Gipo Farassino: Al Mè Piemont

Matilde Pellissero, Pitò e Cincillà, Sangon Blues, Avere un amico
A tribute to Piedmontese music with a medley by the most famous Turin singer-songwriter of the second half of the last century. A medley that fills a gap in the band repertoire dedicated to Piedmont.
Gipo Farassino (Turin, 11 March 1934 - Turin, 11 December 2013) was a singer-songwriter of some note on the Italian scene, but it is with songs in Piedmontese dialect that he gave his best. Born and raised in the suburbs, in the working-class neighbourhood of 'Barriera di Milano', in many of his dialect songs he describes this world he knows well: songs steeped in melancholy and irony inspired by the French tradition. After obtaining his diploma in accountancy, he learned to play the guitar and double bass, beginning his musical career in the dance halls of Turin and then moving to the Middle East for a few years. On his return to Turin, he signed a contract with Fonit Cetra and, in 1968, produced two 33 rpm records and one 45 rpm record, containing songs in both Piedmontese dialect and Italian. As a member of the Italian Communist Party, he created protest songs such as Senza Frontiere, which was rejected at the Sanremo Festival because of its lyrics that were highly critical of the war in Vietnam. The themes of his songs brought him closer to Fabrizio De Andrè, with whom he became friends. In the 1980s his songs were no longer as successful as they once were and Farassino decided to devote himself mainly to theatre and politics. Farassino decided to devote himself mainly to theatre and politics. Having moved away from the 'revisionist line' of the PCI, he founded his own party, 'Piemont Autonomista', which soon merged with the Lega Nord. The four songs chosen for this medley represent the various souls of Gipo Farassino: "Avere un amico" (Having a friend) is one of his songs in Italian in which the singer-songwriter's melancholic vein is clearly present: "having a friend means finding oneself in the evening in a certain café, remembering a road, a bath in the river [. The ironic and light-hearted vein is found in Matilde Pellissero, known as Tilde, "you dispensed graces only to three: a doctor, a lawyer and a delicatessen worker". Alberto, a metalworker, falls madly in love with Tilde, who promises him that when he finishes paying the last bills, she will be his. But once she has finished paying off her debts, Tilde leaves all her lovers and becomes a nun... Pito e cincillà (Pito and the Chinchilla) is also in the ironic vein: it is the story of Vigiu, known as the "clever", a small bourgeois thief who one day reads an advertisement: "To make money, breed chinchillas". With the savings of a lifetime of theft, he decides to go into speculation and buys three hundred chinchilla eggs. When the eggs hatch he sees three hundred turkeys come out, but since he is "smart" he becomes a turkey farmer, always wondering what a chinchilla looks like. "Sangon Blues" tells the story of the Turin beaches between the Po and Sangone rivers where, in the first half of the last century, people from Turin who could not afford the Ligurian sea used to go. It is the story of Berto, a young lathe worker who, very tanned and gymnastic, regularly frequented these beaches to pick up girls. It is a blues-style song, in that Turinese vein that was inspired by American music and of which Fred Buscaglione was another illustrious interpreter.

(c) Scomegna Edizioni Musicali, ES B1590.19