Paolo Karim

TRANSCRIPT

PAOLO (read by Marco Caroselli)

My name is Paolo Karim Gozzo, and I'm Italian-Moroccan singer-songwriter, musician. I'm the son of an Italian father of Sicilian origns and my mother was born in Rabat, Morocco. Both my parents immigrated as children from the south to the north of Italy. I was born and raised near Lake Como, near Milan, and about 10 years ago I moved near Modena, for love. So let's say that my history is characterized by the perspective of continuous migration, continuous movement.

I don't know how to say, but you have to understand that Italy is a young republic. There have been very fast, very big changes at the social level in a short time. And one of those changes deals with inequalities between North and South. So even though I see myself as 100 % Italian, one can feel also like an immigrant in the North coming from the South. So while I was born in northern Italy – and I have always felt of myself that I am from northern Italy – but at the same time at home, being with my family and my parents, I feel of something other, of these other cultures as well.

My grandfather who left from the South to the North went through this situation in the '60s and the '70s. They were working class. And at the time there was the economic industrial boom. There was more work for everyone and with that came a progressive improvement of their life. But at the same time, those who come from the South could be seen in a bad way. And sadly, this issue is still with us. The situation is always that, when there is a greater poverty, then there may be acts of crime, but then all those people who – only because they have certain origins but have nothing to do with criminality – are also affected and they suffered from it. They were bullied. They suffered from it because of ignorance of others. What you don't know, you are afraid of.

But still, growing up, I did feel different. I always looked in the mirror and tried to understand who I was. So my grandfather spoke in Sicilian dialect, and at home we made Sicilian cuisine or Moroccan cuisine, so we didn't eat cotoletta milanese, for example. For me, I've had my own journey. I had to look for, how to say, a compass within myself. And eventually, when I started to see a different face in the mirror, and hear a different sound in my music, I discovered that I'm actually 100 % of all these origins – Sicilian, Moroccan, North and South Italy. And without one, without even one of these, I would not be myself.

I was always making music since I was a child, but I would say when I first started my career, it was to make pop music. I tried to reach people in the simplest way possible. For example, in 2009, I was on the Italian version of X Factor, and I was still making a type of music that, looking back, didn't allow me to express myself in a mature way.

I discovered it little by little, writing, writing, writing songs, recording, in the recording studio, collaborating with people. Above all, making music that deals with social issues. And to do this thing, you have to live. You have to have life experiences. And only later, while you are there, that you try to inform yourself, that you try to grow, and you also try to communicate to people what you are experiencing, then you understand what the right key could be. So I would say, the most complicated thing in making music is finding the key to open people's thoughts, to open people's sensibilities and souls.

So it is only recently I have approached what are my roots, the Mediterranean, the Arabic, the Berber. And I have tried to evolve my music, my language, my writing, also playing with multilingual writing, mixing Italian with Arabic. For example, I am now learning some words in the Berber language thanks to a friend. So I make, how to say, an Italian songwriting with refrains, sound, and then linguistic influences taken here and there from the Mediterranean coast. But it's only with experience, only by getting to know myself, only by making a journey, abandoning myself, and making this journey to discover all the components that formed the me that I did not know.

And when I tell you this was a journey, it was not about a journey like to get on an airplane, but it was the trip that changed me the most, that allowed me to be who I am and to understand, in short, what to do. It was from being in lockdown during the pandemic in 2020 in my studio. There, it was there, I traveled on this journey. So, in this room, in this studio, I can tell you that I have certainly been to the Atlas Mountain, on the slopes of Mount Etna, along the Apennines, on an island near the Mediterranean, in the Sahara Desert, in Andalusia – all in this room in 2020.

But we can also say it began in February 2020 when I went to Berlin where my producer at that time lead. And just before leaving a week before, I bought this instrument, the Algerian Mandole. And I bought it without ever having played it, without knowing how to play it. I just had to buy it. I had just released an album and was beginning to think about a new project, but I didn't know what this new project would be. Yet I began to compose songs. Songs that did not yet have this identity I would discover.

And then I returned to Italy on March 10th, 2020, the first day of lockdown. And so it was in my studio that I took this journey, from which came this music that connected to my roots, to those of my Mediterranean origins.

The song, I would say, that most represent this, is “In Mezzo al Blu.” Every year, my family went on holiday by car from our house on Lake Como to Rabat, to visit our grandparents. So we were in Marrakesh on vacation, and the song is about a trip I took, and must have been maybe four years old, just me and my dad in the car. We left for this two-day trip through the canyon, I remembered that one evening we laid down in the garden in the middle of the canyon to admire the sky and it had a different color from what I saw in the city. Many more stars could be seen. It's a very powerful and clear image that continues to stay with me. This was the last song I wrote for the album and I'm glad I wrote this one. One because, unfortunately, my father is no longer with us. He died only a few years later when I was just 10 years old. And unfortunately in a car accident. So this song is about that journey, the flashbacks, the image that despite my age, despite all the time that has since passed, I continue, I relive that feeling of total peace that nature, in this case the canyon, the desert, what it can give you. It's out there, alone there, in the middle of the blue, in mezzo al blu, you feel that direct link between you and the sky, the heaven.

“Queen of the Gnawa” is a song I wrote paying homage to an ancient Berber song called “Gumari,” or in the Berber-Arabic: “My Moon.” It's an ancient song that I then rearranged by writing the verses in Italian but keeping the original chorus. The theme of Gnawa music is always the same. It speaks of travel, migration, enslavement and the desert. The desert from which we all begin and the desert to to which we all return.

The music from which I took inspiration for this piece, it speaks about the slave trade in the 1500s, about these sub-Saharan people who arrived in Morocco from the desert, and were then sold as slaves to the Arabs and Europeans, and eventually also were taken to the New World, to the Americas. Through the long journey they faced across the Sahara, Gnawa music developed with different instruments. For example, the Moroccan metal castanets. The sound of those metal castanets, I think, remind us of the clanging of the chains that the slaves work in their captivity. Late at night, the Gnawa people would hold spiritual sciences where they played music, where mysticism connected with the music. So this is about their journey.

Another song is “Leila.” It's not about the past, but about the present. It's about a Moroccan-Italian girl who lives in Italy to find work and live in Ireland. She's trying to make ends meet as she struggles with the increasing expensive cost of living and the difficulty of making yourself understood and having to do so in a new language.

I understand this experience as I have two sisters, one who lives in Spain and the other in London. I also have many friends who have also left Italy in search of a better future and with this song I am trying to tell this story of our generation who have not had the fortune fortune as the generation before us. But we have spalle larghe – strong shoulders – and work hard.

As I said before, these issues for immigrants of identity and acceptance are still with us. People still struggle to recognize themselves and be accepted. I try to talk about these things. I try to write about it in song.

What I would wish to say to people who find themselves in this difficult situation is to believe in time. That in the end, time does solve everything. Over time you can get to know yourself and also over time you can try to identify and understand what are the fears and mistrust these haters have and in some ways make ourselves known and remove the fear. The issue is the lack of knowledge and ignorance.

I think, I dream, to maybe I would offer the haters to come to my home for a dinner as a way of opening them up to some knowledge. knowledge. Oh, and to eat? I would definitely make a couscous. I would offer a nice couscous we can all eat together in a circle. And then for dessert, definitely a Sicilian cannoli. For sure, I don't think you can be a hater after you eat a nice Sicilian cannoli.