#popster

Popster: This LP comes after a long stagnation period following your activity with PFM. How did you come to this album?

Mauro Pagani: There are different ways to experience being a musician. In my opinion, with PFM, I was doing one percent of the things I could have done. So I spent two years doing all the things I had been missing in this period. In my opinion when you play you tell the life you lead, the speed of the rhythms you choose, the type of neurotic or relaxed approach towards the technique, the lyrics you use, etc., everything tells the type of life you lead.

P: I heard that in Milan you were doing school courses for children.

MP: I was very interested in the problem of teaching music, but not so much from an abstract political point of view, nor…

P: I would like you to tell me, for example, what music is for you…

MP: Music is a way of expressing what you have inside. For many people, it is the richest means of expression. Even richer than normal dialogue.

P: Probably to truly hear the music there is a need for abandonment…

MP: Certainly. You have to make yourself available to the stimuli that arrive, then you live them personally. In this way, you make these stimuli your own. You live them with your life, with your emotions, with your stories. This thing here is clearly something that hardly happens, because people attribute a neurotic role to music, culturally wrong…misdirected.

P: Once, music was experienced in a normal way. There was a direct relationship between man and music, as popular music teaches us. There was what was playing and people were dancing around. I've seen around that this kind of relationship doesn't work anymore.  

MP: But the whole music distribution structure tends to give it the role of consumer object. So people no longer consider music as a thing that belongs to them because it springs from their normal rhythm of life, but as a matter of fact, a product.  

P: In my opinion, the simple, linear relationship that should exist with music is missing. The fact that you stand in front of a record and feel it. It involves you or it does not involve you. Or there is even the lack of openness necessary to get involved... 

MP: With the public that understands, that doesn't understand, that doesn't react, I don't get pissed off. If I see Frank Zappa coming, he does something amazing, and his records sell 10,000 copies and the Bee Gees records sell 300,000, I don't get mad at people, ever. I get pissed off with the musician. I have no respect for the musician who makes shitty music. I do not forgive the reporter who hurts his work. He doesn't know shit about music.  

P: But let's get back to your record…

MP: I tried to make a group record, despite being a solo musician. Being a great composer is not in my nature. I have this anomalous role as a group musician…which is not a group…but I believe in teamwork. Because teamwork has given me things; it made me do things that working alone I wouldn't have…

P: In fact, your record boasts the participation of a lot of people, including… 

MP: And among other things there is a lot of space. There is someone, even from my record company, who said that in reality...I play little. But I don't give a damn about playing...I didn't take the record as a training ground for Mauro Pagani, violinist, who will show you how good he is. I wanted to try the paper of a type of material written by me, but lived together with musicians who were able to put on this material. And Demetrius - for example - who came to sing, it must be Demetrius who sings, it must not be I who uses Demetrio's voice.  

P: In fact, with the presence of Area, Canzoniere del Lazio and PFM, to what extent is this Mauro Pagani’s record...is it by Mauro Pagani?  

MP: Of course I didn’t go out on the street saying: whoever wants to participate on my record come on over…

P: You have chosen.  

MP: Exactly.

P: Now I would like you to summarize, as briefly as possible, the contents of this record.  

MP: Mmmmmmhhhh… (long hesitation) 

P: If I had to give it four or five adverbs or adjectives…I don’t know, sex, drugs and R&R. Namely what is this record for you in a nutshell.  

MP: It is strangely difficult for me because…for example, giving it a title was a drama. I’ve changed the title three or four times. It had started even before the realization as “Longobardi e Saraceni [Lombards and Saracens]” and then, after the realization, it turned out that there was very little of Lombards, while there were a lot of Saracens…and then in my opinion it did not fit the image. In the end, “Mauro Pagani” remained. In reality, perhaps it should have been “Mauro Pagani, born in Chiarili, province of Brescia, on 5 February 1946, who did this, this and this…32 years old, violinist by profession, with his history and who works with tizio, caio e sempronio [Tom, Dick and Harry]…”

P: What did you mean by Lombards and Saracens?  

MP: Well, by Saracen, I mean an attitude of carnality, a certain type of intensity. You know what I mean: everything that is not Lombard. In fact, when I spoke of Lombards and Saracens I was talking about reason and emotionality…about all these things here. In my opinion, what came out in the record is that there is reason, yes, but to a strange extent. How much is left of Lombard? I can't tell you. I am a Lombard, after all. Part of the musicians, too…however…

P: I heard a piece of the record where there is a very beautiful female voice. Who is she?  

MP: It is Teresa De Sio, the singer of Musica Nova by Eugenio Bennato. I had heard Teresa sing and I was struck by the incredible role she gave to her voice as an instrument. It was all a relationship between her and me. In this relationship she has put her voice, this enormous charge of hers, this creativity of hers.  

P: In the whole LP what are the things you love the most?  

MP: I really like the first piece, the piece with Teresa, and the violin solo. The first piece was made with three musicians from Area, and two from Canzoniere del Lazio. I like it because there is a bit of everything inside. And the same theme done in two ways. First there is a more urban development, then it acquires a Turkish market atmosphere. Then there is Teresa's piece, which she sings in Neapolitan but she is accompanied by two bouzoukis, which is a Greek instrument, with a much more Balkan than Neapolitan type of cadence. When the oboist improvises, he enters with an almost 600-strong Italian attitude.  

P: And for the next album will you use the same procedure?  

MP: The next one will be based on the same kind of basic language, because that's what interests me and what I have inside. What I will try to do is use the instruments in a different way. Maybe there will be more decisive arranged parts, and the creativity of the individuals will be structured in a different way. The type of relationship I want to achieve with the instrument and with the musicians is a type of intensity in which every measure (dimensional, structural, etc…) becomes relative.  

P: So your record should be very serious, since you have placed yourself in front of humanity in a serious way. Is it a happy record…or sad? 

MP: I find it's an intended record. A record that laughs little, perhaps. I think being able to laugh in music is really nice. That's why I absolutely love Frank Zappa who does his thing and laughs. But this record was not intended to be either a summation, a thesis or a proposition. And the record that I made, with what I had inside in 1978...I looked around and reflected. There are flights within...that express themselves in that language, in that way. It must be said that the life around it is what it is. And then what we have within us of thirty years…almost thirty-three…there is what we have done inside. We look around every day, in short…