Music, “against the horrors” of wars, is “more than ever a vehicle of great brotherhood” between people, said Neapolitan singer-songwriter Eugenio Bennato, who gave a concert in Barcelona, ​​​to ANSA.
The concert “Waiting for Sant Jordi – Che il Mediterraneo sia”, by Bennato and his band, Taranta Power, was offered yesterday for free thanks to the Institute of Italian Culture in Barcelona very close to a thousand people.
“Today more than ever in history we live with conditions of war, music is presented as a means of great brotherhood and communication between people.”
Art, he emphasizes, “spreads messages that always speak of the meaning of unification.”
And in particular, popular music, as he puts it, “has a great potential to create great connections.”
“Che il Mediterraneo sia”, a very successful song in Italy, was written 20 years ago “as a wish that the Mediterranean Sea would once again be a sea of ​​peace and travel.”
The Mediterranean “is a crossroads of different cultures that influence each other. Its negative side is the tragedy of migration and being the scene of a senseless war that no one wants.”
Bennato, 77 years old, says this while crossing the Mediterranean Sea, from Civitavecchia (Italy) to Barcelona, ​​​​​​​​​​​on board the Grimaldi Lines cruise in Rome on the literary tour “Nave dei libri” organized by Agra Editrice since 2010.
And he gets emotional when he remembers when he was a child, he and his brothers Edoardo and Giorgio played together – “we were a bit silly, we were the Bennato Trio” – and “a ship owner named Grimaldi saw us and took us to play on a ship going to America”. The first foreign port we arrived at was Barcelona, ​​and I am now making the same trip.
Later Bennato, who produced dozens of soundtracks for film and theater, founded the Nuova Compagnia de Canto Popolare, which gave “a modern perspective to southern popular music”.
In 1988 he founded the Taranta Power movement, reinforcing the great masters of ethnic music from the southern regions of Italy. Since he was young, the “point of reference for musicals was the poet Federico García Lorca, who gives us musical lessons in every verse he writes.”
In this 12th edition of the “Nave dei libri” the singer presented his book “Ninco Nanco must diere. Viaggio nella storia e nella musica del Sud”, with which he “overcame the reluctance to write something literary , because I have always written music, always books.”

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