Luigi Tenco
Luigi Tenco (Cassine, 21 March 1938 – Sanremo, 27 January 1967) was a singer-songwriter, musician and actor, one of the founding figures of Italian cantautore music. Born in the Alessandria area of Piedmont and raised in Genoa, he died during the 1967 Sanremo Music Festival, leaving behind a note protesting against the audience and the jury: an episode that changed the way song is viewed in Italy[1].
Piedmontese origins
He was born in Cassine, in the province of Alessandria, to Teresa Zoccola; he took the surname of Giuseppe Tenco, his mother's husband, who had died the September before his birth[1]. His legal paternity has been questioned: according to an account reported by Il Post, his mother had worked as a maid for a wealthy family in Turin, and Luigi was said to be the result of a relationship with the family's son, still a teenager at the time; after the birth the woman returned to the Alessandria area she came from[2]. The Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani mentions the hypothesis of a biological father from the Micca family, a law student in Turin, but considers it unconfirmed[1].
His early years were spent between Ricaldone, his mother's family village, and Varazze, together with his older brother Valentino. In 1948 the family settled in Genoa, where an uncle, Giovanni, ran a shop selling Piedmontese wines[1]. His ties to Piedmont also persisted in his literary formation: among the authors he drew on were Eugenio Montale and Cesare Pavese, from whom he took a plain, spoken, dry and at times harsh language[1].
Genoa, jazz and university
A young teacher, Sandra Novelli, introduced him to the piano; in the loft above his uncle's wine shop he began playing clarinet with his friend Bruno Lauzi. In 1953 he founded his first band, the Jelly Roll Morton Boys Jazz Band, and in the following years played in various jazz formations, up to the Diavoli del Rock, founded in 1958 with Gino Paoli on guitar[1]. He listened to Jelly Roll Morton, Nat King Cole and Charlie Parker[1]; he also played piano and saxophone, and among his idols were Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond[3].
To please his family, in 1956 he enrolled in electrical engineering, which he left in 1959 for political science[1].
Milan and his first records
In the late 1950s he moved to Milan, where he gravitated around the Ricordi label, and lived at the Pensione del Corso, at Galleria del Corso 1, alongside, among others, Gino Paoli, Sergio Endrigo, Bruno Lauzi and Piero Ciampi; he also collaborated with Ornella Vanoni and Enzo Jannacci[2]. At Ricordi he began in 1959 as a songwriter and performer: in June 1960 Quando was released, and within a few months he went through three stage names, Gigi Mai, Gordon Cliff and Dick Ventuno. He was among the first to be called "cantautori" (singer-songwriters), a term coined in those years within RCA[1].
In 1962 he released his first album, Luigi Tenco, featuring Mi sono innamorato di te and Angela, and made his film debut in Luciano Salce's La cuccagna, playing an evidently autobiographical role as a young nonconformist songwriter[1]. In the liner notes of that record he stated his artistic credo:
"My songs should be seen not so much within the framework of light or dance music, but within that of popular music."
The quotation is reported in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani[1]. Among the songs of those years is Cara maestra, which attacked school, church and politics and cost him two years of exclusion from RAI[2]; OndaRock considers it one of his best tracks[3].
Protest songs and RCA
After internal conflicts at Ricordi, in 1964 he moved to Walter Gürtler's Saar Records, under the Jolly label, with which he recorded his second album in 1965: it included Ho capito che ti amo and Vedrai, vedrai[1]. His lyrics dealt with power, inequality and conformism[1]; OndaRock calls E se ci diranno an anthem to civil disobedience and describes a Tenco who, following Bob Dylan's example, blended beat, folk and protest song while rejecting mere imitation of foreign genres[3].
His contract with Jolly partly overlapped with his military service, which could no longer be deferred; in 1966 Tenco signed with RCA, which had opened an office in Rome a few years earlier dedicated to singer-songwriters. That same year saw the release of the album Tenco, featuring Lontano lontano, the song that became the most representative and "cult" piece in his repertoire[1]. The Enciclopedia Treccani places him within the Genoese school and describes him as a mediator between Italian melodic tradition and poetic and melodic experimentation[4].
Sanremo 1967
To reach a wider audience, he agreed to take part in the January 1967 Sanremo Music Festival paired with Dalida, performing Ciao amore ciao, a song whose final version describes the emotional hardships of migration from the countryside to the city[1]. On the first evening, 26 January, Tenco appeared nervous[1]; the song placed twelfth out of sixteen and was eliminated from the final, while the victory went to Claudio Villa and Iva Zanicchi's Non pensare a me[5].
That night he was found in room 219 of the Hotel Savoy, killed by a gunshot to the head. According to Il Post's reconstruction, it was Dalida who discovered the body, around two in the morning, though who actually found him first remains disputed[5]. In the room there was a note:
"I loved the Italian public and devoted five years of my life to it in vain. I am doing this not because I am tired of life (quite the opposite) but as an act of protest against a public that sends 'Io te e le rose' to the final and a jury that selects 'La rivoluzione'."
The note, which ends with "Ciao Luigi," refers, with a garbled title, to Orietta Berti's Io, tu e le rose, which had been admitted to the final[5].
The investigations
The initial investigations were hasty and superficial[1], imprecise according to Il Post, and over the years alternative theories circulated, including murder[5]. In 2005 the Sanremo prosecutor's office ordered the exhumation of the body for an autopsy[5], which a year later confirmed the suicide[2]; the examiner concluded that "the degree of certainty regarding the suicidal nature of the death remains the same as back then, that is, very high but not absolute"[1]. In 2013 a discrepancy concerning the shell casing emerged, and a supplementary investigation in 2015 was closed[5].
Legacy
Tenco is buried in Ricaldone, in the Zoccola family tomb[1]. According to the Dizionario Biografico, his death left a deep mark on the history of Italian song and contributed to the recognition of the cantautore tradition as a serious art form[1]. In 1972, on the initiative of Amilcare Rambaldi, the Club Tenco was founded in Sanremo, which since 1974 has organized the non-competitive Rassegna della canzone d'autore[1]; the prize that bears his name has become one of the most prestigious awards for Italian songwriters[3]. In 2009 an album of previously unreleased material was issued, and in 2024 a collection of unpublished writings, Lontano, lontano[4].
Pages linking here
Sources
- Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani —
- Il Post — 21 March 2013
- OndaRock
- Treccani – Enciclopedia
- Il Post — 7 February 2017