“Despite Scugnizza, they should make him an honorary Neapolitan.” Enzo Gragnaniello This is how he remembered his friend Ornella Vanoni, who accompanied him to Sanremo in 1999, with the song «Alberi»: «As soon as I heard that he had gone, the song came back to me. He is responsible for the dialect verses, so they are more original. “There are leaves scattered in the wind then/ beside us/ with them there are us/ beside us/ We are waiting for us to go home/ we are waiting for someone to hug us.” It’s a song about the transit of the earth, about trees rooted in the earth and their branches reaching up to the sky. He is now back home.”
Secular, Ornella doesn’t know which house will welcome her in the afterlifeacknowledge and not grant its existence. But what is certain is that CantaNapoli is his adopted home, his second language. Since 1964 where he won, partnering Domenico Modugno, at the Naples Festival with the tune «Tu si’ ‘na cosa grande»: «Mimmo is the sun, he is the Mediterranean, he is the speech of a life lived with the wind in your face. Its success is truly extraordinary“, he recalled, “even if one doubted his own language: it should have been said ‘na cosa gruossa’, not ‘big’”. To dispel doubts about its correctness, he also came second that year, paired with Nunzio Gallo, after the less popular «Ammore mio» by Mogol and Donida.
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Since then he has never stopped playing with Neapolitan melodies, preferring modern ones to classical ones: again Modugno (“Strada ‘nfosa”, “Resta cu’mme”), “Nu quarto ‘e luna” by Manlio and Oliviero, a delightful version of “A canzuncella” by Alunni del Sole, “Cu’mme” in live duet with Gragnaniello himself.
«I still remember the moment we met», continued Gragnaniello: «We were at Enzo’s house one night and Annalisa De Paola, amazing Neapolitan presenter, music friend and musician. Caterina Caselli, my record producer at the time, was also there, and with Ornella, whom I had always respected, we immediately hit it off. Apart from being a great artist, she was a passionate woman, we liked each other, so Caterina then proposed that I go to the Festival with her. We had a great time, he was crazy about Neapolitan songs and the Neapolitan dialect: he said it was poetic and sensual, but when he used it it was even more poetic and sensual. We chat a lot, he calls me to ask if I’ve moved house, if I’ve found one with a lift now that I have a little girl and it’s even more of a hassle to climb all those stairs: “As soon as you do, I’ll come and see you”, he promises. I haven’t found the house yet, now in Quartieri Spagnoli there are only B&Bs. But he’s always at my house.”
Among the Neapolitan Vanoni meetings there is one with Pino Danielewith whom he duetted with «Anima» for the cover of the album «Più di te» «2005: «It was his most suitable work for that album, and then for a tour only for jazz musicians. I did so many concert tours with only men that I really enjoyed it,” she recalls. “But there was also another song by Pino that I was crazy about, “Sulo pe’ parla’”: it excited me and lulled me every time I heard it, so that I sang it, especially when I heard him sing it, the voice of an angel: if angels exist, they must have the voice of Happy Lazarus». «Senza un motif», which she recorded with Sal Da Vinci in 2012, is also in Italian: «She also came to the Sistine in Rome and to the Smeraldo in Milan, extraordinary as a woman as well as a singer: she was and will remain a great thing. Forever”, commented the man from “Lipstick and coffee”.
She also sang “Bammenella” by Viviani (1973, on TV, “L’impresa”, a program she hosted with Walter Chiari), “Sole” (by Ambrosino and Fiorillo in “Ricetta di donna” in 1980), “Siente si” (by De Sando in “Quante storie” in 1990). «Neapolitan song is the root of Italian song», he said when the melody that was once the absolute protagonist ended up forgotten, folded in a corner, living in isolated exploitation: «It is the fault of the sadomasochism of the Italians, of the xenophilia that makes us ashamed of our national treasure, of the former Northern Leagueism. Neapolitans still sing, they sing beautiful classical melodies with their usual passion, but they also know how to write new melodies. I think not only of Gragnaniello with whom I had the pleasure of competing in Sanremo, of the legend Pino Daniele, but also of Nino D’Angelo: he is very good, he has an ancient voice and he knows how to sing today’s Napoli songs, without being ashamed of being popular, but also without being afraid to grow, to mature, to give up easy success in favor of deeper proposals. The Neapolitans kept their songs, the problem was the Italians who treated the Bovio and Di Giacomo as historic family jewels, placed in the attic to show off more modern costume jewels. This is a cultural problem, sadomasochism, I repeat.”
