Riccardo Sinigallia: “Excluded from the system: I am a cliff”
I haven’t released an album for seven years. The last, “hello heart”, dates back to 2018. When you ask him if the times are ripe for a return, Riccardo Sinigallia replies in a clear way: “No”. Then, he also explains why: the singer-songwriter and producer who with his refrain has contributed to making “those who right” by Frankie Hi-Nrg one of the most important and well-known songs of the last thirty years, which has made “two destinies” and “the description of a moment” of the Tiromancino two timeless hits and who contributed to turning the careers of Niccolò Fabi, Max Gazzè, Luca Carboni, Luca Carboni, Luca Gazzè, Luca Gazzè Motta, Brunori and Pure Coez, closed with the-form form. “For me” hello heart “also sanctioned in the title the end of an approach, the record one. Sound and study every day: but in this phase of my career I want to do something totally expressive, free, without any kind of legacy with the song “, says the Roman musician, 55 years old, who when at the last Sanremo Festival appeared in the evening of the covers next to Bruori – and Dimartino – on the notes of” The year that will come “by Lucio Dalla it seemed almost a mirage, so much the appearances on TV and in certain circuits are rare. They are a little less those on the stages that know of music really played, such as that of Casilino Sky Park in Rome, where he will perform tomorrow evening at 9 pm guest of the Author’s Song Festival withoutfiltro.
“I feel that my karma is to be the excluded of this history of Italian music of the last twenty years.” You say it at the time of “Ciao Cuore”, in 2018. Is this still the case?
«Perhaps at the time I had not yet completely perfected the consossing of this thing. Today I understood that of the history of Italian music now, if only by mistake, I still be part: I within the right for usucapion, for those songs to whose writing or production I contributed and that they have become classics. I feel I am, if anything, the excluded of the record system. And I am not only talking about pop, but also of the record circuit linked to the songwriting song, which from 1982 onwards gradually went to favor a certain type of approach to the song: light, ironic, sardonic, sly. Excluding inexorably all those artists who perhaps were seen as a painstaking or doors. “
In which category do you return?
“A little bit all.”
Also a portasfiga?
“Yes. Because this small part of independent independent of which I feel part of being part of putting a magnifying glass on some chores of which it was better not to speak. Or if you really wanted to do it, you had to do it with irony ».
Cades of what type?
«Of all kinds, from political or sentimental ones. And I’m not talking about texts. Music is also enough. If I made a piece in minor, electronic, unstructured, people ran away. The biggest artists I met were put on the edge ».
Who saved?
«Giovanni Lindo Ferretti for his greatness managed to find a space. The others were able to dialogue with that side that excluded all the others. The fact of being excluded from Sanremo and those areas and also the fact of having excluded some things by choice, in a mutual refractoryness, is a consequence of this. The Italian song today is a mega holiday villa in which to participate you must know that you are in that envoment, otherwise you are out. Those who are inside is because they wanted to be inside. “
What is Riccardo Sinigallia’s place?
«I am a man who goes where they invite him, as Claudio Lolli said. To keep the family forward and pay the bills ».
Is it true that you don’t like the manufacturer’s work?
«It’s not that I don’t like being a manufacturer: I don’t like the term” producer “. I really like the work of the musician, even if I do it for others. I really like it when I feel an artistic tension. If there is not that artistic tension, but there is only the job, I like less. “
When was there artistic voltage?
“In” two destinies “of the Tiromancino, who does not see me as an author, but who sees me involved as a musician, I felt a huge artistic satisfaction, for example”.
And in “those who are right”?
«I felt so much that artistic tension so much that I didn’t like it at all. At the time I was 25 years old. The hip hop in Italy was very closed, narrow, in which the musicians were seen with distrust, the instruments were banned and the melody was perceived as an enemy. I did music research with David Neptini and Francesco Zampaglione with the band of the 6 of his ex, between Trip Hop and Techno. Singing on that stuff there a melodic refrain seemed to me an intrusion. And then I was also fragile vocally. Not that today is who knows what kind of interpreter, but I am certainly more convinced of my vocal expressive form. At the time it was not so. I left the studio, apologizing to Frankie: I thought I had ruined the piece. And instead … (laughs) ».
You said that leaving Tiromancino after the success of “The descrement of a moment” was a political act: to what extent?
«In the Tiromancino there was a wonderful balance between Federico, Francesco, Laura (Arzilli, bassist of the group, now partner of Sinigallia, ed) and me. When the representatives of other, less artistic and cheaper issues arrived, brought another type of approach to everyday life, which instead was more anarchist, free: it changed everything ».
Are you talking about managers and records?
“Yes. Perhaps Federico rightly wanted that stuff there for the Tiromancino, who in fact then carried on in what was the right way for him. But I realized that unlike how we left, that balance between the four of us had failed. That’s why abandoning the group was a political act ».
Is there anything that intrigues you or intrigues you with contemporary Italian pop?
«Listen to little. Indeed, I am almost completely abandoning listening to the discography. I am looking for amateur videos of people who make research on synthesizers and publish their own instrumental things on the net. Andrea Laszlo De Simone, Daniela Pes and Gaia Banfi likes colleagues ».
What idea did you make the mechanisms of the industry of these years? This was the summer that brought the bubble of gigantism to all costs, between semi -plus stadiums and inflated numbers.
«The public wants this: it is the cultural history of our country. If one gets used to burning, then Rutta and not even noticing it that he is burning. In the end, ordinary people want this stuff here, easy, which resembles something already done, with imitations of international models. And hence the reiteration of formulas, signatures, sounds: everything is ridiculous. Battisti also listened to Motown, but filtered it with his taste: it was Motown music but of Poggio Bustone. And the same can be said of the blues of Pino Daniele, re -proposed in Neapolitan sauce, as no one had ever done before him. I rarely find intelligent artists and songs that I like ».
With Bruori, who wanted you as a producer of his latest album, “The tree of the walnuts”, and as the musical director of the tour, how did he go?
«Bruori is a different one. Because he does not bring an American product to Italy, monkeying another stuff: he resumes our tradition and carries it in his own way. Let’s go on hoping that there will be a Renaissance sooner or later. Even if it doesn’t happen, patience ».
In 2020 he founded an independent label, Dram: is he still active?
“He never started actually. The pandemic prompted me to put the project in stand-by. It will be seen ».
How does the work as a composer for the cinema continues, after the collaborations with Renato De Maria, Gabriele Salvatores, Geneva Elkann and Elisa Amoruso?
“That too is in stand-by. I have the projects at stake, but it is early to talk about it. It’s a job that I’m learning to do. “
Still? You have done more soundtracks than discs.
“But I did it as a passionate, without having who knows what preparation. I still have a lot to learn ».
