There's a buzz backstage at the Kaufleuten on Sunday 5 December: a few minutes before Marco Masini's concert, some changes to the setlist are still being discussed with the band, and then Marco glances at his phone and cheers: “Guys, we've won the Zecchino d'Oro!” And it's true: the song “Superbabbo”, winner of the 64th edition of Italy's most famous and longest-running singing competition for children, was written by him for nine-year-old Zoe.
We immediately go back to the preparations for the show, because the Kaufleuten is full of fans waiting for him. Even so, we manage to draw a few reflections from him:
Marco, I know you have a recording studio at home: did you manage to compose and get through the pandemic by making the most of your equipment?
“I made the most of this bad time, more to compose than to experiment. I moved on to a more technical kind of experimentation, learning and exploiting all the potential of my equipment: plug-ins, audio software, recording techniques. It was harder to write stories, because the words you set to music have to spring from a life that has been lived. And during the lockdown there was really little that was exciting to tell, apart from moving from the bedroom to the sofa and the garden. I needed stories that were lived by me or by others in order to compose.”
Tonight you're bringing 30 years of career with you. What would you change, after so many years, in this line: “Se mi guardo nello specchio, con il tempo che è passato, sono solo un po' più ricco, più cattivo, più invecchiato”?
“No, you never change songs. They belong to that period; I would write others, but keeping the words of that moment, which remind me of a particular situation. It was a special time when I was just starting out and when there was also criticism of the way I expressed myself.”
In fact, the label of the “good national-popular singer” didn't suit you…
“I had responded with a more generational message, not only in my own name but speaking about a certain context also on behalf of many young people who, like me, had dreams, and with direct words.”
Under the posts of your videos, especially about the latest song presented at Sanremo, “Il confronto”, there are many comments in which your fans write that “Masini is a poet, but for a few”: yet, after 30 years, you don't fill theatres with only a few people. It means that your words, your poetry or your protests have really reached many, with great success.
“In reality, we write, and there are those who follow us and stick with us, and those who do so less. In life there are many changes, also in the way of singing, of expressing oneself, and in the audience that listens and perceives. A very beautiful thing I've seen is that the people who have followed me for many years teach my songs to their children, and that honours me greatly; it's a very beautiful gesture that spurs me on, after so many years, to adapt the language and to reach the new generations too.”
Speaking of young people, again in Disperato, you wrote: “quando ho smesso di studiare e di campare di illusioni sono stato il dispiacere di parenti e genitori”. Today the music world is “disposable” for young people. What would you advise the new generation?
“Well, look, there are a thousand other paths in the world of work today, some jobs have even disappeared. I'm a man born in '64 and it's hard for me to advise a young person anything, other than to follow their passions, to fall in love, to always fall in love with something and pursue it until death: that's the real engine for success.”
Marco Masini slips away to his audience and, a minute later, the roar of applause is all for him and for the songs that, over 30 years of career, have moved the Zurich fans too.
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