CartaCanta Award, here are the five finalists

Work is underway for the 2023/2024 edition of CartaCanta, the award established by the Ar.Ca. Cultural Association for the best book on music by an Italian author.

The Association, which since its foundation has collected and catalogued, in its headquarters in Brescia, the volumes that deal with the history and criticism of popular music, established in 2021 an award for the best book on the subject.

Works sent in paper format to the headquarters of the Ar.Ca. Association will be considered: biographies and autobiographies, critical essays and historical reports, but also fictional works set in the world of music or written by musicians, provided they are by Italian authors and regularly published and distributed in Italy.

The Ar.Ca. Cultural Association, also taking into consideration the reviews published by newspapers, magazines and online publications, selects a short list and submits it to a Commission that indicates which one is in its opinion the most deserving.

The first edition of the award was won by Carlo Boccadoro with “Bach/Prince, vite parallele” (Einaudi); the second by Marco Ongaro with “Il senso per la parola di Serge Gainsbourg” (Caissa Italia); the third by Francesco Donadio with “Freewheelin’ in Rome” (Arcana Edizioni).

The five books from which the recipient of the Prize will be chosen this year are:

What I’ll Do When I Grow Up by Gino Paoli with Daniele Bresciani (Bompiani)

Congratulations! by CCCP – Ferretti, Zamboni, Giudici, Fatur (Inside 4)

Alternative Generation 1991-1995 by Luca De Gennaro (Rizzoli Lizard)

Giorgio Gaber, Sandro Luporini and the Eighties by Fabio Barbero (Arcana)

Musicarelli by Marta Cagnola and Simone Fattori (VoloLibero)

The Commission, chaired by Franco Zanetti, editorial director of rockol.it, and composed of Marta Blumi Tripodi, Enrico Casarini and John Vignola, will announce the winner of the Carta Canta Award 2023/24 in October 2024.