Congratulations to Franco Battiato, 76 candles for the teacher

Franco Battiato

turns 76 today.

The artist's birthday comes a few weeks after the cameo with his original voice singing the closing line of "Povera Patria", the cover

chosen by Colapesce Dimartino at the Sanremo Festival: "If we still have a little to live / La meanwhile, spring is late in coming ", the master scans.

In 2020 the Segesta concert of 29 July 2004 was re-proposed on demand in which Battiato performed in the Greek Theater of Segesta, a splendid cavea with seats carved in stone, dating back to the third century BC.

Filmed by Rai International cameras with the best technologies and resolutions available in a pre-HD era, the concert remained imprinted in the collective memory as one of its most successful live performances.

The preview of his 70 years was certainly not the best: a fall on the stage of the Petruzzelli in Bari, a broken femur, three screws in the bone. 

Almost 50 years have passed since his first musical experiences in Milan, from his first recording contract obtained thanks to his great friend Giorgio Gaber who among other things, together with Caterina Caselli, (the two conducted the program "Diamoci del tu") has hosted, in 1967, its first television appearance.

Over these decades Franco Battiato has built a truly unique path on the Italian scene.

An ironic free thinker who practiced the art of provocation and who also had a short (unpaid) experience as councilor for the Sicily Region with the Crocetta junta, which lasted from November 2013 to March 2014 and ended in a stormy way to say the least.

Although he has always been far from militant attitudes, he has never hidden his sympathies for the Left and with "Povera patria" he has signed one of the most intense portraits of the degradation of our country.

Battiato is certainly one of the most famous names in Italian music, he has a long tradition with the top floors of the charts and some of his songs have now entered the history of costume, but in the 70s he produced experimental albums such as "Fetus" and " Pollution "which made Italy discover the resources of electronic music and the most advanced concepts of rock of those seasons and the contaminations with the great authors of contemporary music.

In those years it happened that the public reacted in a lively way to say the least to his performances deliberately at the limits of the unlistenable.

These experiences and this kind of approach inspired his latest album, Joe Patti's Experimental Group, which was toured in front of a much better prepared audience than it was 40 years ago.

He speaks of his great commercial success with his masterful irony and his proverbial and sophisticated sense of humor without hiding a certain embarrassment.

In reality Franco Battiato is a scholar with very broad horizons who knows how to practice the art of pop song but who, thanks to his culture with vast horizons, uses very different languages ​​and references, both in the musical field and in other forms of artistic expression, such as cinema, painting, opera.

Just as he was a forerunner of electronic music, Battiato is a lover of classical and symphonic music that in his stories seems to be practically the only music he listens to.

But the list of his collaborations goes from Claudio Baglioni to CSI, from Enzo Avitabile to Pino Daniele, from Bluvertigo to Tiziano Ferro, Celentano, Subsonica, Marta sui Tubi, not to mention the decisive role played in the careers of Alice and Giuni Russo.

It is certainly no coincidence that he continues to be a point of reference: young people see him as a model of originality and curiosity, the older ones a defender of intelligence in a world that too often forgets its importance.