It was Francesco De Gregori, in the seminal album “Titanic” of 1982, who made the distracted kids of the time rediscover the unmistakable voice of Giovanna Marini in “The clothing of a stoker”, a point of reference for those who loved still follow the history of the popular song, with its tradition, even the hits, which had come back to life thanks to the movements of the students between the ’60s and ’70s who sang them in chorus in the evening at the tavern. Giovanna passed away the other evening at the age of 87, after a short illness. At the time of the Titanic she was 45, her severe air masked the sweetness and indispensability that had always accompanied her passion for her. She had studied guitar with Segovia; she was a researcher, scholar, teacher and practitioner of an infinite repertoire that started from the lauda of the Middle Ages and reached “Bella Ciao” and beyond, up to her “I trains for Reggio Calabria” which remained since ’68, a success that you can find on You Tube, with the story of the journey of the unions from North to South to bring 40 thousand solidarity to the Calabrian laborers in struggle, on special trains.
Giovanna came from a family of 4 generations of musicians, her father Giovanni Salviucci had been a pupil of Respighi at Santa Cecilia, but she had chosen the path of popular song and never gave it up: she continued the times we spoke on the phone to tell me about the Testaccio school where he taught until he made it, giving concerts in Italy and abroad. As a girl she had met Pasolini and Calvino and had then joined the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano movement with Ivan Della Mea, Caterina Bueno (to whom De Gregori later dedicated a song), Bertelli and others, and then took part in the show “Ci ragiono e canto” by Dario Fo, in 1964. For her artistic life she had chosen the surname of her husband, the nuclear physicist Marini, with whom she lived for a long time in the United States, without this diluting her ardor as a researcher.
Again with De Gregori, Marini ended up on the hit parade thanks to the album “Il whistle del vapore” in 2002, a folk anthology which included their songs but also much-loved popular songs, from “Bella Ciao” to “Sacco e Vanzetti ” to “Nina ti te memoria” by Bertelli (beautiful). Among the historical protest pieces, “The ferocious monarchist Bava” (“with lead the plebs fed”, sings the text) on the bread revolt of 1898 in Milan. Giovanna kept our singing story going well beyond the 1900s, and there is no one left like her.