HUMANWONDER.MAG INTERVIEW/ @yvan_js in collaboration with @inritorino
HW: Can you introduce yourself?
Y: Hi, I’m Ivan [smile]
HW: How did you approach music?
Y: I have been playing the piano since I was 5 years old. But at 13 a high school friend of mine lent me the LIVE-TONIGHT-SOLD-OUT videotape of NIRVANA. Since that day everything has changed.
HW: How important was it to find good mentors in your career?
Y: I would say fundamental [smile]. A little over a year ago I met Matteo Gabbianelli (leader of the kuTso) who later became my producer and at times also my tutor [smile]. I can say that if it wasn’t for him I would still be wandering between my delusions and my existential confusions that then poured into my work [smile]. Let’s say that thanks to him I managed to clarify myself and consequently on my music.
HW: What’s your best advice for someone who wants to do what you do?
Y: Believe it and avoid the mental blowjobs and the chatter of the people
HW: What are you obsessed with right now?
Y: Giuseppe Conte
HW: What do you think is your biggest personal or professional success so far?
Y: Live on what I love. I’ve struggled a lot and I’m still doing it. I think that’s what keeps me “alive”.
HW: How would you describe your work?
Y: Wow!
HW: How do you explain your music?
Y: My music? Like my life !! I say it in a dialect that makes the idea “tutto nu burdello” better [smile]
HW: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Y: A very important person once said to me: “Be true, be yourself. There is no “keynote”. Only you exist. You don’t have to be afraid of being yourself. You must feel the vibrations first if you want others to feel them too. “
It may seem rhetorical but in practice, it is not so obvious [smile]
HW: How did “Il Porno di Belen” and the video project come about?
Y: I think it is the sweetest and most honeyed song I’ve ever written [smile] “Say tomorrow we don’t undress anymore and that you would have done better Belen’s porn” for me is like “I love you, you are beautiful and you won’t have you ever noticed! [smile]. How was it born? I remember the chords and melody I had in mind for a while; I often hummed it at the house of the girl to whom the song is dedicated in moments of daily bullshit. A few months after our break, the text came to me quickly and I tried to use precisely those chords and that melody. Coincidentally they fit us perfectly.
It was a little more complex for the video. We had already shot another video but we were not entirely convinced. We were looking for something that expressed the deeper meaning of the song and didactically it would have been difficult even given the title of the song that was easily “misunderstood”. Then one day my director Maurizio “Izzy” Rodio, in one of our many alcoholic evenings at the Bar Celestino (Rome), said to me: “What if we make it run by people? Leaving them free to reveal what they see and “hear” in the song ?? ” So armed with all the videos that have arrived we have made a small montage and I must say that we are really excited about the success [smile]
HW: Where do you get inspiration from?
Y: I can’t answer this question clearly. [smile]
Let’s say it’s an unconscious thing. I often wake up in the middle of the night and find any piece of paper or anything that I find myself in front of and write without thinking. it is rare that I am lucid and really realize what I am writing. Very often I only later realize the meaning and motive of my texts
HW: Which musicians are you a fan of?
Y: First of all the Nirvana which was the soundtrack of my adolescence. But I listened to everything: from Tom Waits to 24 Grana, from De Gregori to Sistem of a Down. I could make an immense list. I also gladly listen to the new Italian songwriting lever. I think there are guys with great talent.
.. and then there’s Bruce Springsteen. I saw it for the first time on July 19, 2009, in Rome. I had been playing the guitar for a few years but without that concert, I would never have found a real reason and a real reason to write songs and go on stage. Springsteen has changed my life and my way of dealing with it. Thanks to him I understood that music is not salvation but it is hope. And so many dark moments in my life I got over them like this: holding a guitar, imagining and continuing to believe in a better ending.
Even in my love life: I have never been able to “send” the girl from “CUBA” to the fore .. she didn’t smear me .. but I did it in the song and somehow it became real [smile ]
HW: How did you hear about INRI?
Y: Coincidentally
“Lo sai che non è mica male CUBA??” (Cit.)
Cuba is my third single [smile]
HW: Any anticipation?
Y: A new single will be released in April .. maybe two [smile]
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5yJzZAaA0aUV6vd9xYGpkv?si=tF5QLhmXQp6W4v9zUH98fA
ph. Marco Triolo
