La vera musica

La vera musica sounds like a waltz that falls apart and reassembles itself with an air of old jazz, as if Paolo Conte's piano were playing with the measures of a Parisian café from the 1930s. It is not just a song: it is a bridge between European swing and the rhythms Conte heard in the streets of Paris, where time seems to stand still between one chord and the next. The piece is sustained by a rhythmic game that never stays still, with that playful touch that makes the ear unable to stop following it, as if each note carried a hidden wink.

Recorded in two different studios, the song was born at Format in Turin —the same place where Conte had recorded his first albums— and finished taking shape at the RCA studios in Rome. It was at that moment, after the hiatus of Un gelato al limon (1979), that he rekindled his collaboration with Lilli Greco, his producer from his early days, and moved away from Nanni Ricordi's production. The result was an album, Paris milonga, which refined the jazz and South American language that already peeked through in his previous works. La vera musica, with its 3:48 of duration, is one of those pieces that need nothing more: a perfect instant where music and lyrics embrace without haste but without pause.