In this article we have the opportunity to meet the point of view of a great musical, guitar, compositional and vocal reference of Italian music and beyond; I had the opportunity to collect in this interview the precious and interesting experience of Finaz : guitarist and new voice of the Bandabardò and many other projects and collaborations of international scope.
Elisa Pezzuto:
First of all thanks for your time and your great availability! I would like to start from your life experience in musical terms, which is very interesting, wide and full of different activities. For example, together with your note and long guitar career, you have had numerous experiences as an author and in the vocal field in the context of national and international projects; Can you talk to us about your experience and your vision with respect to the requests, difficulties and differences that there may be in a performative activity linked to these various contexts?
I was lucky enough to work in many musical contexts, crossing very different historical periods. I grew up in the 70s, but with the eye aimed at what had happened in previous years (I have been a superfan that I have memory). Teenager in the 80s and professional since the 90s.
Of water it passed under the bridges and live all these changes has certainly forged my idea of music, and, above all to make music. Being guitarist, composer and producer twenty or thirty years ago was certainly not the same thing as today. The things that were requested at the time are not exactly the same as today.
underground music (the real one, not the Indy as they call it today that it has nothing independent!) Where there was a national and international open circuit. I was able to collaborate and share experiences with artists from all over the world: there was an open and contaminated musical community.
The difficulty of the time was that ... if you did not know how to sing, if you did not know how to play and you had not a proposal that came off from everything else, you had no reason to exist or go on. Today the requests are all on the contrary: if you know how to sing very well, do not set the Autone and then "lose" that sound that today dominates and that all the successful productions are approved.
That is, better if stoni !!! If you then "do not resemble" something that already exists, you have no reason to be. Sorry for the frankness, but that's just like that. Now I do not want to draw an apocalyptic picture, also because both in my activity with Bandabardò, both as a university teacher of West-Scotland University, and as guitarist for other musicians, and as a role of frontman singer who broke out in my hands lately, I noticed that even among the youngest, if we can make them "meet" with a performance (I point out that today the big live with super tickets expensive for 80% are all in playbacks !!!), they manage to undergo the magic of the artist who uses the voice, the tool, the performance in its entirety as something superior. You can grasp the amazement and wonder that also grasps them a little unprepared.
So responding to the question, the difficulty of addressing the various contexts of instrumentality, vocality, writing and production today is precisely in knowing how to grasp the difference of making music "to the old" and knowing how to mediate it with the change of taste of the contemporary world. All this, however, without distorting what is your "message": for me the essential has always been to let out what I have to say whether I sound, songs etc. the expression of the personality has always been my ball.
Also because following fashion requires you to disappear as soon as that fashion disappears. Following your inspiration, your world view will never go out of fashion, because each of us is unique and unrepeatable, therefore not serial, therefore not "fashionable".
Recently you found yourself being called to play a new role in the Bandabardò project; This new vocal guise, in a dimension in which historically you had an instrumental expression, what reflections led you to open? What does it require in expressive, communicative and compositional terms? In the relationship with the public what do you feel that it may have changed? In your life, what leads you to research?
This new perspective opens up new scenarios that I would never have thought of facing, especially at my age, now. And this is - indeed - very stimulating. I have always sung in all the projects I participated in. But almost always as a backing vocal , where an in -depth, decisive, and above all neutral voice was required, in order to mix well with the main item. So it was with the voice of Erriquez, Gazzè, Pelù, Paola Turci and with all the countless artists with whom I had the joy of working.
But when you come "promoted" to the first voice, things change. The rumor becomes the main tool with which to identify a project, with which to communicate a text, to convey a message ... here what I said in the previous answer. The originality, the personality, the recognition of the sound of an instrument or a voice or sound itself in its entirety, is what I consider fundamental. Finding one's "voice" in this sense is not easy, but I however believe to be the focal node of making art in the true sense of the term.
The composition obviously goes accordingly. Writing for Erriquez's voice, or Dolcenera etc. requires the ability to understand the expressive potential and the personality of the artist with whom you have to interact. Writing for yourself imposes a deeper, more introspective research. Who am I? What do I want to tell my audience? What are the technical and artistic expedients that I can make use of so that the song can arouse interest using my voice? This especially if you are a curious like me, always looking for new forms of expression, of fusion between old and new trying to generate something that however still remains "yours".
In addition, writing also has to do with your maturity, with your age. As Vasco does not write more about skills and reckless lives, even for me, for my generation, to speak of civil conscience, social and political responsibility and so on, it must take on a more "appropriate" tone to experiences experienced in modern times. Blend everything together to obtain a credible, not simply nostalgic or naive or out of time item and therefore indecipherable.
How would you define the voice tool from the point of view of the musician and the composer?
