Caparezza

Michele Salvemini, also known as Caparezza was born in Molfetta in 1973.

He is an Italian musician who firstly debuted in Sanremo Giovani in 1995 and his
stage name was initially MikiMix with the song “succede solo nei film”.
In 1998 Salvemini published his last album “Vorrei che questo fosse il paradiso” as
MikiMix.
Then he grew his hair out and a goatee and changed his stage name in “Caparezza”,
meaning “curly head” in Molfetta’s dialect. He published his first album as Caparezza
in 2000, titled “?!”.
He grew in popularity thanks to “Fuori dal tunnel” which became a hit despite that
not being Caparezza’s goal; in fact, the song was used as a party music while it was
meant to be a social critique. Caparezza used that fact to demonstrate how media
and people can easily misunderstand the meaning of the lyrics.
It is impossible to categorise Caparezza’s music genre, because his style consists of
an alternation of speech and singing and a frequent usage of rhymes and wordplays
which are typical of the rap genre, but at the same time he makes use of musical
bases attributable to other music genres; for istance in “Verità supposte” Caparezza
switches from the nu metal in “Dualismi”, which is a crossover genre between
alternative metal and other music styles like rap, to tip tap in the end of “Fuori dal
tunnel”, to electronic music in “Vengo dalla luna”. Caparezza shows himself, in his
last album “Prisoner709” (and, more precisely, in the videoclip of the homonymous
song), in his mental prison as a genre-free artist.
When it comes to the topics he talks about in his songs, Caparezza is able through
the narration of hystorical events and characters, and sometimes myths to send a
message. Caparezza makes use of the music as a way to critique or make self-
analysis, developing real “concept albums”, a concept album is an album where
each of the tracks within it contribute to give the album itself a meaning, often
focusing on a single topic.

Caparezza’s last album “Prisoner709” was released during a hard time in the artist’s
life where he questions his adequacy in the music world. His inadequacy is the
primary motivation for which Michele, instead of his alter ego Caparezza, is the
central pivot around which the album revolves; the division of his persona is
hiddenly expressed in the album’s title: the “0” can be considered as zero referring
to a number given to a prisoner or can be a wordplay because the sound “o” means
“or” in Italian and therefore could imply a choice between a 7 letter word or a 9
letter word, for example the former can be Michele, the latter can be Caparezza.
The cover image is intentionally in grayscale, to represent the bipolarity of the
project and Caparezza’s mental state.
The album’s title is heavily inspired by “the Stanford prison Experiment” by the
psychologist Philip Zimbardo: the experiment consisted in making a group of a
college students play the role of guards and prisoners for two weeks. It was stopped
just six days after its start because the experimentees could not discern reality from
fiction: the guards became extremely violent and the prisoners, subdued, ended up
accepting every form of oppresion.
Prisoner n.819 tried to sabotage the experiment with a hunger strike and demanded
to see a doctor, thanks to him the title “prisoner709” was conceived.

The album consists of these tracks:

1. Prosopagnosia (The crime - Michele o Caparezza);

2. Prisoner 709 (The punishment - Compact or streaming);
3. La caduta di Atlante (The guilt - abuse or justice); 
4. Forever Jung (The psycologist – heal or get sick);
5. Confusianesimo (The comfort - reason or religion) ;
6. Il testo che avrei voluto scrivere (The letter - Novel or biography); 
7. Una chiave (The visit – open up or close off);
8. Ti fa stare bene (The yard time - Shallow or busy); 
9. Migliora la tua memoria con un click (The flashback - Remember or forget);
10.Larsen (The torture - forgiveness or punishment);
11.Sogno di potere (The revolution – serve or lead); 
12.L'uomo che premette (The guard - harmless or criminal); 
13.Minimoog (The infirmary - Scratch or scar);
14.L'infinto (The window - People or programs); 
15.Autoipnotica (The evasion – run or come back); 
16.Prosopagno sia! (The hiding - Freedom or imprisonment);

Like always his music is full of quotes. The most evident is to Oliver Sacks,
neurologist, who in his book “The man who mistook his wife for a hat” investigated
the prosopagnosia, which is the inability to recognise anyone’s face, including their
own; Caparezza expresses in “Prosopagnosia” that he is a prisoner of his own work
and this confinement makes him unable to recognise himself.

“Cantavo per fuggine dal mondo in un solo slancio,

ora che cantare è il mio mondo ne sono ostaggio”
or
“Non mi riconosco più, Prosopagnosia;
sto cantando ma il mio volto non è divertito”
In this album Caparezza also faces another kind of confinement: the tinnitus, the
perception of sound when no corresponding external sound is present (the majority
of the people with this condition describes it as a constant ringing).
Michele indirectly talks about it in “La caduta di Atlante”; he takes a cue from the
Greek myth of Atlantis who, fallen in love with Dike, goddess of Justice tries to win
her heart by offering her power and richness, but she refuses and runs away from
he. Atlantis, by desperatly trying to get to her, falls, ending up crushed by the weight
of the Earth which he was lifting. This story is a metaphor of the moment when
Caparezza realised his tinnitus was getting worse.
His tinnitus problem is also described more intimately in “Larsen”, he is
astonishingly blunt about the issue in the last stanza:

“So come ama Larsen e so com'è ammalarsene,

so che significa stare in un cinema con la voglia di andarsene.
Contro Larsen, l'arsenale, non pensavo m'andasse male,
solo chi ce l'ha comprende quello che sento nel senso letterale
e poi non mi concentro, mi stanca, sto invocando pietà, Larsen.
il suono del silenzio a me manca più che a Simon e Garfunkel.
Nel cervello c'è Tom Morello che mi manda feedback:
hai voluto il rock? Ora tienilo fino alla fine”

 
At this point Caparezza acknowledges the problem and starts to react: he plans, in
“Sogno di Potere", to go away, specifying that all he wants is to heal from his
condition and to stay in peace. In the song “L’infinito” a theory about a simulated
universe is implied, stating that all of the existance would be just a vast advanced
simulation/game. Concludes the album “Prosopagno sia!”, the evasion, an
instrumental song where is noticeable the presence of the opening track
(Prosopagnosia) refrain alone, with no spoken part, as to say that the prisoner
Caparezza is not there anymore, that he escaped, and therefore his voice cannot be
heard in the song itself.

The artist makes sure that the listener thinks about the prisoner’s condition at the
end of the album:
 Freedom, because he finally accepted to have to live with the tinnitus and to
do so in a positive way;
 Confinement, because he still has to be under the thumb of it for the rest of
his life.