Interview – RANCORE: “Tarek to color” and the rewriting of language

I wanted to change my name and get rid of this resentment, but I realized that there is no better name at this moment. It is the perfect tool of political propaganda to program and move the masses.

The world is dividing into smaller and smaller parts, until we are left alone in our resentment.
Everyone chooses their own color in a war that puts our souls to sleep. Are we still capable of mixing, of getting dirty with other people's colors to wake each other up?

From “Segui me” twenty years ago to “Fantalonavo” by TAREK TO COLOR: What is Tarek's trajectory?

If I look at “Segui me”, a record I made between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, I see another era, of the world and of my life.
I was still in school. Yet there is a thread that has never been broken.
That album opened with the definition of “grudge” taken from the dictionary, like a neutral voice, almost an ante litteram Google of words.
Today, when I construct “fanfore” or an invented language, I still start from the etymology: I enter the root of the words, dismantle them and recompose them. I empty them, I rewrite them.

Songs remain a form of alchemy. Ingredients that become formula. My gaze has changed: then I sensed one dimension, today I recognize many more. Second, third, fourth. But the matrix is ​​the same.

Even then you talked about “Italian lessons” in your lyrics. A provocation?

A paradox, but up to a certain point. It was a student's criticism of the school. I was writing a record while skipping Italian class: something wasn't working.
Why did I have to look elsewhere for the tools to express myself?

It was a short circuit. I was attentive in physics class, but not in Italian class. Yet I was writing. This says a lot about how certain systems fail to intercept expressive urgency.

Over time your relationship with the word has become almost obsessive.

The word has become an all-encompassing journey. My world is a linguistic architecture. And precisely for this reason, at a certain point, I felt the need to sabotage it.
Hack the language so as not to remain a prisoner of it.

But the problem is broader. I don't think music has evolved badly, but rather human beings. And this is inevitably reflected in the arts. Music, in itself, remains something pure, almost sacred. You don't touch it, you don't see it, it passes through you.
It is an involuntary, inevitable sense. In this it has something profoundly close to a dimension that we can call divine.

So is the crisis more anthropological than aesthetic?

Yes. When man becomes impoverished, his expressions also become inclined. And the system we live in tends to convince us that what is authentically beautiful is not really beautiful.

We must defend that beauty. Hold her tight. Don't let yourself be weighed down by structures that alter its purity.

In this scenario, can art still be a tool for evolution?

It inevitably is. It is too connected to something profound, which we can call divine or collective. There is a spirit of the time, a shared unconscious that moves us. The artist manages, for a moment, to stare at it. Like a film closed in a bottle.

It lasts a short time, perhaps very little. But it exists. And when you come into contact with that moment, it's as if reality stops being a single surface.
Art moves you, forces you to see another side of the prism.

Complexity versus simplification?

Exact. Not complication, but complexity. In a time that simplifies everything for defense, even the enemy, art works in the opposite direction. Integra, holds opposites together.

He can do it in a thousand ways: in a political, ironic, light, brutal way. But always broadening the field. Even just for a day.
And on that day your possibilities, your choices, your way of being in the world change.

And the music in this?

Music forces you to enter into the other. This is the most difficult step. In an era that fears contact, that shuns other people's colors, music invites you to get dirty.
To understand, to honor.
That's where something happens.

What color do you feel you are today?

I have a hard time choosing a specific color. The last period has been chaotic, almost a battle, and in battles the colors overlap. There is also red, inevitably.

But I'm more interested in the topic of nuances, which is exactly what I'm missing at the moment.
In life I'm becoming rigid on shades that are too clear. If I had to answer you instinctively I would say red, but in reality I would like to say all the colours. I know that over the course of the day I will go through an entire color spectrum.

It's the same invitation I make to those who listen: color, don't close yourself in black.
In recent years I myself have seen myself as too monochromatic. Now I feel the need to return to nuance.

Rome remains a key point. From Tufello to the centre: what has changed and what remains?

Tufello is both a real place and an interior dimension. It's the suburbs where I grew up, but also a state of the soul. In my songs it becomes a space of apparent quiet, crossed by a latent energy, a resentment that remains in the background, as often happens in the suburbs.

When I talk about Rome in this album, I do it in a broader, almost symbolic way. It's the movement towards the center, even when you feel like you don't belong there. In recent years I have lived this tension: moving, entering a place that is not mine, but which somehow calls me.

Rome as a complex organism, therefore.

Yes, a stratified city, almost exceeding itself. It brings with it an ancient energy and at the same time is exposed to a changing present. It is a privileged observatory: political, religious, media power, everything coexists and overlaps.

In recent years it has changed as the world has changed. The suburbs are transformed, the center is redefined, new forces emerge. It's a system that gets complicated. Rome, in this sense, becomes a very clear metaphor of what is happening outside and inside us.

You'll be back live in May. What shape will this new live dimension take?

I will continue to work with the band with which I built the last concerts. Anyone who has seen me live knows that that is a consolidated dimension, also because some of them are an active part of the album.

As compared to Xenoversewhich was very theatrical and constructed almost like a script, here I imagine something freer. Not necessarily less structured, but less constrained.
Closer to a direct, more instinctive energy.

If Xenoverse was a closed universe, this will be a more natural continuation of Music for children: a more open, rougher shape, even more “punk” if you want.
A collective cry, desperate and liberating at the same time. That's where I'd like to get to.

THE FORMATS

“TAREK TO COLOR” will also be available in the following physical formats

● Double numbered autographed vinyl + pencil set
● Numbered autographed CD + set of pencils
● Double vinyl
● CDs

LISTEN TO THE RECORD

INSTORE

The instore tour of “TAREK DA COLORARE” starts from Rome. Below are the dates on which the artist will meet fans:

Friday 3 April – Rome, Discoteca Laziale
Saturday 4 April – Florence, Galleria Del Disco
Tuesday 7 April – Milan, Flying Saucers
Wednesday 8 April – Bologna, Semm
Thursday 9 April – Turin, Capodoglio

LIVE

8 May – MILAN, FABRIQUE
May 15 – ROME, ATLANTIC – SOLD OUT
May 16 – ROME, ATLANTIC

25 June – SALERNO, Limen Festival
04 July – RECANATI (MC), Memorabilia Festival
06 July – BOLOGNA, Bonsai
10 July – FLORENCE, Cascine Amphitheatre
13 July – COLLEGNO (TO), Flowers Festival
14 July – VICENZA, Jamrock Festival
23 July – MARINA DI RAVENNA (RA), UNDER Festival
27 July – TORRE SANTA SUSANNA (BR), Bembe Music Festival
02 August – GRADISCA D'ISONZO (GO), Mediterranean Waves

WEB & SOCIAL

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