Documentary: Zucchero: Finding your own voice

Zucchini, i.e. sugar. What kind of name is that, especially for an internationally successful musician? While I’m shaking my head about it, I remember that I had a classmate at EOS who presented the poem “We’re not made of sugar” at a school competition, which was about the adversities of life, not just the climatic kind. Two weeks later she was dead in an accident on her moped. So does the praise of sugar also have its bitter side?

Certainly with Zucchero, the sweetness in his name seems like a pious wish. You can see this for yourself in the film “Zucchero – Sugar Fornaciari” by Valentina Zanella and Giangiacomo de Stefano. A film biography of the now almost seventy-year-old, who was born in 1955 and grew up in Roncocesi in Reggio Emilia. This was a poor rural area of ​​Italy at the time. The father traded in cheese, and the family barely survived on that and a small farm. And yet for him it was a kind of paradise. His grandmother was the real companion of his childhood. And he was even allowed to play the organ in the small town’s church, at least when there was no service. Perhaps the later mixture of blues, soul and rock was already in evidence, as long as the latter already existed at the time. The African-American rhythms from the South of the USA fascinated him precisely because they defied any stylistic attribution. They expressed the same wild hunger for life mixed with an inexplicable sadness that he also knew.

But first his family also managed to climb the social ladder. She moved away from Emilia to live better elsewhere. But for the boy this was like being expelled from paradise. In the coastal town of Forte dei Marmi, he always carried a matchbox filled with Roncocesi soil. He even took them out to smell them in class. Hence the name Zucchero that the teachers there gave him, which meant something like the sensitive one. He remains that way to this day: wild and sensitive.

In the coastal town of Forte dei Marmi, he always carried a matchbox filled with Roncocesi soil. He even took them out to smell them in class.

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He knew early on that he wanted to be a singer. The teenager introduced himself to various bands, but they all already had singers. Maybe saxophone? So he borrowed one and was allowed to join in. Using archive footage that goes back a long way, the film succeeds in showing Zucchero’s arduous path to the top. All the trials and tribulations? He appeared twice at a talent competition in San Remo, when he was already thirty, with “Una notte che vola via” and – very much in keeping with the disco sound – three years later with “Donne” (1985). The reaction? Zero. He ends up at the bottom of the vote. You could probably hear the impure tones, the smoky blues that suddenly took on a bit of soul – and you were irritated. He couldn’t completely deny himself and that disqualified him from the music industry. The wild and melancholic mix of styles, about which his musician colleague Bono would later say that it “brings his version of the opera to the blues,” initially puts him on the sidelines. And he goes to America.

But then he gets lucky. A year later, the rather annoying disco title “Rispetto” became a huge success, selling almost half a million records. This brought him to New York and San Francisco, where he played with Miles Davis and others. They are surprised because he suddenly mixes Italian opera motifs with the blues. But that’s acceptable, people even like Italian as a singing language here. He is on the way to becoming a global star, also including Andrea Bocelli and Luciano Pavarotti in his arrangements. One tour follows the next in the early 1990s, and he will sell a total of 60 million records.

But at the height of the gigantic success, the boy from Roncocesi suddenly appears again, pulling a matchbox full of dirt out of his pocket. In 1992 he fell into a deep depression and could no longer and would not take part in the big global concert circuit. He hides in his hometown and doesn’t want to see anyone from the music industry anymore. This condition lasts six years and only slowly recovers. Finally, in small steps, he overcomes his inner paralysis and lack of strength. Gardening and contact with the simple people of the small town – that was the only thing that saved his life, he would later say. But he cannot tolerate external pressure and external expectations. Friends finally get him back on stage, but not as a singer at first, but further back – on the drums. Music should bring joy, he is told, who hasn’t laughed in years.

When he finally gets back on stage as a singer at the end of the 90s, he seems newly grounded. He alone now decides with whom he plays music, when, where and how. But since he has friends all over the world, he will soon be touring again, only this time much stronger inside. Bono says Zucchero gained the ability to “express sadness without letting it overwhelm him.”

This film shows an important artist biography of someone who never stops bringing his life into his music, who tells stories of longing and doubt, hope and failure with unusually rough and tender nuances. Just like in one of his most successful songs “Senza una Donna” (together with Paul Young), which when translated into German – “Without a Woman” – sounds trivial. But transforming worlds of memory into expression that is as harsh as it is true is what makes the unmistakable poetry of Zucchero’s songs.

The film team also accompanies him on his big world tour in 2022/23 with 114 concerts in 90 cities and 36 countries. The now 69-year-old, who has the traces of life written on his face, who appears somewhat clumsy and chubby, with a large hat on his head, seems to be in great shape. Because he is amazingly present. His voice sounds much better today because it has more life than before. His credo accompanies him: »The blues knows no borders, no country, no flags, except those of the soul. This is what I rely on to keep my heart from breaking.”

The film ends with a beautiful symbolic scene: Zucchero, coming from the stage, the applause still in his ears but already outside the hall, grabs his hat and puts it on the railing. Wherever he hangs it, he is at home. That’s right – and in Roncocesi.

»Zucchero – Sugar Fornaciari«, Italy 2023. Direction and screenplay: Valentina Zanella & Giangiacomo De Stefano. 100 minutes, start: September 26th.

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