To my question Elisa turns to Ferdinando Salzano, who organizes the concert. “I imagined a figure,” she says. “I believe between 30 and 35% more,” he says. “I too thought about something like that.” The two are saying that the choices made to reduce the environmental impact of the concert on June 18th in San Siro caused an increase in costs by 30-35%. Today the ecological awareness pays it at a market price, not to mention the additional commitment that it takes compared to a normal concert and the working hours necessary to complete the company in a country where certain good practices are all to be implemented, if not to be invented. “But the most important point is another and that is that if all artists used the same attention, the prices would come and the 30% more would zero”.
It is the message that he cares about Elisa, is the invitation that he addresses to colleagues: do it too. An invitation made without any sense of superiority and without trying to put someone behind the wall, but with a certain sense of urgency and the right optimism. “I am sure that this thing will move the waters, it is the demonstration that it can be done, it will encourage other artists to do it.” The key word is concreteness. There are no 100%sustainable concerts, but something can be done, indeed it must be done by challenging those who accuse you of Greenwashing, who is convinced that they are all nonsense, who says it is a drop in the sea and so much is worth nothing.
Someone must start. Abroad are the Coldplay who have transformed ecology into a show and the Massive Attack which for many represent the standard of concert sustainability, those who have taken the commitment to reduce emissions more seriously (and which for a coincidence will play at the gates of Milan just on June 18). Here is Elisa, the first Italian artist to be a bearer for the United Nations of the promotion of the 17 objectives of sustainable development of the 2030 Agenda. They go to “reduce the negative environmental impact per capita of the cities” to “make people have the relevant information and awareness in the subject of sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature all over the world”. Elisa puts it as follows: “We must encourage the change of paradigm from anthropocentrism to accecentrism”.
“First of all,” he explains in a meeting with journalists in view of the sold out concert of 18 June, “we have chosen to feed the stage not with diesel, but with biocombustibile composed of waste and agricultural biomass. This already allows to reduce emissions by 70%. It is the first show powered by Biofuel made in San Siro. Think only if we did it all and not for a single concert, but on tour ». Then there is the non -secondary theme of mobility: only for the Elisa concert 50 thousand people will move producing a certain impact. An old study commissioned by the Radiohead had shown that 80% of their tour emissions were due to transport. Imagine what the concerts at San Siro of world star like Taylor Swift, with people who came to Milan from all over the world, caused on this front. “We asked and obtained from the Municipality of Milan for an increase in public transport,” says Elisa about the city mobility on the concert day. Everything is useful. «Thanks to Vestisolidale there will be a collection of clothing used outside the stadium. We have improved separate collection, even if it is not easy to change the habits of those who have the food & beverage of the stadium in contract ».
Many of the actions taken in view of the concert are the result of the synergy between public and private entities, which would seem according to artist and organizer the most effective way to do things. “The measure of data inherent in emissions, an important fact to improve protocols, will be entrusted to independent subjects” such as Tetis and Justonearth. In short, it will be the opportunity to show what can do, collect information, sensitize.
Since resetting emissions is impossible, Elisa has launched the project of the Plantia sound park with her Lotus Foundation whose name is inspired by the 1970s environmental concept Mother Earth's Plantia by Mort Garson. It will be financed by public funds and a crowdfunding and will rise on a former quarry quarry in via Quarenghi in Milan, a few kilometers from the stadium. “The area will be reclaimed through phytobonification techniques”, Elisa enthusiastically says, “that is, with the use of plant species that absorb toxic substances”. With the enthusiasm of a little girl he says that phytobonification “is cool”. After reclamation in the area, speakers will be installed that will spread classical music, “which has a beneficial effect on plants”.
Press photo
“My hope is to inspire a change in attitude.” Elisa may have said it about San Siro and instead it is a quote from three years ago, when he presented the summer concerts of Back to the Future. The change has not arrived, but she does not give up. The San Siro project is also the son of that tour made following a protocol for live, the first in Italy, which included, among other things, the reduction of the vehicles traveling on the streets, the selection of venues as sustainable, the use of renewable energy sources, the planting of 2300 trees. Everything did not go well. For example, a training project was launched on the theme of direct sustainability to local promoters which are an important part of the live music supply chain with a view to containing emissions and the implementation of good practices. He replied only 50% of them. “It was a tiring and exploratory tour,” Elisa recalls, “made us understand what the situation in Italy of sustainability in music is”.
Now he wants to do more. «The civic sense moves me. Doing it is not an obligation for anyone, but a moral commitment yes, especially in this moment of spectacularized denial by irresponsible heads of state and this while the effects of climate change are increasingly evident. We do not wait further, we need concrete actions, to make commitments, to make responsibilities towards the new generations. I would like it to be a normal thing ». He is not afraid of being accused of Greenwashing. “I am serene and surrounded by competent professionals, a serious job has been done.” However, he knows that the theme inspires fear to colleagues. Those who do something is often mocked by the right and criticized by the left. It is better to do nothing and if you need to hide behind the most classic of Italian alibis: it's not my fault, but of the system. When you make a concert at the stadium, the first concern is to fill it, do not make you come a great headache by studying ways to reduce emissions. “The artists are afraid to do something and be inconsistent, they are afraid of making mistakes, to expose themselves media.”
Elisa does not want to reveal too much of the concert, except that it will last at least two hours and three quarters, perhaps three. For 28 years he makes records and he can't exclude certain songs from the lineup. «On an aesthetic level, everything will be based on the concepts of interconnection and ecocentrism. There will be a time when I will try to make the word sustainability less abstract. I will say that we are water, we are air, we are wind, we are one. I want to make it clear that this concerns us all ». Knowing that the sound at San Siro is dirty and stunned, it does not want to load it too much and therefore has reduced the formation to a minimum. There will be Andrea Rigonat on guitar, Matteo Bassi on bass, Giovanni Cilio on drums, Will Medini on keyboards, in addition to his four vocalists because he likes to think about music as a choral thing, in all senses. The only guest confirmed for now is Cesare Cremonini, who will in turn host Elisa at the stadium.
The repertoire will be a sort of best of because beyond the environmental commitment is the first San Siro of the singer and is still the celebration of a career. Elisa will also recover songs that loves and that are not particularly popular. «I will start with an almost debut piece, he moves me to take it on a stage where I would never have thought of arriving. I like to do it for me and for fans who wanted this concert at the stadium so much. I have strained, I will even change a lot of times ». He adds laughing and speaking of himself in the third person: “Admirable effort of Toffoli”.
And then there is the story of when Elisa heard Brian Eno on the phone to talk about a possible collaboration that then did not go through. “On that occasion he told me a beautiful thing: the systemic changes are very difficult to implement because those who are in power is harnessed in a network of interests, move in a mined field. And therefore systemic changes take place paradoxically from below. We can make them artists who are free people ». And perhaps this is the change of paradigm that is needed among the Italian singers: from self -centeredness to ecocentrism.
