“My name is Jovanotti and I throw parties.” That’s more or less what he said, seriously. And in fact you listen to him talk about various projects that move ideas and aspirations, musicians, trucks (“sustainable”), trains (“up to 75% discount on my concerts”), thousands of spectators, about to travel many kilometers around the world, in Europe, finally in Italy and – in essence – these are the remains of the anarchist bearded dreamer: everything that Jovanotti has in mind for the end of 2025 and the coming year 2026 is a great solo party. So it’s not an exaggeration to approach the John Ford joke that produced a masterpiece in cinema and then throw in the important line: “My name is John Ford and I make westerns.” Lorenzo actually had a wide-brimmed cowboy hat on when he entered the Comet Theater “restored by my friend Maria Grazia Chiuri” (fashion designer and former creative director of Fendi and Dior) to announce a series of surprises.
The first: on November 20, out of the blue, a record called Niuiorcherubini (Island Records) was released, “a record born in just one week in New York last October, escaping a period of quiet despair over what was happening in the world and for which I felt I could do nothing but give a few likes on social media. I rented a studio in Brooklyn, I looked for musicians from this city full of talent on Instagram and I started doing jam sessions with them. I had the idea of recording a salsa version of the song i Senza se e senza but, then I liked it, after three days of fun and writing, I realized that I had a record of thirteen songs, played on analogue recording and live, in the spirit of pure 70s funk and soul I called it that, Niuiorcherubini, thinking of Dalla’s Dallamericaruso What interests me today is the freedom in the too fast record market: a song reaches number one and a moment later it is gone”.
The second surprise: the live project L’Arca di Lorè which, after the PalaJova Tour with a total of 600 thousand viewers, saw Jovanotti board a symbolic boat made of enthusiasm, just as the biblical boat was made of wood. “The ark is an image – he explained – that prompted me to think about what to take with me into the future, what to keep and what to let go. When this journey ends, I will be just days away from turning 60.” The ports the ship will stop at range from Australia to Congo, “maybe even to Niger”, then to Europe between Pula, Munich, Vienna, Barcelona, Montreaux with its Jazz Festival, Lichtenstein. “They would be, Jovanotti explained, all places where I was unknown, just a guy who wanted to make music with his band and hoped to do well.” Third surprise? A special chapter of the all-Italian L’Arca di Lorè, namely the Jova Summer Party 2026, the faithful but different son of the Jova Beach Party which will be dedicated in August exclusively to Southern Italy and which will end the navigation after stops in Sardinia, Abruzzo, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily and Campania – in Rome on September 12, at the Circus Maximus “because – says Lorenzo – in Rome I was born, lived until I was 19 and started working as an announcer in clubs like Veleno. But birthdays have nothing to do with it, in fact it’s never been celebrated before and I’m not going to keep a photo of Mick Jagger in front of me to grow old like him.” Lorenzo instead spoke frankly about the fact that Summer Party is not called Beach Party number 3: “We always do our live shows on the beach with great attention to the environment, PalaJova achieved a 102% reduction in transport emissions, but we live in an era where the news is more important than the facts: there have been violent attacks, we have received sixteen complaints and not a single one has passed the first inspection. Many use Jova Beach to give themselves visibility. So we chose a comfortable and spacious venue inland. I have never toured in the South simply because there are no venues The indoor space there can accommodate at least 50 thousand spectators.” The final card to close out the poker was a truly curious one: Jovanotti, escorted by friends and collaborators, would travel from stage to stage of a tour of the South on a bicycle, the beloved bicycle that caused him a dramatic injury that saw him undergo two operations and months of difficult rehabilitation. “I call it Jovagiro’s thoughts on the Cantagiro of the 60s, I want to promote bicycle tourism, provincial roads and small towns where we will meet so much of humanity. Gianni Morandi told me about the Cantagiro, with artists moving around in convertibles, we will move in an environmentally friendly way”.
Before leaving for the 2026 globetrotter, Jovanotti admitted: “I will watch the Sanremo Festival like every year, but I definitely won’t go. For last year’s event with the Rockin 1000 we worked for three months. What if I took part in the competition? Only when Fiorello returned to direct it, but because I knew he wouldn’t do it again, I cheated”.
