25 years of commitment to saving human lives for one, 25 years of a career in words and music for the other. A quarter of a century of history in which the timelines of these two protagonists of our country have often crossed, giving rise to unique moments. We are talking about the Italian NGO Emergency, which since 1994 has treated 10 million people around the world, and Roman singer-songwriter Daniele Silvestri, who in 1994 published the first of nine albums and is preparing to celebrate this milestone with a tour of arenas kicking off on 19 October in Roseto degli Abruzzi. One of the moments in which Silvestri's life crossed paths with Emergency's came this summer, when the singer-songwriter took to the stage at Milan's Arena Civica for the NGO's national gathering. That was the occasion to have Silvestri tell us something about these years spent in an Italy that has changed its style several times, only to wake up, every time, exactly the same as before.

This year Emergency turns 25. For you, who have always supported it, what does this birthday mean?
This anniversary also coincides with my 25 years in the business — it was also 1994 when I released my first record. Or when Silvio Berlusconi decided to enter politics…

Or when Roberto Baggio missed that penalty…
Exactly, they were intense years. Of all those things, though, the only truly interesting one is Emergency. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that it would make it to 25. It takes the mettle of Gino [Strada, ed.], of his family, and the support of all the people involved, from the doctors to everyone who has put so much passion into it. Passion that I understand and at the same time admire. I understand it because I know, from direct experience, on the ground, that it transforms your life. It changes the way you assign value to things; the proportions to which our "easy" Western life accustoms us shift. So celebrating these 25 years is fundamental, because for them it is a relaunch, and it is a source of hope. They face enormous costs and it is right that they should be repaid. Perhaps some people didn't know them before and today are having second thoughts, helping them and realising it is better to let their own life intersect with Emergency's. Emergency isn't the only organisation of its kind, but if there is one I have always staked my reputation on throughout all these years, it is precisely Emergency.

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In the album Il padrone della festa, which you made with Max Gazzè and Niccolò Fabi, there is a song about Africa, Life is sweet, born after a journey you took together with Cuamm. Can you tell us something about that experience?
It was, once again, a small, brief parenthesis within privileged lives. It was a choice made quietly too, from our point of view, which then evolved. Cuamm is an NGO based in Padua and led by don Dante. They too needed visibility. But it all began quietly, from an idea of making a journey into ourselves, of living an experience as genuine as possible, which then transformed and became first a record and then a tour. But initially the idea was to set off with a backpack and some mosquito repellent, to leave behind the baggage of 20 years of individual careers and superstructures and all the things that crystallise around you, for better or worse, and to return to the original spirit with which you pursue a craft as wonderful and full of curiosity and adventure as this one. That is the how and the why we set off. Then everything you thought before counts for nothing.

Where did you go?
We went to South Sudan, which at the time had just emerged from 20 years of civil war, only to slide back into one — fortunately for a brief period. We were there when weapons were beginning to be seen and heard again. It is an immense territory even as a portion of what Sudan was before [independence, ed.]. There are no infrastructures, no roads and more besides, which makes it feel even vaster. Much of our journey, as we tried to convey in our song, ran up against apparently trivial difficulties that nonetheless meant a great deal to us. Covering five kilometres might seem like nothing, but sometimes it makes the difference between life and death. Being able to cross that river, that stretch of mined terrain, that area divided between ethnic groups fighting in various ways, the mutual suspicion, and so much else. During this journey, which took in three very different hospitals, including two run by Cuamm, we got to know the people who work there, to discover what their eyes hold. Very often they are young people or distinguished doctors who at a certain point have decided to dedicate their lives to something else. As happens with Emergency. There are many such humanitarian organisations, and some are particularly worthy because they operate with an utterly complete humanity.

In a recent performance at the new Apple Store in piazza Liberty in Milan you gave the song Le navi a new dimension. Born as a song of humanity, it has become, over the years, a political one. Downright subversive, given the latest news on the subject of migrants.
That song tells a series of stories through an example — not even a particularly explicit one — of lived experience. Their lives are lives, just like ours. It could have been us who had to choose between staying put and dying without any hope, or setting out and running the greatest risk of all: finding death at sea and never reaching our destination. Those stories [of migrants, ed.] are often chilling. The terror lies in the crossing. Having to debate whether or not it is right to save people who are risking their lives is incredible — I find it incomprehensible. I feel as though I've ended up on the wrong planet when I hear such things.

