An off-beat sound

Locations, trends, a desire for a middle-of-the-road way of life. But then Springsteen and Cage as well, struggling between a deep sense of pain and anguish and musical genius. A brief encounter with Mario Luzzatto Fegiz to discuss the essential elements that have gone into the making of the sound of our times.

More or less four minutes to tell a story: do you reckon there’s enough time?
Positively yes. Communication is generally the power to compress a message in a nutshell. I always say a five-minute interview to run a feature, ten for an essay, fifteen for a book is all the time a professional journalist really needs. Clear ideas make for brevity. But the question talks about “telling a story”. It’s a different matter when it’s an issue that’s at stake. Dumbing down and brevity can in this case be detrimental to clarity. There are some topics that just won’t take digesting down to the study-aid format. Streamlining “The Critique of Pure Reason” or Beethoven’s Ninth would be a foolish task.

Who do you reckon are the modern music icons of the last couple of decades?
Twenty years is far too narrow a time span to reckon with. The nineties stand out as a veritable sound vacuum and the eighties
witnessed the last distant echoes of what had been. Sound- and visual- wise the most innovative performers have without a doubt
been the Minneapolis genius Prince and Madonna. Top-of-the-rock is Bruce Springsteen, whose lyrics are also memorable. Whether in the
acoustic or band version this songster supreme expresses all the distress and anguish of modern-day man. The most original practitioners of instrumental music have without a doubt been Andreaa Wollenweider and Ruiichi Sakamoto.
After Webber and Rice’s spectacular productions the only memorable musical has been Notre Dame De Paris by Luc Palamondon and Riccardo Cocciante. In Italy Roberto Cacciapaglia deserves a mention for his theme songs and commercial jingles, as well for his original adaptations. His revised version of the Italian National Anthem has in fact been adopted by the Italian Public Television Network, R.A.I.. But all these artists are renowned in their field; the overall music scene as such is lack lustre. It’s a far cry from the times of the all-pervading genius of artists the likes of Cage or Bernstein.

Are there any physical locations or spiritual milieus today, such as in the case of Seattle for Nirvana, offering a hotbed for a new musical revolution?
According to the renowned professor Emilio Tadini creativity arises wherever genius meets a significant social body undergoing change. In other words, Tadini reckoned that it was not by chance that the great breakthroughs of Ancient Greece occurred in the vibrant milieu of Pericle’s Athens rather than in some remote village of Tessalia, just as was later to occur in the seventeenth century Rome of the Popes. I don’t believe there are currently any more places around like those of Seattle that gave birth to Nirvana. Increasingly comfortable and well appointed homes and improved long-distance communications have sounded the death knell of physical locations conducive to the creative spirit, venues like the famous coffee shops that were once in Milan where people like Buzzati or Afeltra used to congregate. They could be found patronising these places already early in the morning after being thrown out by fretful land-ladies in a hurry to air and do up their rented rooms. Physical aggregations of this sort can still only be found at universities, institutions though that tend to favour the sciences rather the arts.

What do you reckon are the prevailing trends in the current musical melting-pot?
The same as yesterday: emotions filtered through technology and culture. A prime example of this is the recent compilation recorded by Armani. There’s room in it for Muti and the Scala Orchestra, Nino Rota and Bernstein, as well as for the highly hermetic folk sounds of the tarantella with a touch of tecno. As a matter of fact the culture consumer market is so fractionalised that the chances of an artist or product achieving universal appeal and becoming a general reference are remote indeed. The prevailing trend is to make the most out of what’s already there. What’s new tends to be fleeting and/or sectorial.

Pop music was a cultural leap forward, standing for an age of profound renewal. What’s left of all that today?
Pop music, that is Popular Music, is essentially melodic and it’s still the underlying base that accompanies us through the day, the veritable musical score of our times. Rock’s continued viability depends largely on what other genres it manages to absorb as it goes along. Pop on the other hand has a life of its own; it lives thanks to its intrinsic vitality, to the talents of those who compose and perform it. Not surprisingly groups who have been out of the scene for some time now, such as the Abba and the Bee Gees, are still selling strong. Pop is the just the right sound for music lovers who don’t know anything about music. It’s communication direct, non verbal. It’s the hardcore of the music biz.

What to you feel are the aspects of our society, if any, that fail to get any coverage through music?
Whatever constitutes everyday routine, probably. What doesn’t make the evening news or morning headlines.

It wasn’t so long ago that a song could be the symbol of an entire generation. Nowadays if it lasts three weeks in the charts it’s enough to call it a hit. Is it because “the times they are a changing” faster than before or has there been a fall in musical standards?
I’ve already answered that question when we talked about creativity and the culture consumer market being fractionalised. Mind you, there’s still music that appeals to masses of people. But there’s no more music that people will identify with as such en masse. Some critics reckon that it depends on the lack of talent scouting, enterprise and risk taking by the majors. I wouldn’t be so sure about that, though. The problem could be more on the fruition rather than on the creativity side. A bit like the hole in the ozone layer; pin pointing a cause isn’t all that easy.

Pop is the just the right sound for music lovers who don’t know anything about music.