Life, children, the new album, dubbing: Mario Biondi tells his story
For Mario Biondi everything starts from the voice. Not only as a musical instrument, but as a force capable of entering people’s lives, changing their moods, accompanying their most intense moments. It is no coincidence that his vocal chords are today at the center of two different but complementary experiences: the new album Proof of the author, and the dubbing in Gus Van Sant’s latest film, Blackmail. «I lent my voice to Fred Temple, a radio speaker who mediates with a man from Indianapolis who in 1977 takes the son of the president of a loan company hostage».
The film tells a true story, that of a deejay who tries to save a life by relying solely on the power of the word transmitted via radio” says Biondi.
It is a theme that he knows well: over the years his deep voice has become one of the most recognizable timbres of Italian music, but also an instrument capable of creating a direct relationship with the listener. «Many people tell me that one of my songs or my voice has changed something in their life. I have been the soundtrack of great loves, births and embraces…”.
His look at today’s music is anything but nostalgic. Biondi observes the change in the music industry with clarity, without indulging in generational lament. «Historically, music was born in environments of great culture, study and preparation, then little by little it became commercial, increasingly commercial. In this time, technology and digital platforms have transformed the way we write, produce and distribute songs. Record companies have noticed that this new simplified musical language works and they are riding it. It’s a pure question of the market: if the public likes something it’s normal for it to be pushed”, he explains.
Music for Blonde it began long before the success, in the squares and small stages of the 1980s. A tough but educational apprenticeship. «I sang in the Sicilian squares as a kid», he remembers. «At the time the situation under the stage was not easy. Sometimes they even threw coins at you or treated you like a human jukebox: “I don’t like this one because you don’t sing instead…”. Experiences which, however, quickly teach us to understand if that is really the path to take. “When you move on from those situations, nothing stresses you anymore.”
His father, a singer, was fundamental in his education. figure that Biondi remembers as a true school of life. «With him I understood what success and failure mean», he says. «We experienced moments in which we were well and others in which we were looking for the hundred lire under the carpet of the car to put together the money to buy bread». A memory that is not told as a trauma, but as a teaching. «I don’t think it’s a bad thing to come from difficult times. Indeed, it teaches you the value of things. Once, a guy, running towards the stage to ask me for a song, bent the lectern in front of me. I got angry. He contemptuously shouted in my face “look, I’ll buy you ten”. I sent him to hell and told him to start running… That was my father’s lectern and it had an inestimable sentimental value. These are the values that I try to pass on to my children.” Which are ten, had by four companions. «The eldest works in a law firm in Parma, the second, Zoe, is doing a world tour with Eros Ramazzotti, as a backing vocalist. The third, twenty-five years old, has been on tour for five years, always as a chorister, with the supreme maestro Renato Zero. The 18-year-old deals with rap and trap productions. Everyone has studied and studies music: piano, guitar, voice. Music is good for you regardless of having a career.”
His career, which has lasted for twenty years, began with the success of an English song, This is what you are, and now after concerts in fifty countries, he starts again with an album of unreleased songs in Italian (the single, Cielo stellato, will become another classic in his discography) released on April 10th, with the participation, among others, of Dodi Battaglia dei Pooh, Roy Paci and Fabrizio Bosso. «I tied up the threads of memory and emptied the drawers by fishing out passages that in some cases date back to twenty-seven years ago» he reveals.
Twenty years of records, stages and meetings: «There is no one as frank, sincere and direct as Renato (Zero; ed.). Once while we were joking, he told me: “A’ Nì, you mustn’t do too many duets because with that voice you are like the ace of clubs… And whoever sings with you risks big…””
At the center of his entire musical trajectory there has always been the relationship between the artist and the stage. For Biondi there is no distance between the private and the public person. “I don’t want to be an actor,” he says simply. «I try to bring the reality of the facts, the real character, to the stage. I want to be myself, with my strengths and weaknesses. When this happens, a different confidence is created with the public. Because you’re not playing a role: you’re simply sharing who you are.”
