Power to the festivals

Dna was founded in 1998 - setting aside the economic difficulties, how have audience receptiveness and the institutions' willingness to engage with a mechanism they know little or nothing about changed since then?

When it comes to relations with institutions, it really depends on the case. There are local councils that pay you more attention and others that couldn't care less. It's a real up-and-down. As for receptiveness, I can tell you it's constantly changing.

In what way, compared to what you usually put on?

There are multiple factors at play. It all starts with what's out there being offered. Over these twenty years I've seen musicians - even famous ones - running a bit out of steam, without that necessarily meaning the audience had fallen out of love with them. It's all very tied to the fashion factor. And like any fashion, after a while it deflates. Rock recycles things that have already been done, so you get these pockets of listeners reshaping themselves. It's not unlike vintage clothing - you can't keep reselling the same item hoping it'll always look new. That said, my impression is that the music we put on as Dna Concerts is often tied to rediscovering something already heard, filtered through new styles and narratives.

Dna's roster is the richest and most varied in Italy. How has your job changed since Dna was founded up to now? Has the promoter's role evolved, or are the dynamics essentially the same?

The dynamics are roughly the same. What's changed significantly is the role of public institutions, which up until 10 years ago heavily subsidised summer concert activities. That's no longer the case - now you have to deal with the private sector. And in my opinion, self-sabotage aside, that's actually for the better. At some point you have to take the training wheels off the bike. It helps separate those who can stand on their own two feet from those who can't.

But that raises another issue: in Italy, this substitution mechanism - private sector stepping in for the public one - never really kicked in.

Exactly. What you always hear from sponsors - and it's hard to argue with - is: for a lot less money I can buy a page in the Corriere and reach ten times as many people as you can put in front of a stage. So it's clear that, given the modest audience numbers, you end up missing those famous training wheels (he smiles, ed.).

How hard is it to deal with foreign agencies and explain our habits to them?

I've stopped explaining it to them. Recently I had a conversation with a promoter asking for a big-name artist while offering a fee that was almost laughable. If Brescia asks Messi's agent what his salary is, they can't then be shocked at how much the player earns, nor complain that they can't afford to sign him. In Italy we can't seem to grasp that, nor take the first step needed to get past this problem: realising that we are the exception, not everyone else. Unfortunately we're stubborn and feel like we're the centre of the world. We're not.

Against this backdrop, Italy is a place where festivals don't really exist, only "rassegne" [concert series]. Siren itself goes in that direction, with itineraries tied to food and wine and to the sea. Is that the only viable path?

In summer, we essentially break European festivals down into pieces. How many artists play at Glastonbury? Four hundred? Well, we organise four hundred separate individual dates. And two-thirds of them do badly. Which means we lose money on them. With that money you could put together a medium-sized festival, but the choice is made not to do that, and to play it differently instead. That's a historic mistake. We have zero entrepreneurial foresight. With Siren, we built something meant to carry meaning beyond just the music. And this formula, which rewards something that goes beyond the purely musical side, seems to me like it could be more sustainable.

What's new this year in terms of organisation and programme?

This year we'll have a daytime part that will also take place by the sea. As for the future, what I hope for most is to have as many people as possible coming from outside the area.

Do you have different expectations compared to last year?

In all honesty, we're not expecting huge movement from abroad. That's because explaining something like Siren is a long-term undertaking, and it takes time. Festivals like Sonar became what they are thanks to time. Before you put flowers on a building's balconies, you have to lay the foundations. The Italians who buy a ticket are far fewer than the ideal threshold that would make the whole thing sustainable. Foreign audiences, on the other hand, are strategic, especially from those areas where there's no sea, or where it's simply cold. One of the secrets behind Primavera's success is the migration of those fans who, in summer, prefer to see lots of bands in a warm, pleasant setting.

What do you hope for the future of concerts in Italy in the coming years?

That we finally manage to reach a European dimension. It's as if we always only played the qualifying matches of a tournament without ever actually qualifying. For me, all of this hinges on our ability to organize festivals worthy of the name. Only that way can we climb out of the rut we're stuck in.

Source: IlFattoQuotidiano.it

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