
A lecture-concert by singer-songwriter Pippo Pollina
The event on March 11 in the Sala dei 146
From a very young age, founder of the Palermo-based band Agricantus, which crosses the Sicilian musical tradition with influences from South America, Pippo Pollina boasts a more than 40-year career as a singer-songwriter and cultural researcher and promoter. His social and political commitment led him, in the early 1980s, to collaborate with the magazine "I Siciliani" directed by the late Giuseppe Fava, who was killed by the Mafia. In that season of socio-political turmoil, Pollina would move to Switzerland in a sort of self-exile in which his activity as a musician was not interrupted but rather experienced a period of great productivity that led him to become well known in his host country, in Germany and in other European nations.
Of his very rich discography we recall the albums Rossocuore (1999), which features the song "Finnegan's Wake" in which Franco Battiato and Nada also sing, and Versi per la libertà (2001). In 2007, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Museum for the Memory of Ustica, where the remains of the downed Itavia DC 9 are kept, Pollina composed a civil oration entitled Ultimo volo, on which philosopher Manlio Sgalambro, former author of some of Battiato's texts, collaborated.
Pippo Pollina will give a lecture-interview-concert on March 11 from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. in Sala dei 146 (IULM 6), as part of the Contemporary History course that Prof. Massimo De Giuseppe teaches for the Bachelor of Arts and Cultural Events program.
The meeting will take as its starting point Pollina's latest work, the volume L'altro (Squilibri, 2023), the Palermo artist's first novel, in which the vicissitudes of a doctor from a small town in the Sicilian hinterland are intertwined with those of a German journalist conducting an investigation into the Mafia. "A novel that through the story of the two protagonists tells how History is destined to condition individual existences with imponderable deviations, but also about fatherhood, migration and how two existences that run parallel can converge in time, space and affections." (Eleonora Lombardo, Repubblica-Palermo). Pollina will tell students about the genesis and development of the novel and perform some songs from his repertoire.