It is the most important tool. As I said before, it is the vehicle that represents the "face" of the project, whether it is a band , a soloist or other. Even the most difficult to manage, in every sense. It is a delicate tool. Not every day you are always at the same standard , there are seasonal ailments, riucedine, reflux, hiccups ... thousands of losers who can undermine your live performance and in the studio. It is a delicate tool in the sense that it is the tool with multiple shades in the world. You can interpret the same syllable in an infinity of different ways.
With a tool you can have many nuances , many shades, but the voice allows you to infinite. This is a blessing on the one hand because your creativity and expressiveness reaches incredible levels, but often even too much choice creates embarrassments and, sometimes, even the danger of choosing the wrong interpretative route. Understanding how to better interpret a song is extremely demanding and difficult.
Can you tell us about the differences you perceive in the work of the vocal interpreter and in the work of the singer -songwriter?
Singing songs by other people (in the case of a cover for example) is an interesting challenge. First of all, if you have chosen to sing it is because it is a song you love. So you like what you are doing. The challenge lies all in making the interpretation of you and at the same time respecting the author's intentions. But you are exposed to the judgment evidently: the "official" version is always there ready to disassemble you. If it is an unpublished song, the challenge is less exhausting because in any case you do not have comparison stones, so you can follow your muse.
In the case of songs that you wrote, the paranoia are a thousand ... while singing it in the studio, in the song already finished, you change continuously ... EXCE that are recorded again of the parts ... try to improve it until the last ... and even when it will be published you would have to complain ... this hallucinating picture is only the result of the manic care that I put in my productions. After all, the songs are like children, therefore, how not to take care of them and follow them until we are given the possibility? Then they become adults and will live of their own life, even if you would like to continue putting mouth and interferer 😉 😉 😉
What suggestions would you feel like giving those who want to devote themselves to the work of the musician, of the interpreter today? In short, to a musical career that can be of value?
I can not help but repeat what I anticipated in the first answer. Being an artist means living bifronte: knowing and looking at the past because the great masters have everything to teach; At the same time look at the future to understand how to create something original, personal. I am a great supporter of the study: studying does not only mean growing technique, but growing one's life. If you mean something original you have to become an original person, with your own way of seeing things, and then then to tell them.
Being artists means knowing how to tell the present in a never banal and approved way. They make me laugh the texts that use the trendy , which are fashionable at this moment, it seems to me a childish attitude and laccaculo. De André also spent weeks in choosing a word. The power of the word, of its sound, of the sacred space that opens, of reflection, of emotion ... nothing is comparable. The universe seems to have been created with the sound of a word: think of the Om or the verb of the Gospel of San Giovanni.
As you say it, as you sing it, how you intone it ... we create universes, continuously. Why flatten everything with a supermarket language, as a computer , or even cancel its sound with a plug in which it is added the out of hand and takes away depth on the voice, to the word?
I always come to mind the song soul of Vasco when he sings "all those things that united us" ... there is that clash of discontent that is worth the song almost: at that moment you feel that the guts are turned to you from the beauty of imperfection. Brilliant having left that interpretation, he knows true, he knows of alive. Think of the out of tune in the Bridge of Space Oddity of Bowie. Today we would have added everything with Pro Tools ... how sad.
Now I am not completely contrary to Autotune , it can be a nice technical means to express something, but if everyone continually use it in an exaggerated way ... can you perceive the difference between an artist and another? Can you perceive how much depth, the dimensions that are lost in expressiveness, in sound? I hope that what has been said is not just the outburst of a middle -aged gentleman who (as per cliche) repeats the mantra that in his time was all better and now he sucks everything.
I would just like to invite the reflection that there are multiple plans in the art world and that relegating yourself to one only without exploring the rest is castrating and stupid (as well as taking away the true taste of life). Various studies are showing that music sculpts our brain (read the book How Music Sculpts Our Brain by Isabelle Peretz), is the only art form that creates new neuronal connections. If the stimulation is homologating, the connection is homologating, if the stimulation is multifactive, so our brain will work and organize itself brilliantly and originally.
The conclusion is that you have to work on yourself, be with open antennas, search for and love all music, from Gregorian chant to concrete music, passing through the blues, rock and pop, trap and so on. Sir Paul McCartney, at the height of his career with the Beatles, confronted himself with the Beach Boys and Rolling Stones (his coeval), but he attended Luciano Berio and Stockhausen, to open his form of expression and learn new languages. The same also did the Battiato master with whom I had the honor of working. Two examples of artists who have left an indelible mark on energy, art, fullness of message ... immortality of music.
Finding your voice (instrumental, vocal, compositional) requires effort, sacrifice and above all never surrender to the commercial spirit that from immediate satisfaction but not lasting over time, not consistency ...
You know yourself was written on the Temple of the Delphi oracle. The greatest teaching, or, at least, one of the most important. It is a titanic enterprise, but it's worth it.
Thanks again for these stimulating reflections and for having shared your deep and long performative experience so wide and heterogeneous with us.
