Il settimanale del 25 agosto 2026 - Centro Studi Fabrizio De Andrè

[music] While enrollment for courses at our university is underway, in these August installments of the university and city weekly magazine , [music] we show you some of the many centers of excellence at the University of Siena. [music] We are in the courtyard of the Palazzo di San Galgano, which houses the historic Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Siena. In 2003, on the initiative of the University and the Fabrizio di Andrè Foundation, an important study center on the life and works of the Genoese singer was created. Giulia Giovani, the center's current director , takes us on a journey from the center's inception to its current initiatives. We are in the humanities library of the University of Siena, which houses the Fabrizio D'Andre Study Center. I am accompanied by Giulia Giovani, a professor of musicology and music history who also directs the study center's activities . Professor, what are the goals of the research center you preside over? The Study Center was founded in 2003, when the fund dedicated to Fabrizio De Andrè arrived, deposited here by Fabrizio De Andrè's family, who today presides over the foundation's activities. From that year on, the study center's activities began with two main objectives. The first was to organize, reorganize, and inventory this material that had no organization whatsoever, and the second was to promote studies on Fabrizio De Andrem, but also on singer-songwriter music more generally . The first goal was achieved with the publication of the catalogue, the inventory of the collection in 2012. On the second, however, we are obviously still working hard. And I was wondering what are the main conferences or research projects you have produced so far. Since its inception, the Study Center has promoted the study of Fabrizio di Andrè's songs, combining, on the one hand, the study of his poetic-literary and musical work, but also, on the other, the relationship between Fabrizio di Andrè and society and more general themes. So conferences were organized that then produced books or essays on women in Fabrizio di André, on the theme of migration, on the Middle Ages reinvented starting from Charles Martel obviously and lately on Volta la Carta, so on many different themes, obviously on the culture of antimilitarism, many different themes that are still very, very current that lead us to study society through Fabrizio De André and Fabrizio De André in society. Research activities, however, continue and will continue. The study center and, above all, the Fabrizio De André archive are open to scholars who are aiming to write theses , doctoral theses, or any approach based on a scientific method. Now, you do n't come to study De André's papers just out of curiosity, even if that would be a more than legitimate curiosity. Well, as a result, the studies continue and the library receives weekly requests for access to the material and I am happy to be able to tell you that this very year a book dedicated to Fabrizio De André will be published, which was the result of a scholarship from the study center several years ago and of a doctoral thesis, so in short, we continue, we continue to work. We offer research support. What is your relationship with the Fabrizio di Andrè Foundation? We interact almost daily because the foundation obviously owns the documents we preserve and study, and we invite scholars to consider them. There are some publishing activities that we do in collaboration, some recording activities of the foundation to which the Study Center supports. A re-edited collection of all of Fabrizio di André's records was recently released, titled Waypoint, and it contains previously unreleased documents that obviously come from the documentation that is kept here. Does your research focus only on Fabrizio D'Andrè or do you also study other singer-songwriters? We obviously start with Fabrizio De André, also because he spanned a whole century with his work , right? Andre was born in 1940 and died in 1999, so we also consider him a mirror of society. However, we have also dedicated works to other singer-songwriters, always to be connected to Fabrizio De André, so his role models in France like Brassens obviously, but also Bob Dylan, we presented a book dedicated to Bob Dylan a few years ago during the pandemic , so we welcome, let's say, the songwriting, the theme of the songwriting, the issues in their entirety with a particular focus on these precious materials. Do you still think it's relevant to study Fabrizio D'Andrè today, when there are so many musical genres dominated by trap music and it almost seems like Cantaturato is going through a phase of decline, so to speak? In fact, let's say, the latest trends are bringing singer-songwriters back to being that, let's say, mass poetry, as some called it a few years ago, and we are witnessing, no, new singers who are returning to the limelight and making themselves known to a wider audience. So I believe that Fabrizio De Andre can still be relevant, singer-songwriters can still be relevant, but I'm happy to remember how Trep also somehow welcomed Fabrizio De Andrei a few years ago as a trap singer, he actually reinterpreted the trap hits with the vocal timbre of Fabrizio De Andrè, so something, let's say, in our Italian culture remains, right? But beyond the musical styles are the themes covered. There's an interesting festival these days dedicated to anti-war cinema, for example, and it's titled Ma la divisa di un altro colore (But the uniform of another color), obviously taking one of Piero's famous war verses, so you can really still use, no, Fabrizio De Andrè to address a young and contemporary audience. No. [music]