Gabry Ponte: “The Eurovision is a conquest: from” worker of the night “to DJ in front of millions of people”

In the metvers of theEurovision Song Contest 2025you understood it, everything is worth. In Basel they govern laws that elsewhere would never govern, for better or for worse, so it ends up in the race there is a song about the beauty of Italy – the spaghetti, the mother, Bettino Craxi (there will also be for him) – sung by … San Marino. It is the story of All of Italy by Gabry Pontetheme song of the last Sanremo Festival and now to the Eurofestival, after winning San Marino Song Contest Last March, as a favorite. “Carlo Conti was his first fan, I feel it a lot in these days,” reveals the 52 -year -old DJ and producer of Turin. “But it is not true, as it was legitimately thought, that I had written this song to go among the competitors to the Ariston: it is a hymn for the San Siro concert on June 28th”a huge arrival point of his career, exploded in the late nineties with the Eiffel 65, at the time of the cosmic success of Blue (from Ba Dee)and from there you never go down.

Yet, to these altitudes, bridge hadn’t been there for a while. The piece is spreading like a virus for all of Europe (semicit.), They point out that something moves in Georgia. “Well, I have one more chance of winning,” laughs. «Seriously, I want to do well, but I don’t think I have the possibility of triumph. And it doesn’t matter: when I called me the friends of San Marino I didn’t think twice, at my age it is a privilege even just being here, in what on balance, for me, is a first time ». The doubt is, if anything, if and how the international public received a piece in Italian – and that unlike Lucio Corsi does not have the translation into superimpression – which cites the pizzica and other traditional genres of our country. It is true that, on the other hand, it lines that series of stereotypes that basically please a tourist than an Italianbut he has a huge success from us too, so who knows. “Of course,” he says, “coming here is a bet.” Yet the pre-parties of the festival, a series of evenings organized around Europe in recent weeks, true opportunities to make their songs known to professionals and basically exercise soft power (there are those who say that the ESC wins there), it went well. “At the beginning they were all displaced, then overwhelmed.”

It will be the charm of the Dolce Vita, it will be above all the umbilical cord that binds more than half of the competitors to the same bridge, which over the years has been one of the decans of the euro-dance, a genre that have rediscovered in this edition. “And to think,” he recalls, “that When I started, in the eighties, the DJs were considered workers of the night, they had no artistic dignity. We had awards by putting our heads out of discos, when our music became mainstream and we started attending TV, next to the pop star. That’s where we became show men ». And the show imposes its own rules, which first of all means that it means all the tools off: this is television, you don’t play live. “I bring the console to represent the DJs, make sense of my role, but I cannot use it,” he says. Counting that he sang is not him, who has never done it in his life, but Andrea Bonomo and Edwyn Roberts (only live voices are requested, yes), bridge is in the paradoxical position of do not do anything on stage. “Tommy Cash says I’m not a musician? I don’t look for controversy, I just say that I am not a singer like him, but a producer like dozens of others who worked on the songs in the race. Not necessarily I have to sing a piece of mine to be considered an arista, nor an artist fails if you sing a song that he has not written himself. There is a place for everyone. ” The show also imposes diplomacy.

The appointment is now for Saturday’s final. Ponte will perform for 25 – in the queue therefore, even if “I don’t know if it is good or bad” – with the choreography already seen, on a small scale compared to Sanremo because “there I had thirty performers, here they can be at most in six, also counting choristers and singers”. The visuals will think about pushing the scenography further on, with Quotes and references to the architectural and cultural beauties of Italy. “Always in an ironic key, we just want to joke about clichés,” he concludes, referring to the phrase on Craxi, called here “Blessed Blessed”. Everything comes back, however. Even the sun on Gabry Ponte, who survived the fashions of which he was the same master. This is testified by the new single out today, Brokenhearted With the Train, the US pop rock musical group, and the exclamation point the San Siro concert. Almost thirty years ago he was popular throughout Europe with the Eiffel 65: who knows he doesn’t succeed in the bang again.