His songs continue to give voice to the feelings and memories of multiple generations
There are songs that bring to mind a summer, a person, a stretch of road. Those of Jovanotti have accompanied different moments in the lives of millions of Italians: the holidays, the travels, the loves, but also the days when you needed simple words to say something difficult. Today Lorenzo Cherubini turns sixty, and perhaps the most natural way to think about his music is to start from here: from the memories that everyone has left there.
At the beginning there was a boy behind a consolewith the pleasure of choosing a record and starting the next. In 1987 he recorded Walkinghis first single; the following year, with Jovanotti for President And Gimme Fivethat voice reaches everywhere. He spoke almost as much as he sang, he played with words and seemed to address his listeners directly. It had the urgency and some edges of youth.
Then life entered the songs with more space. Lucky guy, I think positive, Rap serenade: titles that belong to different seasons and that many can recognize from the first notes. Jovanotti continued to write about love and desire, about what unites people and what challenges them. He did this by preserving a language close to speech, capable of moving from a common phrase to an unexpected image. Sometimes the words chase each other, sometimes they stop on a thought that seems to be said to someone in particular.
Live, that way of communicating becomes presence. Jovanotti crosses the stage, speaks, dances, listens to the crowd’s response. You can still hear the disc jockey who knows the value of a pause before the beat starts again. Even in the biggest concerts he seeks contact with people: a song sung together, a look towards the audience, the time left for a voice to reach the end. It is a generous energy, which has changed shape over the years without running out.
Sixty years allow us to look back, but do not force us to draw conclusions. In Jovanotti’s history there are records and concerts; for those who listen to it, there are also the lives that have changed in the meantime. Maybe this is what happens when an artist stays long enough in the days of many: some of his songs end up preserving a piece of everyone’s history.