Let the ships set sail, let the anchors be raised and the sails fill with wind. Clear days will come and we must make the most of these icy winds, of the grecale and the mistral. Let them push us beyond this sea and there is nothing left to cry over or return to. Let the sounds fade away and soon let the memories and these smells recede. Virgin days will come and new days regardless, we will invent rules and choose our names and surely we will find ourselves making old mistakes but only to discover we are better. While you, meanwhile, in the time that remains are here beside me and already so different and beautiful, you are beautiful.Le navi, Daniele Silvestri

So today that song remains among the most political I have written, when it should be almost a straightforwardly human song, rhetorical, easily shareable. It is not, and that is chilling. There are not many things that measure so readily our capacity to give meaning to life, other than coming to the aid of those in need. We don't all have to be heroes, all attentive, but faced with a person in need, can you shut the door? It is like denying our own history, the history of the Mediterranean and of the Western culture that was born around it.

On that note, in Lampedusa there is La porta d'Europa by Mimmo Paladino, created in collaboration with another NGO, Amani, active in Africa. And it represents the gateway for those who would like to enter the Old Continent from the sea.
And instead we close it.

Il padrone della festa is another song born from the collaboration with Fabi and Gazzè that is clearly a dedication to our planet, to the Earth. What do you think of the new climate movement that emerged thanks to the actions of Greta Thunberg?
That song grew out of Niccolò's sensitivity, from a vague idea he had tucked away. There was the idea of "a stone under the backside", of the planet as a place to be defended and left to someone else, without the presumption of owning it, given that it actually plays host to us. Policies that place climate and the environment at their centre are one of the few languages that manage to find their way through to younger generations, who have been somewhat left to their own devices — or rather, to their digital screens. When I hear talk of environmental policies, I think of my children, of their school. Environmental policies are what unites them, what makes them perceive a cause as real. And for that cause they feel — rightly — entitled to challenge the authority that does not place it at the heart of its own action. Under that umbrella, on the same path, various movements find themselves side by side, with a reverse homogenisation of minority battles whose adversary is no longer merely the guilty silence and indifference. Now it is openly contempt, the vulgar and ignorant attack. And I am obviously also referring to those who use social networks as a tool for this attitude. But it also becomes easier to see how some of these battles are still valid.

In 2019 you had great success at the Sanremo festival with the song Argentovivo. For those who have known and listened to you since that fateful 1994, it is easy to spot a fil rouge that runs with you right up to today. How do you look back on this year and what are your next projects?
I'm not proud of the numbers, which are by now irrelevant, but because it opened up, at least for me, a Pandora's box. We were overwhelmed by a series of accounts, of stories, both sad and fortunate, about relationships with teenagers — when it wasn't the teenagers themselves recognising their own experience in it or getting angry at that portrayal. I was ruthless, and Rancore [the name of the rapper who sings with Silvestri and Manuel Agnelli on Argentovivo, ed.] followed me to perfection.

The intention was to give a violent snapshot of the possible abyss facing a sixteen-year-old today. Touching on, more or less openly, subjects that are all interconnected: teaching, education and pedagogy are in crisis because the world has changed in a subtly gentle and also very alluring way, and in this there is no attempt to demonise the device we hold in our hands [the smartphone, ed.]. The world changed without us having an instruction manual, without there being a vision of society to pursue behind it, without there being the objective of improving ourselves as a species, as a community. This has generated a disconnect with the authoritativeness — not authority — of those who ought to be educating, from the State in its institutions dedicated to study and teaching, down to individuals. And this concept resonates enormously. I knew it, but not to this extent. I discovered fascinating, deeply interesting worlds. So many profoundly painful stories.

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We were accused of having opened an important window, but of having done so with the wrong words. And I understand that — perhaps it is even what I wanted. They are not my words, but the possible words of a sixteen-year-old. I could answer those words myself, but my intention was to make others want to answer them. And about that I am enthusiastic.

What you might call a positive provocation.
Exactly. Our future also depends on how we think about educating people and where we think of raising those who will come after us. That is why it is worth thinking about.