Lorè’s Ark: Jovanotti and music to escape the gloom
Lorenzo Jovanotti one and three, and the biblical reference is not accidental. There are three projects that will engage him: L’Arca di Lorè, the Jova Summer Party, the new New York album which is not volume two of “The Human Body” but «a mixtape of miracles, an LP of shared enjoyment”, he says as the best promoter of himself.
Stand still not the Jovas. Stasis isn’t really his thing. After over six hundred thousand spectators in the arenas, a documentary and an album of the last live show, cascade collaborations (with Carmen Consoli, Gigi D’Alessio, Eros Ramazzotti, Cesare Cremonini), this morning Lorenzo Jovanotti presented the new projects to the press, in the plural, because he thinks of a hundred and does all of them.
Black jacket and fedora hat, Hemingway beard, he has a world map next to him (“the first gift I received as a child”) and starts with a quote from Borges: “We were as always at the end of time”, to explain why it is urgent to make all this happen right now: “We are at the end of the world and at the beginning of something. The catastrophe is looming, what we thought we knew is collapsing, it is a time of tacit despondency, of fear, we are inside a cloud, the marketing of depression. My generation is the last to grow up with the certainty that things would always get better, more health, more peace, more democracy, more education for all, more freedom and even more joy. Many things have happened, but anxiety, misunderstanding, extremism, the Holy Inquisition of social media have also increased. I decided to react, it’s my character, my look. My solution is to look for the road, the movement, to go and see the world. Artists, faced with the edge of the precipice, have the privilege of deploying energy. Hope, joy, does not mean denying the tragic, but giving birth to the new, overcoming the crisis.”
It is his reaction to the gloom in which we are immersed, and some will say that it is not appropriate, that the planet is adrift, peace has not yet broken out and there is nothing to celebrate, but we now know what he thinks: the body sublimates violence in dance, and we have the duty to flower everywhere and in any case, lesson from Etty Hillesum. Jova specifies, almost already sensing the specious criticism: «I can’t make lament part of my writing because I’m not good at this. I’m a DJ, an entertainer, I don’t like blackmailing people with big messages in the space-time of a concert. Take me seriously about performance, about my devotion to the audience. Then it’s clear that I prefer good people to “shit”, but I don’t like ethical narcissism, dogmatism, I’m not the one who says what others should do.”
He quotes Joseph Campbell “Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold” and Pope Francis, “Be witnesses of hope” and gets to the point: «Behold, for me hope is nourished by contamination and multitude. Salvation, the handhold, is a whale’s belly where I will climb and bring many people on board.”
The tour, between the world and Italy
He decides to go on tour where he has never been, to play where they don’t even know him, chasing a concept dear to Roberto Calasso, “primavoltità”, in concert from Australia to Congo, from Croatia to Barcelona, beyond mental boundaries, in search of human coordinates.
The summer, however, will be totally Italian with the Jova Summer Party (tickets on sale from Sunday 16 November at 3pm on the classic circuits) finally favoring the south, which he had not managed to reach with the arena tour. He moves the idea of Jova Beach from the beaches to the large open spaces of five thousand people but without environmentalists to spoil the ultra party: «I didn’t want to repeat the format and then we live in the era in which the news is more important than the facts. We were eco-sustainable, we took care of the environment, but there were reports of devastation and pollution. I didn’t want to fall under deliberate and specious attacks. Of the sixteen complaints received with Jova Beach, none progressed beyond initial consideration. It wasn’t enough to be good. There was a dogmatism with which it was impossible to dialogue. I don’t want to contribute to the polemical climate, I party and do things properly, so this time let’s go and look for places in the south where there has never been music, we will valorise the most peripheral ones, we will make good music where you don’t expect it”.
It won’t be a concert but a real festival, inspired by Burning Man, with a temporary city that is born and dies, but in the meantime lives to the fullest, with DJs and artists from all over the world and from all genres: «I’ll be there from the afternoon» he anticipates «I’ll be the director of the circus». The other, more local, inspiration is the Cantagiro: «We will do one stage after another as Celentano and Morandi once did, but we will use the bicycle. We will stop in the villages, it will be a beautiful story live in Italian August. I also want to encourage administrations to invest in cycle paths for slower and more conscious tourism.” The mainland sailors’ caravan will be open to all.
Jova al Massimo
The tour will end in Rome, the city where he was born and lived until he was 19, the city of Veleno, Piper, Hysteria and private radio. Jova al Massimo. The logo portrays him driving the chariot and riding the she-wolf. He takes the Circus Maximus on September 12th as a conquest, a landing place, a few days before his 60th birthday («I have the Mick Jagger holy card, he jokes): «It will be beautiful, even if in Rome it’s the empty chairs that move me: my parents, my brother. My mother would have put on airs.” All always accompanied by the super band heard at PalaJova: «In other concerts you see few musicians and many dancers, but we do the opposite».
An “American” album (inspired by Dalla)
Meanwhile, on November 20th the new album “NIUIORCHERUBINI” will be released (for Island Records), a title that pays homage to Dalla of DallAmeriCaruso”, born in New York: “It’s the city where I was born musically, rap came from there. I went there in October to escape, as I had done since I was a kid in front of my parents’ arguments. I was overwhelmed by the news of the war, I felt great impotence, I wanted something that made me feel good”. He had to record only one song, the salsa version last of “Senza se senza but” with Oscar Hernandez’s Spanish Harlem Orchestra, but then he rented the studio in Brooklyn for a week, summoning various artists contacted on Instagram: «Every day a jam with different musicians, on the third day I realized that they weren’t sketches but really songs. I was happy. I recorded it live on analog tape, without overdubs and without corrections, and it will be a success even if five people listen to it time, out of the league of music where everything goes fast and things get old quickly.” It will contain cumbia, funk, lots of rhythm, and it will be a work more of a “funky preacher” than a singer-songwriter.
Sanremo?
To those who ask him about a possible stop at the Sanremo Festival, he replies: «It’s not planned, I’ll watch it like every year. Future artistic direction is not among my goals and as a host… if one day Fiorello goes and wants me, I’ll go. I say this because Fiorello said he won’t go back again.” On the collaboration with Gigi D’Alessio, he replies: «It was born spontaneously, he was convinced that I would tell him no. When an artist has as many years of career as him, you have to have admiration. Ours is a violent business, you’re first in the rankings and then suddenly you no longer exist. I recently went to the Nisida juvenile prison, I met the kids, all crazy about rap, but above rap for them there is the Pope, there is Gigi”.
Lorenzo Jovanotti returns several times to the need to put a lot of energy into circulation in this historical moment: «Something went wrong in the world but something went splendidly. We are in the heart of a change, the kids who have grown up digitally will surprise us with their enthusiasm and ideas, I have no doubts. The risk is an excess of moralism and conformism, the algorithm that leads to what we already know, but we are there, those who act to find new possibilities. There is an avenue and we are the opposite avenues, the parallel streets. We must do everything to tell another story, a good one, not just an ugly one. I believe it. My intention is to give a sense of wonder, even to the little ones. I feel in tune with my demon only when I sow joy and light.” Once again he will try to present all possible worlds, with an eye set on beauty to save what can be saved.
The dates
The Italian stages of L’Arca di Loré – Jova Summer Party
7 August OLBIA – ARENA SOUND PARK
12 August MONTESILVANO – MUSICARENA
17 August BARLETTA–MUSIC ARENA
22 August CATANZARO – CALABRIA MUSIC ARENA
29 August PALERMO–IPPODROMO LA FAVOURITA
5 September NAPLES – AGNANO RACECOURSE•
12 September ROME–CIRCUS MAXIMUM
