Brunori Sas: singer-songwriter, economist and entrepreneur 'I'm in the right place!

He feels at home at the Festival of Economics, Brunori Sas. He has a degree in economics and commerce, has been an entrepreneur, and understands numbers as well as music. "I'm in the right place: my true creativity is developed more in Excel sheets than in songs,' he jokes. 'I really like closing a cell, I like putting an equal or a plus to start a formula, I like drop-down menus! I'm also a very good financial advisor'. He says this, of course, laughing, but really Dario was involved in the family business for a while ('I was a 'bricklayer', I sold bricks and cement blocks to bricklayers'). Then, quoting the theme of the Festival, at one of life's 'crossroads', he returned to making music, and with great success. 'I have always liked the idea of being at a crossroads,' he says, 'and not regretting the road taken. The important thing is that the road taken still has an awareness: I wish it for me, I wish it for everyone, and I also wish it for the world around me, for those of us who are living in a time that is not exactly pleasant'.

The work ethic, however, remained the same. "As the son of entrepreneurs, I've always liked to have a certain type of approach to work, as the son of entrepreneurs from Romagna. A vision that I brought to the management of a real small business as it becomes that of a music project'.

Third place at the last edition of the Sanremo Festival, with the song L'albero delle noci (The Tree of Nuts), definitively consecrated him to the general public. 'Anything can happen at Sanremo,' he says, 'you can also be ridiculed for a triviality, because maybe there is a stain on your jacket and then that thing takes over everything else. So I knew to some extent what kind of trouble I was getting myself into, but it was also very important for me to test my ability to write songs that could embrace a large audience, because in the end that's what I wanted to do. So after so many years of 'resistance' I wanted to do it, and I'm glad I did it'. And here too he allows himself a joke: 'It certainly helped me in Calabria, where I became a regional hero. Now I'm more famous in my parts than Bruce Springsteen!'.

After this year's podium of singer-songwriters, however, everyone wants to do Sanremo: 'If this has served to open a breakthrough for singer-songwriting, welcome. Usually singer-songwriters have a sensitivity and try to tell the society around us. We probably need, at this moment in history, not only umbilical songs, which talk about intimacy and personal stories: sure, I do them too, but we also need to tell a bit about what is happening in society'.

For him, now, an intense live season. In which, the few who did not know him are amazed by his irresistible comic verve, in a world where singer-songwriters often seem cold and unfriendly. "I really enjoy it. Then, it is true that some singer-songwriters have a character for whom it is more difficult to show themselves. But many artists who perhaps publicly seem obnoxious or grumpy, then in private are very likeable. Everyone protects themselves from popularity as they can; it is not always true that those who are disliked from the outside are disliked in reality. I have a nature perhaps closer to Jannacci, my references go in that direction: Jannacci, Gaber, Guccini himself on stage was a nice guy'.