Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
Noi cant agree with that Marcel Proust when in 1896 he stated convinced: «Don’t despise popular music…
Little by little, it filled up with the dreams and tears of men. For this there is respectable. Her place is immense in the sentimental history of society.’
And it is precisely a sentimental narrative that Gino Castaldo does in his latest book The sky was burning with stars. The magical season of Italian songwriters (Mondadori).
A journey through the songwriting made in Italy as enthralling as a novel. The music critic is not new to this kind of adventures but this book is particularly inspired and goes straight to the hearts of readers.
The endless amount of information and unpublished anecdotes – always tasty and interesting – are just the framework of the story: through the events and songs of the authors most loved by the public, Castaldo reconstructs the collective history that has held together the imagination of several generations and it is precisely the author’s emotional participation that makes the difference.
His enchantment and his involvement are also ours, as are the shivers that certain verses still give us. Lucio Dalla, Francesco De Gregori, Franco Battiato and singing company…
“The sky was burning with stars. The magical season of Italian songwriters” by Gino Castaldo (Mondadori).
The idea of examining a handful of years that have changed the face of music and marked some of the most painful and emblematic events of our country is wonderful.
It all begins symbolically in August 1979, with the kidnapping in Sardinia of Fabrizio De André and Dori Ghezzia traumatic event that becomes a watershed and opens up to a new world.
And year after year, or rather month after month, Castaldo follows the birth of a series of musical masterpieces which incredibly came to light in a very short period: a fertile and unrepeatable moment, which has given the country some jewels that have remained in history.
Songwriters conquered the market in those years and, as if by magic, art became mass. Everything happens without a prearranged design, by magic, as if a benevolent Muse had decided to sprinkle magic powder right on our boot.
A moment of extreme creativity which, however, also presaged a sad decline: our story is all enclosed there, in that play list of wonderful songs that even now, with every listening, make us emotional. It was enough to know how to read it and Castaldo did it for us.
All articles by Serena Dandini
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