In a few days Francesco Guccini will turn 80 and Ocarina doesn’t miss the opportunity to celebrate this important anniversary by listening to some of his most beautiful songs.
Full of timeless successes, the career of the great artist from Romagna began more than 40 years ago with no less than 16 albums under his belt. It is not easy at all to draw up a list of his songs, one more beautiful than the other, and undoubtedly intergenerational, so that older people, young people, but also children like them!
Among the songs that we recommend to let your children listen to there’s without doubt The Old Man and the Child/Il vecchio e il bambino and the Song of the Twelve Months/La canzone dei dodici mesi, both real poems, contained in one of his best-known albums Roots, 1972.
Sweet and with a very melodic text, The Old Man and the Child tells the story of the passage from one generation to the next one. In the 70s and 80s it was one of the favorite pieces in schools, in scouting activities and in general in many youth movements and associations. The twelve-month song instead describes the time of a year, month by month, from the point of view of those who give a meaning to the various moments of their existence.
And again, The song of the child in the wind /La canzone del bambino nel vento (Auschwitz), written by the songwriter in 1966, is a real pacifist manifesto, which all children should listen to know about the crimes of Nazism, unfortunately still very current.
Always interested in looking at reality from many points of view, Guccini has very often taken sides with young people, urging them to have critical thinking. Already starting from God is dead / Dio è morto, in 1967, the singer doesn’t share the ideas of those who consider young people as poor in ideals, dreams and courage. In contrast, this song tells of a generation “prepared for a brand new world and a new hope, for a future that they already have in their hands, for an unarmed revolt”, therefore capable of building a new and better world.
Guccini loves stories, loves to write them, loves to tell them in his songs … he sings about politics, young people, ideals, love, life stories, giving them universal meanings.
Eskimo, considered by many to be a masterpiece, an absolute piece of history, is the story of an unconventional love, between a young man who had “the revolt between his fingers” and a “girl with the paletò”. The song is contained in the album Amerigo (1978) and is set in a revolutionary climate that has already gone in 1968: the rejection of religion and the system, the discovery of drugs and sex … everything is relived with nostalgia by the adult voice of the narrator.
Even in Locomotiva, probably one of his most popular ballads, Guccini tells a true story, which has as its protagonist the anarchist machinist (stoker) Pietro Rigosi. Once again, he deals with the issue of equality, social justice and freedom.
With Locomotiva Guccini was used to conclude his beautiful concerts, and so we want to finish with it as well our tribute to this great artist.
If, like us, you nostalgically remember Guccini’s live shows, we recommend the video (here below) of one of his performances at the RSI Swiss Swiss Television in January 1982.
