How does one deaf person to be a professional singer? It seems impossible, but it isn’t. It proves it Francis Brizio34 years old born in Taranto but Milanese by adoption, who a Luce! tells himself like this: “My name is Francesco, aka Brazzo, I’m deaf and in my life I rap”. A few words that tell it all. Then, of course, he is also employed in an insurance company, but the music is the real engine of his life. And it is also a tool for having those rights recognized which are taken for granted by others, but which become fundamental for those who do not hear. Like the one for the recognition of Lis, sign language, indispensable for him in life as well as in his art.
“Even as a child I wanted to sing just that I felt embarrassed that a deaf person could sing. I started talking when I was 5 – she says – at first I didn’t speak very well and I underwent a long process of speech therapy. Then at the age of thirty I had this desire left in the drawer and I decided to launch myself”. How can you make music without being able to listen to it? Relying on “vibrations of the speakers”. And with years of speech therapy, hundreds of lessons. Once learned to sing, in 2006, the desire is to put into verse the reality that surrounds him, the battles for the recognition of the Lis and the social denunciation. Obviously when he raps he also does it through the sign language. “I’m bilingual, I can score and speak at the same time,” she explains. The idea, continues Brazzo, is “make music accessible, because I see many hearing people who listen to it carefree, but the deaf also need it. And that emotion can only reach them through expressions and sign language”.
“Even today – denounces the singer – Lis is not known. There are no interpreters in public offices, post offices, banks and even hospitals”. That’s why it continues his battle with notes, so that all deaf signing people – including most of the 70,000 deaf-mute or prelingually deaf Italians – can feel truly integrated. And he will also do it from the stage of the Hall of the Five Hundreds of Palazzo Vecchio, on November 26, on the occasion of the second birthday of Luce!, in a dedicated talk but also with a rap performance. Registration on the website luce.lanazione.it/evento2022 for participate in the festival for free. Accreditation starts at 14.30 and “the event is free while seats last. Registration is mandatory, but does not guarantee a reserved place. It is therefore advisable to arrive a little early”.