The places and the reasons for a song

(diary and reflections of a musician, activist)

Our need for consolation is great. This is not a job, or rather, it is not just a job. To sing the words, words bind you and involve you...
This is how we are trapped in a sequence emotional investment we make to sing.

We want to love songs
the wind prepare for the rain
we want songs from the sea
and never "Songs from the beach"

we want real songs
as well as the dreams dreamed
from the bottom of each glass
Jenny's ship and the pirates.

Before each concert I am concerned about the thousands and thousands of things that can go wrong, for all the inconveniences that come regularly to materialize on stage, while the words and music must continue to flow, as if he invented at that time. But all are focused on a small speaker at my feet (light or monitor is called in technical language) that croaks, that does not return to me a credible voice, or the instrument on which I am placing the hand, or that it totally dumb ... but in the meantime has to face is only focused on the flow of speech you're doing to an audience - large or small - simple and natural as talking to an acquaintance of the local coffee shop.

Before worried then broken

Before each concert I am worried, since I do the bag, close the guitar back in its scabbard ... then take the tram from home, then the train, arrival at the last minute, I get to take the organizer of the initiative, which maybe is not a professional but a companion in a thousand commitments, subtracting time from work and suffering, is to love, perseverance, anger built for that concert, with little money, maybe even putting on something of his own pocket. Arrival, I try to look indifferent to evaluate the technical situation, and meanwhile the organizer with a disarming smile says, "we hope there will be someone tonight. " Well, cheer up even touches him. It is this common need of consolation.
Before you sing you're worried. After you are broken. Ideally broken if all went well, and broken with a good sense of nausea when you can not really say it's gone. In any case, what did you mean you said it, or you tried and test costs a lot harder to do.
You feel drained. But you just poured in upon the people of your fears, your fantasies, you shared your hopes, you cried your need for comfort. It is then that they come forward a bit 'of people with shining eyes, with a passion on him, in so many words that grow in the mouth to tell you. You do not find any more concentration, you die a little smile a 'idiot in the face and nod hoping not to disappoint the enthusiasm aroused too.
It's the disconnect: while I sing I am one with the listener. After no.

We want more love songs
molasses to the radio
mind that talking about the heart
honey bad iodine

Lyrics to sodium chloride
which give rock salt mines
of lovers breaking the closet
rebels to every trick.

It is our need for consolation, a hunger never satisfied. But something you did, something always goes.

With absurd people with unlikely places

The privilege of those who make this job is now to be able to connect the dots and see the figure, as in the old puzzle games of the week. For the type of songs I do, for the variety of proposals, for their willingness to move often for little or nothing: for the "glory" (as they say), or militancy, for all this to me, more than any I think other fellow songwriter, happened to sing in the most disparate and unlikely places: social centers, private homes, museums, prisons, asylums, hospitals, public holidays, fair trade shops, bookstores, festivals, parades. The initiatives that are often not explicitly part of music, but music is my tool of penetration in places and in the minds of the world.
To speak of these places is to speak of the forms of sociality that expresses our time of dissolution of collective ideals.
Telling these experiences is not just making a list of funny or heartbreaking situations (or both), but forming the map of a sort of treasure hunt where the treasure is scattered at every stop.
When Mario Novello got excited for that handful of 70 songs written by Gianni Nebbiosi on the condition of inmates in mental hospitals, which we had taken up and re-engraved, made us go into the old and dilapidated halls of the "Women troubled" department three , Asylum of Sant’Osvaldo in Udine. The windows on the doors and hinges terrible I continue to pursue, even in dreams.
When exiting the juvenile prison in Catanzaro, after a very difficult musical encounter, while the crack iron gate behind me, I felt terrible shout at me one of those guys behind "Mesciu (" master "), then you come to visit next Monday?" It seemed that some utopian slogan on a world without slaves and without bars are the words of pure common sense.
When far from prison, the women of Verona, they took away the guests from the concert hall, for their hour of exercise was over, as they were leaving they asked us to play again and we accompany them one by one with the last song. Last stanza only musicians were the ones left in there.
Viewed from within, singing gives me the privilege to get in touch with absurd people, and unlikely places with unique situations. Singing is a political act, not only, not for what song, but for the places and people who would otherwise never have had the pleasure and privilege to meet. Humanity in revolt, a multitude that is not satisfied and continues to rise. Sure, it's all too easy to see because there is no glue that puts together all this potential wealth, but, I know, remains. The glue I think they may be stories. Not the collective ruminations on the fate of the world or the most intimate exploration of the depths of the artist in front of his coffee cup, also called minimalism. But the stories, just stories.
Today more than ever I believe that no one emotion to an abstract ideal. The revolution is not made with a budget program and cannot be judged with the financial statements. Today the only place that I can do to get others involved is to tell stories: single stories for single individuals.

We want to air songs
debuts in the May 1
singing cronicle the range
of our great trip

The life that you can tell
the music of the words
we want to love songs
and some songs of love ...

My need is great consolation, a friend once told me "there is no compliment you enough, you'll always miss one. " In fifteen years of work I have not become more famous or too rich, maybe a little 'infamous in our environment. Often to console me saying, "... aaa, had I been born twenty years earlier! At this hour ... "but the fact that I am reasonably well known, much to be called often, but not recognized and thus can make contact with anyone in his way is a privilege, the privilege of doing a job that is a passkey. If life is the art of meeting, singing allows me to live well beyond my capabilities. Hear the stories, keep telling them.

Alessio Lega
alessio.lega@fastwebnet.it

translation Enrico Massetti: enricomassetti@msn.com