Biography

Giuseppe Idile, stage name of “the Captain”, was born in Sassari (Sardinia) in 1960. He started his artistic path following his father’s traces “Raffaele Idile”, a famous Sardinian painter. As a consequence, he painted oil paintings with a style, a technique and many contents which reminded of his father’s art, signing himself under the pseudonym of “Alex”. Very soon he realized that he preferred translating his father’s feelings, passions or simply mood into “musical verses” instead of paintings. Therefore he started composing his songs. In the meantime he enjoyed himself as a radiophonic speaker in his city’s radio broadcasting stations. He was about twenty when he decided to move from his place of origin to Varese (Lombardia, in the north of Italy), where he became well known as “a piano bar musician” and so he wrote an album just entitled Piano Bar. Then he moved again from Lombardia to Emilia Romagna, in Reggio Emilia to be precise (another northern Italian city), where he has still been living. He was a great pal with Gianni Bella, a famous Italian singer-songwriter and, thanks to this friendship, he succeeded in realizing a “Dance Rap” cover of the song Più ci penso (I think more..) in which the American singer Pierre Gerard participated too.

At the same time the Captain worked together many radiophonic and television editors, creating advertising jungle and “lots of musical pieces”, many of them are still in use. The Emilian life paces, quieter in comparison with the north of Italy big cities ones (where he went on coming to), led him to think over the typical social themes of the big “metropolis”, expecially how they became real trends for others urban conglomeration. The album Metropoli, infact, was originated from these thoughts, which were held between the desire of a future innovation and the nostalgia for ancient landscapes, smells and tastes of remote times and spaces. Simultaneusly the artist published chants and music of his Sardinian tradition but in a personal version, which were broadcast from extraterritorial stations.

The close bond of affection with his native land led him to the creation of the album Credimi (Believe me), whose songs were the trade d’union between his land and the whole Italy. The Captain, infact , came back to Sardinia during his breaks, so mixing with sea and land people. As a result his artistic production was influenced by those experiences in a particular way, both as an author and as a composer. He decided to sing in Italian and not in Sardinian language because he thought that his songs messages were to be enjoyable by a larger public, even when he decided to introduce some Sardinian historical traces abroad, as the song Shardana contained in this album, which he considered as a special tribute to his “isle”. Even so, the Captain had measured himself with the performance of wonderful and typical chants of the Sardinian musical tradition, because he was convinced that every native Sardinian artist had to share in the creation of a musical heritage for his land with a personal tribute, which was very important for the “region Sardinia” itself. Basically there was a purpose in the text and music of his artistic path (sometimes obvious and others only palpable): the Captain wanted to combine the typical characteristics of his ancient and magic land (as he friendly loved to call It) with the rest of Italy subcultural varieties. Around these human values, chosen as the Album fundamental topics unified in a very high feeling of love, many habits, customs and traditions of every countries went near each other and, although the superficial differences, they discovered themselves very similar in the values essence. This album arose chiefly from the cooperation between “the Captain” and the Sardinian painter-author Shikanu.

After five years from the publishing of the album Credimi (Believe me) and lots of personal reflections about Life, the Captain presented himself again to his public but in a new form: he abandoned all the sentimental themes, the romantic attitudes and the exaltation of his belonging Sardinian culture to put on the social changes of those times, both in Italy and in the world. The artist explained all this in an interview for Radio Free when he said: “Nobody can pretend to know nothing because we are following a route, better still, the powerful world figures make us follow a route without a way back, if we don’t stop them. We have to intervene, we have to make them hear our peaceful but determinate protest, otherwise, if we follow the route which our powerful figures order us in a passive and compliant way, it will take us straight ahead the end, ahead the destruction of the hope of every social justice and therefore of Peace. This is not catastrophism but the meaning of the reality, a way of awakening our consciencies or sensitizing people who haven’t still taken note of the reality. Everybody have a particular responsibility and task. I’m an artist so I have decided to share in the change with my songs text and music which can leave an optimistic and constructive message to one who listens to them. All this for a better future, better still, for that future which many people are waiting to be called to live”.

