2023-10-20 18:49:19
(by correspondent Enzo Bonaiuto) – “Why so much violence against women, even today? Because we are undernourished from a cultural point of view and culture is as essential a nourishment as food: it gives us a perspective, a vision”. This is the accusation made by Carmen Consoli, interviewed by time.news, in Sanremo to receive the ‘Tenco Award’ for her career this evening on the stage of the Ariston theatre, commenting on the statistics that speak of a femicide every three days in Italy.
“Without cultural nourishment, even an artistic photo with a naked woman would simply appear like a piece of meat to be roasted; and by taking this imaginary discourse to extreme excess, we would even develop cannibalism…”, explains the ‘singer’.
Therefore, underlines Carmen Consoli, “the only cure against violence against women, against feminicides, is culture: we need to strengthen and invest in culture in our country. Culture needs time, it is not as fast as a click on social media , we should return to symposiums, to long studies, rather than shortening school courses”.
In Italian pop music, many good and famous performers, very few singer-songwriters: why this gap? “Probably, the holding back is the idea that women must carry out a more ‘aesthetic’ task such as that of an interpreter, which is also beautiful and very difficult; the author has something inside and what she brings out can then be even more valorised by an interpreter, just think of Mina. The ‘thought’ expressed by a woman is, in general and not only in music, a topic that in Italy still remains under discussion”, replies Carmen Consoli.
“However, there are many singer-songwriters, perhaps not all of them famous”, observes the ‘singer’ as the Sicilian singer-songwriter is defined in the world of Italian pop music. But then, what allowed Carmen Consoli to be both a singer-songwriter and famous at the same time? “I think I was very lucky. And then, I come from a city like Catania, in the deep South, volcanic and at the same time very modern, with a great literary and theatrical tradition, which, not surprisingly, gave birth to music to Franco Battiato, but also broadening the discussion to Pippo Baudo or Fiorello, all sharing the desire to dig deep and turn things around”.
Carmen Consoli explains: “There is a sort of ‘genetic philosophy’ that helped me and then, as mentioned, also a lot of luck: who should have told someone born on the slopes of Etna to get as far as the Tenco Prize!”, he exclaims in the sonority of his Sicilian accent. “My dad would be really, really proud of me, he would look me in his eyes and tell me ‘we did it!’ In reality, I’m still in disbelief… Evidently, I’ve done something and equally evidently the public believes in me more than I believe in myself.”
Today, for Carmen Consoli, “the ‘chewing’ is missing: you taste an arancino, you don’t swallow it! And that’s life.” It is the image that, as a true Sicilian, Carmen Consoli gives. “In this sense – explains the ‘singer’ as she is defined in the world of Italian author music – the legendary slowness of us Sicilians is not an attitude or laziness, a desire to be late to take it easy, but it is the desire to enjoy life in all its moments.”
She will present herself to the audience with only the acoustic guitar: “I like to present myself ‘naked’ to the public of the Tenco Prize, artistically naked I mean… also because I don’t think that if I stripped I would sell more copies of my records” she explains with an ironic reference to certain album covers. As for the near future, “I would like to graduate in Architecture and Design, music, as Schopenhauer said, is liquid architecture…”.
#Violence #women #culturally #malnourished