Giovanna Marini, one of the most lively and authoritative voices in the recovery of the popular tradition of Italian music, has died. She was 87 years old. Let's say pop audiences know her for having sung in 1982 in The clothing of a stoker by Francesco De Gregori, from the album Titanicand for having published with him in 2002 The steam whistlean album entirely dedicated to the Italian popular repertoire and awarded with a platinum record.
«We will forever be grateful to Giovanna Marini for her precious and courageous research work. We are losing an authentic storyteller”, wrote Angelo Branduardi on social media. She graduated in guitar at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, she has dedicated a life to the recovery of the oral tradition of our music, social songs and those that have not been lost and brought back to the public with a work of listening, transcription, arrangement. In 1958 she met Pier Paolo Pasolini, who told her that «her songs cannot be found in her books». She will become a kind of mantra.
The first important show he takes part in is Hello beautiful of 1964 dedicated to political and social singing. She participates in the adventure of the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano where left-wing singer-songwriters converge, from Ivan Della Mea and Paolo Pietrangeli, and at the same time she is close to the world of performers who recover the peasant tradition such as Giovanna Daffini or the Gruppo di Piadena. The idea of saving songs from oblivion, and also making them a political instrument in a crucial period of Italian history, led her to collect and study songs of oral tradition with the Ernesto De Martino Institute.
He collaborates with Dario Fo, who directs another very important show in which Marini takes part, I think about it and sing, writes original pieces that he brings to the stages, and founds the Scuola Popolare di Testaccio in Rome. At the same time, he teaches ethnomusicology applied to oral tradition singing and writes for cinema and theatre.
«The song belongs to everyone, it gives a voice to those who have none», he said two years ago to Rai News when presenting Chiara Ronchini's documentary on his activity Giovanna, stories of a voice. Everyone describes her as a tireless collector of stories and music. “I look for a photo of Giovanna and I find them all with the guitar,” wrote Ascanio Celestini after the news of her death. For her, the song was the most immediate expression of people's ideas and feelings and for this reason she paid attention to the meanings of the music that comes from below, collaborating with both established artists and small theater groups, without making any distinction. «I was looking for the sounds» she said «I found the people».