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On the Italian independent music scene, there’s biggest name, and knew of Giordano Sangiorgi. Patron of Mei, which this year starts with a new course after twenty years of success, Sangiorgi is also spokesperson of the Network of Festival, President of AudioCoop and co-founder of the Artists Italian, to name only some of the many things under his care. No one better than he, therefore, can draw a comprehensive and detailed budget on the independent Italian music, on the difficulties in a period of severe crisis and especially on what can and is already doing to stand up.
What is moment for independent music in Italy?
We are preparing the # nuovoMEI2015 to be held in Faenza from 1 to 4 October and opens the new path of the independent scene and emerging Italian after have closed this year, with a big feast to Pelanda of Rome, the cycle of 20 years of historical Mei was born in the mid-nineties, and that broke the monopoly of the majors on the market. With the # nuovoMEI2015 want to follow suit and break the monopoly of the talent show and platforms multinational approved. The economic crisis, technological innovation, the changing tastes and consumption in the digital age has changed the relationship of the new music is original, innovative, unusual and creative, our country with music lovers and the younger generation. If a time instead of the historical figures of Italian pop booze just behind the new guru of the independent rock flag and stood in line for a new album by a new artist, while today the line so to the latest model of iPhone, is Clearly, times have changed. Today one of the stars, as well as new talents coming from the web, are certainly the rapper, with a wave phenomenon that goes from pure entertainment to the artist capable of interpreting the protest of the younger DJs, new musicians still in demand and acclaimed, a strong wave of songwriters and singers, often reflected on itself as regards texts, but which starts a new artistic path, also for economic reasons, often leaving aside for a period common projects with his own band, and in addition to traditional comical, actually declining after depopulated second model uses throw-away Zelig for a decade, the new rock star chefs. Before all this, the new emerging independent scene and must be able to find again its space of visibility in a country that, as for all when there is a crisis, in a hurry and no time to listen to music innovative, but most tend to look for tracks reassuring and historians, hence the television success of the Sanremo Festival eighties style of Carlo Conti. It will not be easy, but it is a challenge that must be addressed. After the challenge of twenty years ago, he won in all respects from bands that were facing for the first time Mei’s time, as Subsonica, Baustelle, Caparezza, Piotta, Negramaro and many others, arrived among the pillars of the new music of our country, now it’s up to the new generation of Luminal, Nadar Only, Levante, Zibba, Kutso, Erica Mou, to name a few, take their rightful place in the new Italian scene. Of course it will be easier if the older generations will mark up and leave space in the media to these new artists.
In the age of the talent show that engulf everything else, the media space there for independents?
Paradoxically less than thirty years ago, less than twenty years ago, and less than ten years ago. The talent, a great idea of the majors (by the way I appeal to the RAI and the private TV because for the production of musical projects of the winners of the talent we can make a public announcement would draw together even the indies and not only national in order to open up the market and do not let these products only in the hands of majors), they have changed the musical taste of the public (which at the beginning did not like at all the talent, we think that first appeared on the scene of Italy 1, the Popstar who graduated the Lollipop, now completely forgotten), and also damaged the perception of music. Just consider the discrimination which for years have suffered the band: a joke that I like ricrodare is to my mother asked me recently: “Sorry, but you saw what do you do now that the complexes are gone?”.
So the majors have been able to do scouting without spending a euro doing rather invest the tv on new talent and being the only star ready to be launched on the market at no cost to switch immediately to another talent that launches a new winner , going from one artist to another as in an assembly line of pop without attention to the careers of individual artists but able to make sales. Think of Flight, in that sense. The taste is so changed in the general public, less and less attentive to the new. It would, as we say for years, a national program that tales of the millions of young people in a year flock to the concerts at summer festivals and in clubs Winter to tell a generation that huge televised did not leave a trace. Paradoxically, if you wanted to do a television history of 20 years of independent Italian scene, fundamental to our musical culture of our country, not in Rai would be virtually nothing if you eslcude the May Day Concert, and would find life, death and miracles each participant of the Island of the Famous: it seems clear the drift of this television the past two decades due to the belly of the country, to its lowest instincts and has attempted to convey a model that was easier to be successful if you were not able to do anything instead of being innovative and creative. It needs a program with the utmost urgency that every day what stories make the younger generation of music and stories with a narrative new their commitment to build a new cultural scene.
By now the music goes especially for the web: between YouTube and streaming services, it can do the Internet to help the independent scene?
The network has done a lot: he broke the filters and the new music came right into our homes through the pc. But as has happened with the radio and television free of the mid-seventies, after an initial phase of total freedom today the network is in the hands of a few owners and global corporations that are the good and the bad weather but especially they do not pay because they have to the copyright to those who create the work and do not pay what they owe to the artists to stream their songs exploiting them to the fullest. This needs with the utmost urgency an antitrust law that splits these giants and open the market to new entrants, the competition also serves to open up these platforms from Eastern and Asian countries, need a European search engine that identifies and European platforms and jointly promote the domestic and Made in Italy. We offer a platform for ten years online audience / Flying tried calling that brings together the digital archive of the history of Italian music of the Disco of State with the news of our national scene would be one of the most visited music sites in the world and those seeking ‘ O Sole Mio also find the latest work delTeatro of Horrors with great benefit to our promotion of new Italian music abroad.
How is the relationship between MEI and public institutions? There is collaboration? What works and what does not work in the approach of the institutions in your world?
The relationship of music with the institutions suffers from a past that has always seen music as a commercial element, different from the film and from theater, which was enough to give space on Rai (Sanremo, Disco for Summer and so on) to sell their product as they sell soap. A mentality of some discography still present of the seventies and eighties that did considerable damage. When in the seventies a group of record companies offered to do in Italy a law on Music, the same proposal was rejected by these record saying that the music was a product to sell and had nothing to do with culture: a wrong approach that we pay today.
Fortunately, things are changing: the Ministry of Culture has allocated a special fund for jazz, triggered the tax credit for the debut record and renewed Fus opening doors to events as the MEI; a region of Puglia has invested in funds for culture valuing creativity and musical innovation, an example that all regions should follow, because you can create jobs they are essentially linked to tourism, gastronomy, the city Art and the other our excellence in the area. The Emilia-Romagna, which is the area where I work, has a musical capital to that effect and I know that the commitment of the President of the region Stefano Bonaccini want to go in this direction in 2016, naturally without creating excessive pockets of hyper production assisted . For the rest, I believe that today in the relationship with the institutions serve a large unit of the music industry, which we have always advocated, but unfortunately we have seen recently built in Italy, is as full of grandstanding.
Last year there was talk of a closure of a cycle of MEI. What it was due to the risk? What motivated you, then, to move forward?
The cycle of 20 years of MEI it closed. We set out with a book and a hashtag that says it all this year. It needs a renewal that I consider essential, in fact today at # nuovoMEI2015 are working two groups under 30, national and local, that will open doors to new independent today, while the other side was also a warning to institutions national would take to heart because the only reference point – in terms of comparison and stimulus – an entire scene that brings together 30 thousand admissions in three days, with people coming from all over Italy.
Images have in front of a guy who wants to live music. What would be the first piece of advice to follow?
It ‘simple: follow the musical path only if you have a passion, combined with great humility and self-sacrifice, and at the same time if you feel a strong urge to have something new to say and want to stay up to date with the mind and heart. That’s it.
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