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From album
Ovunque proteggi
Vinicio Capossela · 2006 · Track 6
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The story behind
This song doesn't sound like the others by Vinicio Capossela. It sounds like something recorded in a repair workshop, amid hammer blows and echoes of distant voices. The accordion blends with strings that seem plucked from an old warehouse, and the drums beat like a tired but stubborn heart. It's not just a melody: it's a soundscape where each instrument seems to have its own rhythm, as if they were walking in circles without ever meeting. The title, L'uomo vivo, is not a metaphor: it's a statement. It doesn't speak of just any man, but of someone who insists on existing despite everything, even when the world around seems to crumble.
Recorded in 2005 at Officine Meccaniche by Mauro Pagani, this piece was born at a time when Capossela had been away from recording studios for years. The album Ovunque proteggi —released in 2006 under the Atlantic/Warner Music label— broke with everything before it: there's none of the playful irony of his early records nor the solemnity of his more recent works. Instead, it sounds like a journey without a map, where the only certainty is the raw, unpolished sound. The song won the Targa Tenco that same year, and the following year, Mojo magazine ranked it among the best albums of 2006 in its world category, only behind Savane by Ali Farka Touré. But the most curious thing is that, when it was presented in January 2006 at the Chiesa di San Carpoforo in Milano, no one knew they were listening to something that, years later, Rolling Stone Italia would include among the hundred most important Italian albums of all time.