Francesco Guccini

Born on June 14, 1940, Francesco Guccini is one of the most admired of the Italian cantautori of the 1970s, part of a generation that changed the face and principles of Italian popular music. Among his peers, Guccini stands out for his fiercely uncompromising stance, which has translated into a career of remarkable aesthetic and ideological coherence. Guccini is a poetic, if rather fatalistic, observer of life with a keen eye for the locale of the Italian provinces, and his songs are tales of existential anguish over the passing of time and regret over missed opportunities, lost causes, and friends. In the context of Italian culture, however, Guccini's persona is arguably as significant as his music, representing a lone, incorruptible moral force. ~ Mariano Prunes