a thousand other words will be said that shouldn't be dredged up again - the cold substance of the fact remains.

That of a violent act, a gunshot meant to awaken something, a terrible tragedy tearing through the black reality of the supreme expression of the squalid, fake world of Italian popular song of those years - a landscape in which the Piedmontese singer-songwriter had always moved with the desire to express something different, something truer and heavier, like the inner malaise that always accompanied him.

Tenco was changing something, treading unconventional ground for the habits of his time, both in terms of musical solutions and lyrical content; two examples: the lyrics of "Una brava ragazza", which today might raise a smile, were censored, and the structure of "No, non è vero", a call-and-response dialogue with male voices somewhere between gospel and homegrown alpine choirs.

At the time, in the first half of the Sixties, Italian music was mostly stagnating in the typical melodies of Sanremo, but something was budding, especially on the Genoa scene, where Luigi took his first steps alongside Gino Paoli, Bruno Lauzi and the young De André.

His early releases are fairly varied, with room for the rock'n'roll then in vogue ("Vorrei saper perché", "Amore", "Non so ancora"), for Nat King Cole-style crooning ("Qualcuno mi ama") or for jazz, a passion he always declared ("Triste sera", "Sempre la stessa storia").

It's in the ballads, however, that Tenco creates a different model of singer-songwriting, always riding a wave of perennial melancholy, but above all with an interpretive ability capable of giving the songs an intensely sincere emotional involvement, from the childlike fantasies of "Il mio regno" to the desperate romantic appeal of that timeless masterpiece "Angela", from "Un giorno dopo l'altro", a disconsolate hymn to lost dreams, to the themes of anti-militarism and social conscience sung in "Vorrei essere là".

Because, as '68 drew closer, the Piedmontese singer-songwriter also became a forerunner of openly political songs, tackling war, poverty, freedom of opinion or racism through protest folk like "Cara maestra" or "E se ci diranno", or through the folk-beat anthem "Ognuno è libero". Songs that, heard today, may rightly seem naive, but which, as mentioned, must always be considered in light of the times and places in which they were born. Because Luigi Tenco changed the style of Italian singer-songwriting, lifting it to a higher level precisely by tackling adult themes, wiping away that constant veneer of vapid lightness that pervaded most of the productions of the time, speaking of the difficulty of living, of the disappointments and disillusionments that are part of the real world, far from fluttering doves, poppies, ducklings and little houses in Canada.

This Bmg anthology released in 2002 fully succeeds in capturing all of this, being a perfect collection of Tenco's art, from his beginnings to his final creations, missing none of the masterpieces, precious gems like "Mi sono innamorato di te", "Se stasera sono qui", "Lontano lontano". Yet to sum up the concept and the innovative scope of Tenco's musical poetics, and to grant him a place of honor in the history of Italian song, a single song would suffice: "Vedrai vedrai". Bare-bones accompaniment, piano and guitar (so without the orchestrations typical of the time), a song of love and tenderness, certainly, but also of everyday struggle and ordinary problems, of harsh reality and great hope, of the longing for a better future that lies not in the luxury of the superfluous but in a condition of dignified living.

An immortal song because it's timeless, moving yesterday as today as it will be in twenty years, because unfortunately there will always be someone who can see their own daily struggles and dreams reflected in Tenco's words.

And this is, in fact, the most important lesson of the singer-songwriter from Cassine: that the world isn't all roses and flowers, it's made of broken hearts, conflicted feelings, lives that are hard to carry on; lives like his own, lights to rejoice in and shadows to carry inside like knives, often feeling incapable and inadequate.

Lives, above all, that are absolutely real.

This is what Tenco wanted to sing about, and did sing about, and this is what he was convinced needed to be sung.

This is what the best Italian singer-songwriter music sings about today.

And that's largely thanks to him.

"So che tu ridi di me/ e di chi come me non sa chiudere gli occhi/ e di chi come me non sa dir "me ne frego"/ come fai sempre tu… Ma ti auguro solo che non cambi mai/ perché se cambierà/ per la gente come te non ci sarà più nessuno a dare una mano/ non ci sarà più tempo per vivere sdraiati per quelli come te".

("Vedrai, vedrai")

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02/11/2008