«And in this greed, and in this demonstrating. I like you a lot.” With these few simple words, the twenty-six-year-old singer-songwriter Adam Sayf Viacava, aka Sayf, managed to say much more than most of the artists competing at the 76th Sanremo Festival. The message that runs through his song is in fact as linear as it is, in this historical moment, revolutionary. The song by the Ligurian rapper moves on a subtle balance between social criticism and declaration of love for Italy. An Italy which, having a Tunisian mother, is plausible to have looked at him with suspicion or made him feel different on more than one occasion. Yet in his words there is neither anger nor resentment. Rather, one perceives affection, a sense of belonging and the desire to improve the country in which he grew up, without denying its contradictions and limits.

Singing with a smile

In a climate of growing political polarization, especially among young people who experience public debate mainly online, his message then takes on a significant social value. Not only because the person launching it is a 26-year-old boy, belonging to the so-called Generation Z and also “second generation Italian” (an expression that I don’t like, but which I use here for narrative convenience), but above all for the attitude shown on stage. Sayf sings with a smile, has fun, shows that he loves what he does and is surprisingly at ease in a context full of expectations and pressures. He plays with his role as a semi-unknown to the general public and transforms it into a stylistic signature, as demonstrated by the t-shirt worn in the days preceding the event, with the self-deprecating writing: “Who the fuck is Sayf?”. Furthermore, his is not a “paracula” choice, as they say.

He does not shy away from social criticism

He doesn’t avoid social criticism for fear of being divisive, limiting himself to the usual rhetorical love song, but at the same time he doesn’t force controversy to gain visibility, as others have done in the past in Sanremo. His is a light text only in appearance, crossed by references that reveal cultural awareness, such as the indirect quote to Berlusconi (“And as an entrepreneur said: Italy is the country I love”) and that to Tenco (“In this internship phase, Tenco died near here”).

References that demonstrate, even to the most prejudiced observers towards rap, how this genre can be busy when it chooses to be. Sayf has therefore managed to do what Lucio Corsi did in the last edition: surprise with delicacy. He expressed his talent as a young singer-songwriter, a talent that deserves to be valued by the jury and the public, because writing the lyrics that are performed is not a secondary detail. In fact, there is an abyss between a mere performer who brings other people’s words on stage and someone who takes direct responsibility for what he says, and not just how he says it.

The “song”

Thanks therefore to Sayf for having delicately given us important reflections that can be shared or not, but which maintain a spirit of healthy change in a context of rampant defeatism. «I made a little song, I hope it doesn’t scare you. May we all start again little by little”, he concludes before the final chorus. It is a simple invitation, almost disarming in its essentiality. It’s up to us to collect it.