As a result the new work, entitled Marionette and Saltimbanchi (Puppets and Acrobats) revealed all the truth of our time, without any appearances, pretences or hypocricy. “This truth goes forward in human events both in a ranging way and in a quiet one, leaving us incredulous and forced to think that who hold a powerful position can become a puppet whose strings are brought up by higher powers”. So we think about the song called Il drago (The dragon), a metaphor of the economic power which want to decide on our lives in order to control them. If a person decides not to be submitted to its conditions, he will yeld to the dragon because “…it was furious, so it yawned and burnt down all around…”. 

Another song La montagna muore (The mountain is dying) celebrates the destruction of our habitat committed by our society, which is a clear symbol of Evil. It was conceived and sung with HOS, which represented our mother Earth. It has always been taking care of us, looking at us since millions of years; it meats us like prehistoric beings and it sees us to be born, to die and be born again but, because of the man’s uncontrolled progress, it risk disappearing with all the creation. So paraphrasing another album’ song, we understand that the clouds are disappeared over the Sky, someone has stolen the sun and someone else has stolen the sea. They are Scie chimiche (Chemical trials) which at first we believed they were used for beneficial tasks but, just now, we know the dangerousness of them on human health. Maybe will they be these, the new and doubtful weapons of the powerful masters of the earth? Only a pure baby’s heart, which is still free from any adults conditioning, could change “the trial” of a wonderful love message: this is the only way to save us from the powerful, money and success thirst of certain people who sometimes hide themselves also between the members of the same family, even if they pretend good lookings. Anyway nobody can buy lovely affections and we can’t clean offences by duplicities: “ Nobody is immortal” , this is the title of another song which says also: “Nobody is indecent, nobody could decide about something. This world is going to change; who is still thirsty of glory is losing himself inside his personal story”. So in this song there’s a sort of space for personal Reflections which follow one another and…: “there is always someone who plays eating your heart in a time which never ends. You know that now you are strong enough not to suffer for those wounds anymore. Even if we are in difficulties, we can turn our gaze towards the sky, looking for a particular star, the one which represents a well-known dead person who always light us from above, guiding and making us feel less alone on the earth. You are a star is a song’s title that makes us hope and comfort about Life, which gives us a new courage to face life and find again “that light inside us”.

At the end of the album there’s a wonderful Ave Maria, which is in Sardinian language but with a new and unusual musical arrangement for a holy chant. This was an unfailing appointment for “the Captain” with his Sardinia, as well as a proof of its linguistic possibilities to come out the island boundaries in order to look for new musical approaches.

The study and the research of new sonorities, more incisive than the message to leave to the audience, has carried out the artistic staff “Capitano Musica” (Music Captain) directed by the master Francesco Germini, to sound full musical combinations, which range over anglosaxon atmosphere and ethnic music but without losing sight of the bond with Italian music traditions. At the time they wanted to achieve a purpose: to realize a sound holism as an innovative integration which captured the “old sound” to enrich it with sonorities that reflect the new generation’s way of listening to music, that is “digitally native people” grew up among images, sounds, colours and noises. For this reason it took the staff a long time to prepare this album, a meditative slow style which was necessary to catch up the global change of the society, even if it is in countertendency with nowadays executive speed of every human act. Infact the Captain explained that: “I have written these texts as I were inspired by a Superior thing, or maybe it is simply that wonderful spirituality which everyone has got inside of him but he doesn’t know to own it. In this way my ears have magically listened to these music and then, together with the master Germini and very good staff musicians, we have composed and arranged the song words. I hope that these songs give light, joy and hope to every heart and they clear up many minds”.

The project Marionette and Saltimbanchi (Puppets and Acrobats) has also been thought for a theatre performance, in English or German, in which the songs can be presented among funny sides and subtle ironies, spectacular ballets, dialogues and monologues of the artist with other characters well known by the audience.



Translated by Maria Carmen Cilvetti