Giorgio Gaber: Google Doodle celebrates Italian singer’s 83rd birthday

Google Doodle celebrates the 83rd birthday of an Italian singer, composer, actor, and playwright Giorgio Gaber, who pioneered the musical genre known as Teatro canzone (“song theater”) with Sandro Luporini, on January 25, 2022.

Who was Giorgio Gaber?

Giorgio Gaber, by name of Giorgio Gaberscik, was born in Milan on January 25, 1939, into a lower-middle-class family. He was likewise an accomplished guitar player and author of one of the first rock songs in Italian (“Ciao ti dirò”, 1958). With Sandro Luporini, he pioneered the musical genre known as Teatro canzone (“song theater”).

Giorgio Gaberscik initially developed a love for music while playing the guitar as therapy for a hand injury. He later figured out how to sing, and in his mid-twenties, Gaber co-produced Italy’s first rock ’n’ roll song—Ciao ti dirò (“Ciao, I will tell you”).

During the 1960s, Gaber principally performed on TV, where his purposeful and entertaining songwriting delighted audiences by intelligently engaging with Milan’s changing cultural landscape.

Giorgio Gaber started to play as a restoration for an injury to his hand which required consistent however not demanding activity to recuperate his motor skill. Since his health as a child was not awesome and his older brother Marcello played guitar, he was urged to play also. The result was great both as far as his health and artistically, and at just fourteen years old he was locked in to play at a New Eve’s party and acquired his first paycheck of 1,000 lire.

Accordingly, Giorgio Gaber started to visit the Santa Tecla, a venue in Milan where he got the opportunity to meet musicians of the time, including Luigi Tenco, Gianfranco Reverberi, Adriano Celentano, Ricky Gianco, and Mogol, who acquired an agreement for Gaber with Dischi Ricordi.

He then, at that point, played with the Rocky Mountains Old-Time Stompers (supplanting Tony Dallara who had passed on to seek after a solo career) and with Rolling Crew.

Giorgio Gaber matched up with Enzo Jannacci as I Due Corsari (“The Two Privateers”), who made their debut toward the finish of 1958 with two vinyl singles – “Come Facette Mammeta”, a classic song of Neapolitan humor, and “Non occupatemi il Telefono” (“Don’t Hog the Telephone”). They kept on releasing singles with Dischi Ricordi all through the next year, and in 1960 released their first album, Giorgio Gaber – Enzo Jannacci.

In 1969, Giorgio Gaber released Com’è Bella la città (How Beautiful the City Is), which stays among his most popular works for its attention on contemporary social worries.

To build up a more personal connection with audiences, Gaber progressed solely to the theater stage in 1970. His passionate and complex theatrical performances inspected Italian society and encouraged an introspective national dialogue.

After a sentimental-artistic friendship with singer and actress Maria Monti, he married Ombretta Colli in 1965, then, at that point, a student of languages (Chinese and Russian) at the University of Milan. In 1966 she gave birth to her daughter Dalia.

Giorgio Gaber participated in Festival di Sanremo four times, with the songs “Benzina e cerini” (“Petrol and Matches”) in 1961, “Così Felice” (“So Happy”) in 1964, “Mai, Mai, Mai Valentina” (“Never, Never, Never Valentina”) in 1966 and “…E Allora dai” (“…Well Come On Then!”) in 1967.

In 1969, Giorgio Gaber released one of his most popular successes, “Com’è Bella la città” (“How Beautiful the City Is”), an example of the presentation of social matters in a song. The next year, he displayed at Piccolo Teatro his first ediction of Il Signor G (“Mister G”), a presentation he repeated in numerous Italian squares.

In 1973, Giorgio Gaber recorded the one song by which he is generally perceived by international audiences: Far Finta di Essere Sani which was covered in English as Tomorrow’s Got to be Sunny by Tony Orlando and Dawn on their 1975 album He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You).

After a year, Giorgio Gaber was given the very first Premio Tenco award, and numerous years after the fact likewise got the Targa Tenco in 2001 for his song “La razza in estinzione” (“The Dying Race”) and 2003 for the album Io non-mi sento Italiano (“I Don’t Feel Italian”).

After the Tenco award, Gaber deserted TV and started to tour just in theaters, as one of the founders of the Teatro canzone genre. He would show up again on TV, albeit irregularly, just during the 1990s and mid-2000s.

A lifelong smoker, Giorgio Gaber died on New Year’s Day 2003 after a long fight with lung cancer, in his country house in Montemagno close to Camaiore, in Tuscany, and is buried at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan.

Over the next 30 years, Giorgio Gaber refined the Teatro canzone medium with many shows each year. This stupendous oeuvre exhibited that music, monologues, and comedy were tools to extend one’s emotional limits while reflecting on shared national realities.

Out of appreciation for Giorgio Gaber’s contributions, a historical Milanese opera house was resumed under his name as the Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber in 2003.

In 2004, the refurbished underground auditorium of the Pirelli Tower in Milan was dedicated to him. In 2012 Patti Smith recorded the cover of Io come persona, converted into English “I as a person”, contained in the anthological album …io ci soon.

Giorgio Gaber is most popular and recognized as a trailblazer of Teatro canzone (theater melody), an impression of a Milanese society caught through the combination of music, verse, and theater.

On the 25th January 2022, Google featured a Doodle on its homepage for celebrating Giorgio Gaber’s 83rd birthday.