The singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla died ten years ago

There are many legends about him, stories, true and invented. And he himself gladly contributed to the fact that one never quite knew whether what was said about him, Lucio Dalla, was really true. But this really seems to have happened if you think about it a year ago published biography of the two music critics Gino Castaldo and Ernesto Assante believes. It was 1986, Dalla felt the need for the sea. He needed rest, space and freedom to recover from the rigors of a tour that had taken him to the United States.

With a few friends he went on a boat tour in the Gulf of Naples, there was no wind, the ship was motor-driven towards Capri when it suddenly became quiet on board: engine failure. The sails did not help in the prevailing weather. Dalla called a couple of friends in nearby Sorrento, the “Catarro”, the name of his beloved boat, had to be towed away and the repairs took a few days.

Impossible Love

At that time, the cantautore from Bologna was a big name in the Italian music business. And the people of Sorrento liked him especially because in the sixties, before his successes, he had played with his jazz band at the “Fauno”, a hip club on the coast. One of his friends was Luca Fiorentino, the owner of the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria. While Dallas’ boatmates were having fun in town, Fiorentino showed him the room where Enrico Caruso had lived for two months in 1921.

Caruso was seriously ill at the time and had to take it easy. But every evening, at sunset, he had the grand piano carried to the terrace and sang his famous arias and Neapolitan folk songs – to the delight of the fishermen, who joined in the marina below and carried the music out to sea. And as if that wasn’t enough southern romance, the moribund tenor fell in love with a young woman from the small town, whom he gave singing lessons – it was an impossible love.

Dalla listened to Fiorentino’s stories, sat down, looked at the sea – and, while the mechanics repaired his boat, wrote “Caruso”, one of his greatest successes – a song that sold millions of copies and made him known all over the world made. He has it with him Luciano Pavarotti sang and also with Pino Daniele, who embodied the sound of Naples like no other.

The fact that the song was basically incredibly cheesy didn’t matter. Dallas audiences knew that behind all the heartbreak of “Caruso” was a great ironic, a “bugiardo”, a cantautore with mischievousness and wit. For this, it loved and adored him.

When he suffered a heart attack ten years ago, on March 1, 2012, in Montreux and died unexpectedly at the age of 69, it came as a shock to his fans. The abdication in Bologna, his hometown, became an event. His great songs rang out from loudspeakers. And when the coffin was carried to the Duomo in Piazza Maggiore on March 4th, Dallas’ birthday, thousands of people who had come to honor his honor, standing close together, applauded.

Seductive power

To commemorate Lucio Dallas’ death these days appear in Italian newspapers countless articles, Fellow travelers remember, critics appreciate his work. And in Bologna on March 4th there will be one big Dalla exhibition opened, which will later also be shown in Rome, Naples and Milan.

Abroad, meanwhile, memories of Dalla are slowly fading. The genre of Italian songwriting is in a tough position today, having been celebrated throughout Europe and the world in the 1980s and early 1990s, and not fearing comparison with American popular culture.

It was a real wave, a concentrated load of Italianità, that pushed north in those years. Fabrizio De André, Edoardo Bennato, Francesco Guccini, Francesco De Gregori, Dalla and many more conveyed an attitude to life that combined lightness with social criticism and had a peculiarly seductive power. It was reinforced by the emergence of private radio stations, which gave this type of music the space it needed and made it accessible to a wide audience. The Cantautori filled the big halls in Switzerland, and for those who didn’t understand Italian, their sound at least brought back memories of long vacations in the south – at a time when people didn’t jet off to the Maldives yet.

reaction to the leaden years

What was associated north of the Alps with sun, sea, pinball machines, nocturnal escapades on souped-up scooters and big emotions had a serious background in Italy. The songs of the Cantautori were also a reaction to the leaden attitude to life that had gripped the country at the time. The terror of the Red Brigades, the assassination attempt on Aldo Moro, that on the Bologna train station, the reaction of the authorities – it was the “anni di piombo”, they found their echo in songs that told of a better life, of love and Tenderness.

Even Dalla, who was actually a rather apolitical musician and in many respects not a typical cantautore, stood in the middle of this period with his music and his lyrics. “Caro amico ti scrivo”, for example, gives a precise picture of the days when violence conditioned life, when you had to sit at home and dream of a better new year, of a year of “trasformazione”, where every day is celebrated and three times is Christmas.

When Italy remembers Dalla today, it also thinks back to those difficult years that are fortunately over. But at the same time it is aware of the many setbacks in the period that followed, and it wistfully misses the playful irony with which Dalla and many of his colleagues interpreted the passage of time. “At the end”, writes his biographer Castaldo in the «Repubblica», « he was an illusionist, a good magician with the ability to appear and disappear. But once he was gone, he left an immense void that still brings us to tears.”