Lives don’t all start out smooth. Some glide easily downhill, many others struggle uphill. Especially in the time when Salvatore Cutugno was born. It was the beginning of July 1943, two more days and the allies would land in Sicily, his father’s land, and eighteen days later Mussolini would fall, but Italy would continue to be bombed and occupied by foreigners.
The three little Cutugnos were born in the house in Fosdinovo, near Massa, where the father, a naval non-commissioned officer, was transferred. Anna will die as a child in front of him, two years younger: «I saw my sister Anna, the eldest, die before my eyes, suffocated. She was eating dumplings and one of her choked. She was 7 years old, I was 5. A few months later my brother Roberto was born, to whom I love dearly, who fell ill with meningitis and since then, as the doctor predicted, has led a troubled life. And then my other sister. Rosanna, who was the first child to have heart surgery in Italy».
It was difficult, pedaling uphill. At that time the slopes were grim and ruthless, especially for the poorest. The great Enrico Caruso was his eighteenth child, the seventeen before him had all died. Cutugno has lived a life in suspension on the saddle, like the great climbers, right from the start. Gifts has had few, from his life. If not musical talent that was a magical touch. Say what you will, but Cutugno was among the most popular Italian singers in the world. Not only for the songs he has interpreted directly, but for those he has written for the greatest French and Spanish singers, such as «Noi,gazzi di oggi» for Miguel Bosè and for the assists he has provided to his Italian colleagues: «The time goes away» and «Soli» to Adriano Celentano or «Io amo» to Fausto Leali.
Only three Italians have won the Eurovision song contest: Gigliola Cinquetti in 1964, Cutugno in 1992 and the Maneskin in 2021. Yet there has always been a prejudice about him for which Toto Cutugno suffered. He always felt like a popular singer, not a songwriter. He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and this has been, by many, considered a fault. Because, as we know, for certain aristocratic parishes if artistic expressions meet the general public it means that they are not artistic. This is how Italian comedy, Totò, spaghetti westerns, books, Mina and the early Celentano were branded, even the music of our best songwriters who, if they sold copies of their records, meant that they had betrayed the «confidentiality agreement ».
«L’Italiano», «Solo noi», «Gli amori» are beautiful songs, catchy and recognizable. Cutugno’s melodic line had its own coherence and people loved him. Those like him have struggled, more than others. They beat the most dilapidated clubs, sang in distracted squares, fought at the Festivalbar or Disco for the summer. Nothing was given to him. Everything has been conquered. And for that child standing on the pedals of life to have won Sanremo, then in Europe, to have sold that flood of records, to be known all over the world must have been a dream and a marvel. Known as an Italian proud of it. «Buongiorno Italia, with a short coffee/New socks in the top drawer/With the flag at the dry cleaners/And a seventeenth century in need of bodywork». That child scared of life one day wrote this song in which he praised “A partisan as President” and in which he spoke of Italy that struggles and hopes. What this country does, always and forever.
2023-08-23 05:40:52
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