General 2 — Herbert Pagani

Herbert Pagani’s Musical Legacy

About

Radio

Remembered as one of the voices of the radio station Radio Monte Carlo - together with Gigi Salvadori, Ettore Andenna, Luisella Berrino and Roberto Arnaldi - as a singer he recorded songs that are easy to catch and popular such as Cheers with glasses, Canta (which passes you the fear), Friendship and Ouch ... Hawaii, also sung in the film Amore mio help me, directed in 1969 by Alberto Sordi.

Also worthy of mention are: I don't love you anymore (1962) (Alberto Testa Herbert Pagani Christophe), Lombardia (1965), Italian version of Le plat pays by Jacques Brel and La bonne franquette of 1974, later taken up by Fiorello together with his brother Beppe and long musical jingle of the «Club Mediterranée».

However, his best production in Italian is considered Albergo a ore (from 1970), a piece that had problems with censorship and was the adaptation of the French version Les amants d'un jour (brought to France to success by Edith Piaf ); the Italian version was also proposed by Gino Paoli, by Ornella Vanoni and in 1972 by Milva, in the album La filanda and other stories.

In French, his poetic text "Plaidoyer pour ma terre (qu'est ce que le sionisme)" was much appreciated, in defense of the reasons for Zionism and being a Jew.

Acting & Music
Pagani appeared as an actor in a 1975 television drama, Marco Visconti directed by Anton Giulio Majano: he had great popularity in Italy thanks to the song Cavalli ricamati, a song with which each episode of the drama ended and which he performed live at the end. of the last episode.

Collaborations
Among the musical collaborations it is worth mentioning the multi-year one with Dalida, for which Pagani wrote many songs (especially elaborations in Italian of pre-existing French songs). These include: Mamy Blue (1970), There are people you meet on the street (from the original by Fabien-Bréjean-Goraguer, from 1973), It is not my house (from 1965).

For Françoise Hardy he wrote in 1967 'Gli Altri', an Italian text of 'Voilà'. Herbert Pagani in 1972 collaborated on the album "... and seize the fleeting moment" by the Italian / Belgian singer-songwriter Salvatore Adamo. He is also the author of the songs of almost the entire album of the Italian progressive band Hunka Munka, Dedicated to Giovanna G.

Almost always these are pieces characterized by a precise psychological and introspective inspiration, in perfect continuity and coherence with the French neorealist tradition of which Pagani was, according to the critics, in Italy, one of the interpreters and one of the most refined, cultured communicators and sensitive.

Collateral Activities
Pagani was the founder with Annalena Limentani of the production house of radio programs Mama Records.

Ecologist and convinced pacifist, starting from 1970 he had only partially abandoned the world of song to found one of the first "multimedia projects" (the "Megalopolis"), recording some "progressive" albums and also devoting himself to political activity.

His most complex musical product is known with this name, however, which appeared only in French, of which only some songs have also been translated into Italian. Megalopolis is, in this case, the capital of united Europe which, due to a series of man-made recklessness, sees a frenetic growth of skyscrapers which are combined in an increasingly marked isolation of the inhabitants who do not notice the state in which they are throwing the environment until, one bad day, due to an unexpected concomitance of circumstances - all deriving from the depravity into which man has thrown the natural system - in a few hours the Europe that probably wants to symbolize in this work the whole world finds its end.

Fortunately, some attentive observers who for years have feared the arrival of this hour, have managed almost secretly to obtain a corner from which they will be able to make humanity flourish again, almost reborn in a completely different natural context. With this resurrection ends the album perhaps best known in France which goes precisely under the title of "Megalopolis" and in which the irony, sometimes even ferocious, does not fail to make you smile as well as invite meditation as regards ecology seen in a broad sense.