An alien who went down to Earth, exactly eighty years ago. There is no other way to say what Franco Battiato was not only for Italian music, but for our entire culture. To mention it, in contact with “distant worlds” – lexical, musical, even just thought, philosophy – which for a certain period has decided to speak our language, that of the pop song, to open our eyes, tell them. Unique and only. In his work there was tension towards the top, and the other, but without that he expired in something elitist, high, perched, in short, incomprehensible. Battiato, the man in sandals and pigtail of La Voce del Master, the first Italian album, in 1982, to overcome the threshold of the million copies, said favorite listening of the Bearzot national team of that time; In short, the phenomenon of costume, the widespread dedications of La Cura (but is really good for all seasons?), The classic of the Karaoke Cuccurucuucù, a battiato who is moved, singing, dancing and in general, speaks to many, without being taken for granted. Battiato of poor homeland, other than populisms. Incredible even just to conceive.

An alien who went down among us

And instead. Instead, Battiato was there, all right. Thirty discs in the studio, all animated by a sacred fire – that is: to have something to say, Tiè – who do not make them age, nor seem superfluous. Eight live (how wonderful the concerts, the last few years was sitting on a carpet, with headphones), of which the first, jackets red, with a call in cover: “The Italian Emi is quite happy to present …”. This is also unthinkable today. Jozellettiere, it seems, extraordinary, extremely generous in collaborations, without the slightest boria, was not “the master” who is told, if anything, really an alien among men. With the awkwardness of whatsoever, the oddities and the genius (now, for example, a book just released, signed by Fabio Zuffanti, sacred symphonies. Battiato, the whole story, published by Il Castello), reconstructs him. At most, here, he was a actual master of life, one who, the answers, found them, did not keep them for himself. In philosophy, in meditation, in trespassing in classic and electronics. But without lessons, without heirs. One who, above all, suffered for those answers, who sought them.

Started from the Beat already in the 1960s, he had spent almost all the following decade in the most experimental avant -garde, with radical solutions that would have had a minimum success of the public, but which would later return more abstractly to his pop albums, those full of cultured and “strange” references that will make Italy dance – and not only – on the stories of the “Jesuit, Euclidean”. Words and mystery. Like great talents, it needs time. Then he finds an identity. The era of the white boar (1979) and Patriots (1981) will grow in the long run (there are already Nevski and Up Patriots to Arms, among the various), the owner’s voice is the masterpiece that establishes that the general test is over.

Battiato, of all

From there, many experiments inside and outside the traditional song, ranging from author music (and I come to look for you, the season of love) to the cultured one (the ocean of silence), from spirituality (the other masterpiece of Cafè de la Paix, the same praise to the invassed) in pieces that, while according to the game of radio and rankings, speak a language of their own, as I want to see you dance and the best seller disc. The ambush from 1996, where there is precisely the cure. An affection – even before a public success, however enormous – which explains its role well towards the listener: each one, here, will have a memory or an emotion linked to one of his songs. Anyone, really. And most of the time we talk about a “strange” song compared to the average.

The beauty of the genius of Battiato is that it has been approached, available, illuminating. One above all, that same nevski perspective in which philosophy takes in hand for the first time – that here it will never be an exotic tamper or a boulder, but an incredible middle ground – and sings: “And my teacher teach me how difficult it is to find the dawn inside the dusk”. It is not there, here, to explain that there is a dawn in dusk, but it was clear to look for her with him. It will be one of the first successes, he will start many things. In the end, we will close again with a sort of spiritual testament published when, it is said, it was already sick, in 2019. There, the last taboo: death. Battiato had already made peace with that, the songs remain to us. Although perhaps he is never really dead, he only returned to his planet.