Lamante is one of the most interesting emerging rock artists in Italy

Lamante, or Giorgia Pietribiasi, singer-songwriter born in '99, born and raised in the city of Schio, a name we already wrote about a year ago, brings with it expressive urgency, anger, sweetness, pain, atonement, rock attitude and folk spirit. She is one of the most interesting emerging artists in Italy at the moment. Her debut album “In memoria di”, produced together with Taketo Gohara, who strongly wanted to work with her after listening to some of her early songs, is a journey into the rooms of her life. Listening to him, especially live (she is busy on a summer tour), she transmits something strictly real and at the same time magical. Lamante doesn't try to sell songs, like many newcomers today, but she tries to make art, moved by something profound and linked primarily to a personal search.

Is “In memoria di” an album of discovery, but also of loss?
Yes, I discovered it, and I did it especially in the loss. I have always been a person very tied to memory and therefore, up until today, I have dedicated my entire life to trying to unite my family fragments, memories, even those before my birth and, when I started doing this album, three years ago, I thought right inside my head that I would talk about memory. A few weeks before releasing it I rationalized that in reality, however, the exact opposite of what I had envisaged was happening: the album was allowing me to finally “lose” this memory, this family history, also made up of negative elements. The album has gone from an artistic act to a biographical fact.

In the story, between one song and another, it seems that you move between reality and a dark fairy tale.
For me there is a link between these two worlds, as in the writing of Alejandro Jodorowsky. There is a sort of “magical realism” that I love very much. Every one of my family traumas seems to have become legend, epic. I have always been convinced that personal history is not made up so much of the memory itself, but of how it is remembered. And so when I write I never ask myself too many questions about how that situation really happened, but about how it was perceived by my mother, my father, me etc.

When did music come into your life?
Fortunately I come from a family of people who are very close to art: my mother gave me the love of writing and reading, my father the love of music. I remember perfectly the first concert, which I went to with my father. I was 8-9 years old. It was an epiphanic moment, an epiphany. He took me to listen to Massimo Volume live. I have this memory of this man with a big hat, then the sound of the bass, the soft lights. I felt a very powerful energy.

The effects of Emidio Clementi on people.
Something was vibrating inside me so strongly that it made me feel sick. In fact, after a while I asked my father to take me home. When I got out of bed the next day and thought about the evening, I said to myself: “nothing has ever shaken me so deeply.” I felt like crying. And over time I understood that that was an emotion linked to an emotional state that I also wanted to be able to convey.

What happened next?
Well, I never forgot that feeling, but rather it guided me as I grew up. My writing has always been very linked to private matters. I remember the first songs presented to my parents. Even if I expressed ferocious concepts they didn't take me seriously, they treated me like a girl even though I was actually very serious. And paradoxically it was liberating. In the songs, finally, I could say what I wanted, even calling my parents assholes.

Other important moments in your training journey?
The discovery of Carmen Consoli. I saw her for the first time on YouTube, it was a video of her in Sanremo in the 90s: a girl with short hair, the guitar, that crazy voice and those words that were evidently the result of a strong need for expression. I remember saying: “one day I want to be like that too”. She gave me strength in combining the study of the guitar with the search for words. I began to do a lot of tests, to best connect these two worlds.

The live dimension is something that belongs to you, that you take care of and in which you already demonstrate preparation. I had the chance to see you at the La Prima Estate festival and at Mi Ami.
I'm very lucky because in Schio, in general in the upper Vicenza area, there is the culture of live performances, of knowing how to play. At 15-16 years old I started doing concerts. All the people close to me played, my friends, who are now part of my band, already played when they were children. Until a year ago I hadn't published a song yet, but I had already done lots of concerts in clubs or places like that. And I'm very proud to have been born on stage before on a record.

Francesco Motta also often repeats it, he too attributes importance to this aspect, that is, to having been a musician first and not a songwriter.
Where I come from, no one gave a shit if you had the songs published or not, what mattered is if you knew how to play and were credible on stage, whatever it was. This allows you to grow, to gain awareness.

Why Lamante?
There is already a Giorgia (laughs, ed.). Among other things, I am named after her. My last name is unpronounceable. When I asked Taketo to pronounce it, he couldn't, so I discarded it as a possible stage name. It's a tongue twister. And then my surname is well known in Schio and it hurts. It's linked to the history of the workers' struggle and the arrival of heroin, so it wouldn't have been easy to bring it with me into music too. I reasoned that the words “betrayal and tradition” are linked and are part of my life. Betrayal, in its etymology, means handing over to another something that also recalls tradition. Lto mine music feels like it betrays my ancestors.

How would you betray them?
My family's history has always been carried forward by men, even in terms of artistic inspiration. I break this chain, although not completely because I still talk about my relatives in the songs. However, the concept of betrayal led me to “the lover”, who takes everything without any kind of responsibility, but at the same time fails to achieve a complete relationship. And then there is a reference to the praying mantis. And you know how the mantis behaves, right? (laughs, ed.).

Levante wanted you in the new version of “Duri come me”. What did you feel?
A beautiful collaboration, an important recognition for me. We also sang it together when she came to Padua on tour. I went to see her at the Forum in Assago years ago, I have always appreciated her more energetic side, but also her acoustic, direct side. Precisely on the latter there is something that unites us, a sort of folk soul. And then something else binds us. The pain, definitely. She told me that too. I remember her words: “I too was Lamante”.

You now live in Milan, no longer in Schio. Did you want to “escape”? The relationship with your roots after a record like this?
I've already run away many, many times, I've been running away since I was 16. I'm in Milan for love, nothing else. I hate the musical centrism that is attributed to this city, as if everything had to happen here. And in fact I'm very proud to have worked and recorded the album at home, in Schio. It was inevitable given what I tell in the project. And this tied me even more to my territory. Giovanni Lindo Ferretti had to go to Mongolia, on the other side of the world, to understand where he really wanted to live. I don't know what will happen in my life, but I know that I come from a land of farmers. My name means “man who works the land”. It's as if my roots are in my destiny. “Where you are born, you die in the end,” he says.