Claudio Santamaria 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. Actor, director, recently director of the Milan Film Festival, Santamaria talked about his parallel musical career: that of a performer who sang Rino Gaetano, Modugno and, at the last Sanremo, Mina paired with Malika Ayane.
Rino Gaetano, the actor forced to sing
Santamaria says he started playing the guitar late, at seventeen, and that he sang for a long time only among friends, out of shame. The turning point came with the Rai drama su Rino Gaetanoalmost twenty years ago. He made the director listen Marco Turco a version of The violets were dying recorded at home and set a condition: if he didn't sing, he wouldn't do the series.
Not on a whim, he explains, but out of a precise conviction: there is nothing worse than a series in which the artist is on stage singing and the original studio pieces play on the sound. The producers, Claudia Mori And Anna Morithey heard him singing live with Rino Gaetano's Band and gave the OK. From there, he says, Rino really unlocked his ability to sing in public.
May Day, painted gold as an act of Jodorowsky
He says he lost his fear of the stage almost completely in just one time: the May Day concert, in front of half a million people, where he sang with Tiromancino, Marlene Kuntz and Federico Zampaglione, among others. An experience he compares to a psychomagic act at Jodorowskywith whom he had done a seminar. Shortly afterwards Sanremo arrived with PFM, and since then, he says, the stage no longer scared him.
Sanremo with Malika Ayane and Monina's criticism returned
At the last Festival Santamaria took the stage at the Ariston with Malika Ayane for a tribute to Mina, singing You burst into my heart. He says that this time he had a little more tension: he wasn't the surprise guest, he was in the competition, with the responsibility of not making Malika look bad. It went well, so much so that one newspaper listed him as the best performer of the evening.
An episode involving Monina himself, who as a critic had panned it, was grafted onto that performance. Santamaria then wrote to him, through a mutual friend, the vocal coach Francesco Rappaccioliexplaining what technical problems there had been that evening. A clarification that the host said in the episode that he appreciated.
The music of the house: the four year old daughter and the CCCP
One of the funniest passages concerns the children. Santamaria proudly says that his four-year-old daughter, in the car, asks him for CCCPand in particular I'm good, I'm badwhich is now on his playlist. Another, nine years old, plays the drums and writes her own songs. And there is the eldest son, who says he “devastated” him musically by taking him as a child to one of his last concerts. Franco Battiato with Pinaxa, all electronics and early records, without even one of the songs the boy was expecting.
Lucio Dalla, Pupi Avati and the Sagrada Família
When asked which biopic he would like to shoot, Santamaria names the names of Modugnowhich he has already partly evoked in Salvatores' film, and two singer-songwriters he dreams of interpreting: Luigi Tenco And Piero Ciampi. But it's up Lucio Dalla who lights up more, amazed that no one has made a film about it yet.
Tell two images. The first, personal: as a child, at the patronal festival of his mother's town in Basilicata, he saw Dalla walking barefoot, with dirty feet, an image that he kept inside. He told her the second one Pupi Avatiwho was a friend of Dalla and with whom he played. On tour, having climbed to the top of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Avati confessed that he thought of throwing it down out of anger and envy at how quickly the young Lucio had become better than him. Dalla turned, understood, and the two embraced.
Michael, the film about the King of Pop
The episode ends on the musical cinema of the moment, the film Michael dedicated to Michael Jackson, played by the artist's nephew. Santamaria hasn't seen it yet, but says it's worth it, because it's about a giant. At that point Monina starts again with a personal memory: having seen Michael Jackson in concert at the Olympic stadium in Rome at the age of sixteen, among coffins, red smoke and the stunt double flying over the audience with a jetpack.
