Battiato also brought “La cura” to the temple of pop: the Festivalbar

It was the summer of 1997 when Franco Battiato brought “La cura” to the stage of the Festivalbar, a summer temple of popular music.. A track taken from the album “The Ambush”. The piece became and still is one of the most popular of the Sicilian artist, quickly gaining great success among the public and critics and being judged “Italian song of the year” at the Italian Music Award in 1997. A few months later, Battiato participated with the song at the Festivalbar 1997, a choice that photographs his “mission” very well. A performance that was launched at the time by Amadeus. All this while the video of the song, shot by Riccardo Paoletti in Lisbon, was getting massive airplay on television.

In 2007, “La cura” was also presented at the Sanremo Festivalshortly before being released in digital version. To remember the performance at the Festivalbar, recently, was Simone Cristicchiwho is touring Italy with his show “Torneremo ancora”, dedicated to the Sicilian maestro who passed away in 2021 and created together with Amara. “Battiato’s real victory was not to have confined what he wrote to a niche, but to have brought it to success. – Cristicchi recalled – I think it’s a unique case. To understand the singer-songwriter I listened to and read hundreds of his interviews. And he describes his music as a mission: he specifically wanted to insert important content in a light formula. This transmission of wisdom through “simple” keys has a lot to do with sophism, the practices of the ancient Tibetans, the studies of René Guénonall fields of interest of Battiato. He wanted to expand knowledge through popular music and he succeeded by creating songs that in some way everyone knows. Do you remember when he presented “La cura” at the Festivalbar? That was a clear example”.