Preface by Tonino Guerra
I can’t remember exactly when a friend, an Apostolic Nuncio in an African Kingdom, showed me an ancient drum that the first humans used to pray to the great sky divinities for rain for their sun scorched land.
The percussions would violenty hit the air and turn into dust and anguish before morphing into submissiveness and regret.
Having something of Adriano in one’s home is like cherishing a rare and ancient instrument.
I had just brought back from my trip in Armenia a small duduk – a shepherd’s small clarinet. I wasn’t interested in the music it was used for, but I liked its sound which sometimes was hoarse, other times limpid, so similar to the lamentations of a suffering animal.
Adriano’s melodies often have that same effect, they pull you in and entice you, while his voice has a foggy and solid tone that induces one to enjoy something bigger than the story he’s telling. The words have a warm dampness while the space dilates. And I sometimes notice silences that may seem incorrect but are so deep that they drag me along a resonating unexpected rhythm.
Once in Uzbekistan, I was walking down a path so dry it shined, over which merchants had strewn ragged sheets to offer their melons and rusty objects. As I was checking out a corroded alarm-clock mechanism, suddenly Celentano’s voice spilled out of soemwhere. I immediately went to look for where it was coming out of. I finally found myself standing beneath a grey loudspeaker that hanging from a tree. My wife and an italian friend joined me and the three of us stood there, glued to that voice.
The same thing happened on a train during a night trip from Mosow to Saint Petersburg. I was lying on the top bunk listening to Celentano’s voice and lyrics.
He was singing “Soli” (tn: “Alone”) and the narrative regarded me and my wife who was lying in the lower bunk. I looked down at her and she pulled the window curtain open. It was snowing. I must confess that Adriano’s voice helped us realize that it was great to be in that train, while it was snowing, far from everything.
I love his perfect disobedience that reminds me of a saying by a Chinese Monk who lived in the year 1000AD:
“We need to do something better than the banality of perfection”