Simona Molinari she was a guest of SPOT – The Podcastthe program that Michele Monina And Massimiliano Longo they record live at the Spot Music Fest in Bareggio, in front of the audience of the young artists of the festival. In almost twenty years of career, from the swing of Self-centered from Sanremo Giovani 2009 to the all-female song-theater shows, she has built a path deliberately lateral to the mainstream. And on that path he has a clear conviction: “You don't get sick of music, you get sick of popularity. There is a life outside of numbers.”
The concert in Castelvetrano, a hundred meters from Messina Denaro's home
Molinari starts from an event he recently participated in: the concert organized by the association In Their Nameborn after the arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro and dedicated to the victims of the mafia. It was held in Castelvetrano, one hundred meters from the boss' house, with five thousand people. The idea, he says, came from the pianist Shadè Mangiaracinafrom Castelvetrano, who called some artist friends.
The meaning of the operation, he explains, is to overturn the usual story: we always talk about the leaders, who are almost made into cinematic characters, and almost never about the victims, who remain nameless. On stage she led a monologue on Francesca Morvillomagistrate and wife of Giovanni Falcone, who died with him in Capaci, who despite being a prosecutor and having worked on the maxi-trial is still remembered today only as “the wife of”.
“The immobile woman”, Verdi's Rigoletto turned upside down
One of the projects he carries out is The immobile womana theater-song show with an all-female band, written with Simona Orlando. The title plays with the air of Rigoletto by Verdi, where the mobility of women was considered something unbecoming. Molinari turns the concept on its head: the “mobile” women he celebrates are those who have taken a step further, paving the way for those who can get on stage today.
A historical detail emerges in the story: until the eighteenth century, women were forbidden to play the cello, because it was considered obscene, given that it required a pose considered unfeminine. A way, he says, to make people understand how much the musical world was designed by men for men.
Mercedes Sosa, the album and the second Tenco Prize
Molinari also talks about the project on Mercedes Sosaborn from the show with Cosimo Damiano Damato and then became a record, Mercedeswhich earned her the second Tenco Award. An autonomous work, outside the logic of traditional discography, which paradoxically, she says, has given her more than anything else. Hence the belief that outside the mainstream market there is still a life and a reality.
“Today, to be a pop singer, you first have to be an influencer”
When asked what he would advise a young person who wants to make experimental music, Molinari warns against the confusion between making art and being popular. Today, he observes, to be a pop singer you must first of all be an influencer, spend enormous time on social media and sometimes distort yourself, in a downward game in which what outrages, makes people laugh or attracts clicks wins. But credibility, he adds, is the most difficult thing to maintain over time, and without truth there is no art, only entertainment, which is another profession with equal dignity but must be chosen with awareness.
Advice to young people: training and human capital
The final suggestion is twofold. On the one hand, musical and human training, which many today neglect by throwing themselves in before having prepared. On the other hand, human capital, that is, the relationships that are built and that endure even when success ends. With one fact that is the backdrop to everything: we live in a society of adults, but the music market is aimed almost only at the very young, and a lot is lost in this age contradiction.
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