The Sicilian singer-songwriter ‘Tenco Award’ for lifetime achievement: “Culture is as essential as food, without culture we could even become cannibals…” – “So many performers and few singer-songwriters? In Italy there is still a brake on women who think” – “Today there is no chewing, life is like an arancini that is tasted, not swallowed”
(by correspondent Enzo Bonaiuto) – “Why so much violence against women, even today? Why we are undernourished from a cultural point of view and culture is as essential a nourishment as food: it gives us a perspective, a vision”. This is the accusation he launches Carmen Consoliinterviewed by AdnKronos, in Sanremo to receive the ‘Tenco Award’ for lifetime achievement on the stage of the Ariston theatre
commenting on the statistics that speak of one femicide every three days in Italy.
“Without cultural nourishment, too an artistic photo with a female nude would simply appear like a piece of meat to be roasted; and taking this imaginary discourse to extreme excess, we would even develop cannibalism…“, explains the ‘singer’.
Therefore, underlines Carmen Consoli, “the only cure against violence against women, against femicides, is culture: we need to strengthen and invest in culture in our country. Culture needs time, it’s not as fast as a click on social mediawe should return to symposiums, to long studies, rather than shortening school courses”.
In Italian pop music, many good and famous performers, very few singer-songwriters: why this gap? “Probably, the holding back is the idea that women must carry out a more ‘aesthetic’ task such as that of an interpreter, which is also beautiful and very difficult; the author has something inside and what she brings out can then be even more valorised by an interpreter, just think of Mina. The ‘thought’ expressed by a woman is, in general and not only in music, a topic that in Italy still remains under discussion“, replies Carmen Consoli.
“However, there are many singer-songwriters, perhaps not all of them famous”, observes the ‘singer’ as the Sicilian singer-songwriter is defined in the world of Italian pop music. But then, what allowed Carmen Consoli to be both a singer-songwriter and famous at the same time? “I think I was very lucky. And then, I come from a city like Catania, in the deep South, volcanic and at the same time very modern, with a great literary and theatrical traditionwhich in music, not surprisingly, gave birth to Franco Battiatobut also broadening the discussion to Pippo Baudo oh Fiorelloall united by the desire to dig deep and turn things around.”
Carmen Consoli explains: “There is a sort of ‘genetic philosophy’ that helped me and then, as mentioned, also a lot of luck: Who should have told someone born on the slopes of Etna to get to the Tenco Prize!“, he exclaims in the sonority of his Sicilian accent. “My father would be really very proud of me, he would look me in the eyes and tell me ‘we did it!’ In reality, I’m still in disbelief… Evidently, I’ve done something and equally evidently the public believes in me more than I believe in myself.”
Today, for Carmen Consoli, “the ‘chewing’ is missing: an arancino is tasted, not swallowed! And so is life“. It is the image that, as a true Sicilian, Carmen Consoli gives. “In this sense – explains the ‘singer’ as she is defined in the world of Italian author music – the legendary slowness of us Sicilians
it’s not an attitude or lazinessa desire to be late to take it easy, but it is the desire to enjoy life in all its moments”.
She will present herself to the audience only with the acoustic guitar: “I like to present myself ‘naked’ to the public of the Tenco Prize, artistically naked I mean… also because I don’t think that if I stripped I would sell more copies of my records” he explains with an ironic reference to certain album covers. As for the near future, “I would like to graduate in Architecture and Design, music, as Schopenhauer said, is liquid architecture…”.
Source-www.adnkronos.com