Santamarea win the 34th edition of Musicultura

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Musicultura (Macerata) is a precious place. It is a review of popular music, a prize dedicated to new songwriting, a popular festival and a place for civil debate (La Controra). Everything revolves around the word, ideas, poetry. Recanati and the Colle del Silenzio are just a few kilometers away. Inside the neoclassical Sferisterio (1823), a semi-elliptical structure in the heart of the city initially intended for the game of ball and bracelet, there were Paola Turci, Fabio Concato, Simone Cristicchi (he won here as a debutant), Ermal Meta, Rachele Andreoli with the amazing Chorus to Chorus. And then Durdust, Mogol and the French Saints, a revelation on X Factor who won here two years ago under the name The Jab.

Eight songs for the future

Eight songs to imagine the future of Italian songwriting. But the protagonists were the eight young winners, authors of whom we still know little: AMarti da Ferrara (with the song Pietra); Ilaria Argiolas from Rome (I would like to heal myself); Cecilia da Pisa (Tears of lead to hold with the hands); The lover from Schio (The top floor); Simone Matteuzzi from Milan (hypersensitive); Santamarea from Palermo (Santamarea); Cristiana Verardo from Lecce (I finished the songs); Zic from Florence (Amazing Future). Overall winners (20,000 euros, in addition to the Critics’ Prize and that for Best Text) for the four brothers of Santamarea, with a composition of extraordinary poetic and stylistic maturity, dressed in Brit-pop sounds and melodies from the golden age of italian song. The Imaie Prize (10,000 euros for his own tour) goes to Lamante, with a piece that is more indecipherable and Dadaist at first listening.

Literature, the fuel of the creative engine

Enzo Nannipieri, during the press conference, made an artistic assessment of these thirty-four years: “we don’t receive songs even remotely comparable to the canons of the works of De André, Tenco, Paoli. But what good do we have today? An evolution towards free contamination, the vocation to experiment and the passion that moves these young people”. The new generation has seen and heard (almost) everything, even surviving sterile fashions such as trap (which unfortunately also passed through here) and regaining awareness of the importance of musical research. In this sense, technology is a weapon with two blades and no handle: on the one hand it accelerates creative processes, opening up to infinite possibilities and revolutions, on the other it does everything by itself. The fact that no one writes texts similar to those of Battiato or De Gregori is a loss for our culture, not only for music. Depends on what? I suppose essentially from a phenomenon: to write music it’s not enough to experience disruptive emotions and observe reality (two necessary things), but you have to stop and read.

For anyone who writes songs (from Dylan on), literature is the fuel of the creative engine. The mistake of 20s pop of the new century and of trap was confusing emotions with creativity, existential revenge with social protest (which guided the rap of the origins), storytelling with literature.