Tenco-Piotta disputes: Club Tenco “closes the issue”
We have received and are publishing, in relation to the controversy surrounding “‘Na notte infame”, the album by Tommaso “Piotta” Zanello, and his failure to be included in the top five finalists for the Targhe Tenco (we wrote about it here and here ), a press release from the Club Tenco board which, as far as he is concerned, declares the matter closed.
We report it in full below.
The Tenco Club, in response to what Tommaso Zanello, aka Piotta, wrote publicly regarding the Targhe Tenco voting, would like to point out that the representativeness of Roman culture in the artist’s songs is not questioned, which does not imply that it is a dialect or minority language.
Aware of the authoritative opinion of Paolo D’Achille, president of the Accademia della Crusca, we would like to underline that, even if it is difficult to establish a boundary between Roman dialect and Italian, for practical purposes a boundary must be drawn in order to assign the plaques. Even more so because the category “best album in dialect or minority language spoken in Italy” was born with the specific purpose of valorizing a cultural heritage (linguistic, specifically) otherwise not considered.
In the album “‘Na notte infame”, only one song out of eleven is in Roman dialect (“Lella…e poi”), seven songs are in standard Italian (“Ognuno con un se”, “Praise to God”, “Roman Ode”, “I’m not afraid”, “Se se se se”, “Children of a storm”, “L’amore cos’è”) and three lyrics (“‘Na notte infame”, “Professore”, “Serpico”) contain sporadic traits classifiable as dialect inserted within an Italian text.
The 2024 regulation of the Targhe Tenco for “The best records of the year” (the regulation is public and online on the Club Tenco website) states: «Sections 1, 2 and 4 must contain at least half of the songs that belong to the category in which they compete, except in cases to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis”, for which it is believed that the album in question does not have the linguistic requirements to compete in section 2 (best album in dialect or minority language spoken in Italy), as the dialect component significantly less than 50% of the total.
It is specified that in the registration form filled out online by the artist’s staff, the self-nomination was inserted only in category 2 (best album in dialect or minority language spoken in Italy) and that in the form it is mandatory to accept that whoever sends the application is «responsible for choosing the category».
Finally, all jurors are specified in writing that “the choice of category must comply with the rules. Choosing the wrong category risks having the votes annulled during the control phase, at the end of the voting”.
For Club Tenco the matter ends here.
The Board of Directors
