14 years without Lucio Dalla, the singer-songwriter who knew how to look far away (and protected the sea)

Lucio Dalla, born in Bologna on 4 March 1943, has never been one thing: an attentive and scrupulous observer, with a curious and lucid gaze, he has experimented with multiple genres, from beat to songwriting, until arriving at pop; at first he was only a composer, then also a lyricist. Dalla was a far-sighted artist, capable of photographing reality and turning it into a poetic and overwhelming story. A story that, after many years, is still relevant, moving and interesting.

Talking about songwriting in Italy means talking about one of the most important, and certainly most valid, pillars on which the extraordinary success of our music in the world is based. From Modugno to Gino Paoli, from Lauzi to Gaber, from Tenco to Dalla, our songwriters have been able to talk about our country and more often about their most intimate feelings, they have denounced the system through satire and a biting irony and have talked about love with disenchantment and transport, thanks to a language, ours, capable of creating images rich in nuances and dense. Lucio’s artistic personality has been able to span many decades without ever being compromised. Indeed, she has carved out a space for herself within the Italian songwriting scene, which is hers alone and will belong to her forever. Ironic, romantic, light-hearted, amused, nostalgic, Dalla recounted all the nuances of the human soul with his profound and witty pen.

It’s easy to write good songs. It is a little less easy, however, to write timeless, layered songs, capable of revealing profound meanings with each listen and after decades. Intimate pieces, which have the power to be universal, to be born in the intimacy of a room and become the truth of millions of people. No song by Lucio Dalla will fade away, but each one will capture the attention of many generations to come. After all, he said it too in Caruso: “But yes, it’s life that ends, but he didn’t think about it that much. Indeed, he already felt happy and began his singing again“.

Not just music

An extraordinary artist, yes, but Lucio Dalla was also and above all an attentive, scrupulous man, with a clear view of the present and the environmental problems of our era. He fought on the front line against drilling in the Adriatic Sea. During a demonstration held in Termoli, against the drilling off the coast of the Tremiti Islands by Petrolceltic Italia, he personally joined the other demonstrators and shouted his dissent with them. Here are his words on that occasion:

Dear friends and dear fellow citizens, I am not here as a singer but as a citizen of the sea so that this opprobrium and this stupidity do not threaten our survival. We need to start thinking differently. Woe to us if we lose awareness of our culture. When I wrote How deep is the seaI would never have thought that, 32 years later, I would find myself here faced with such a situation, among the drills

On 30 June 2011, a few months before his death, he was artistic director of the festival The sea and the starsnear the island of San Domino. On that occasion, he performed for free together with artists, including Renato Zero and Francesco De Gregori, to keep attention high on one of the areas of our peninsula most in need of protection from black gold jackals.