The king

Turin, Giardini Reali - July 6, 1997. That evening Ray Charles began his concert late. It was said that he was disappointed that following his own whim (a star thing of course) regarding the desire to drink a glass of Dom Pérignon, the production was taken aback, finding "only" a bottle of Veuve Cliquot available. of "cheating", counting on the blindness factor of the musician, perhaps thinking that he would not have noticed. What fools! This was enough to spark a small quarrel between laughter and embarrassment. I, who was in the front row, saw him arrive behind me dressed in white, limping, with the pace of the living metronome. I had managed to earn that privileged place for having agreed to push the wheelchair of an invalid lady without a companion, met at the ticket office.

"The king" was accompanied arm in arm by a production employee who made him walk up to the stage, in the midst of the delirious audience who applauded him in welcome.
Meanwhile the orchestra, 5 selected elements of the highest value, had already taken its place and had begun to play a rhythmic "intro", an introduction piece that served to dampen the buzz until it died out completely. There was a brief silence, then when Ray Charles took the stage there was only the magic we had all been willing to pay for: a gift to the five senses! The light that until then had illuminated the beige facades of Palazzo Reale dissolved, leaving only a handful of white dots lit, the Milky Way that had descended to transform itself into theatrical light illuminating the positions of the musicians on the stage.

Ray Charles began to play delicately, stroking the keyboard just enough for the notes to spread, playing on par with the crickets of the royal gardens, involving the silent and music-conscious audience. That's more or less like this when you listen to a poem. The magic of the music was so powerful that at one point, during a song, the audience got up to better see the standing genius hammering unreservedly that poor plastic instrument. The keyboard was hit so hard that it rocked when it swayed, it could have broken. If he could, the king of soul, in that moment of state of grace, would have stepped on it with his feet!

I realized that I only brought two Tri x rolls with me, one of which was almost finished. The other did not even do it on purpose, his sensitivity was too low. So I had to be careful not to take more than ten shots, too few, I thought, to satisfy my ravenous photographic hunger. Anyone who is not a photographer or an artist cannot understand ... Considering the age of the artist, I thought that this would probably be the last chance to be able to see him live in my city, and I was not wrong. At that time when I was making my bones as a photographer I had the desire to photograph the musicians who created the history of Jazz.

When I got home I didn't even go to sleep, I rushed into the bathroom that I had equipped as a dark room and prepared the acids necessary to be able to develop that single roll. The photos that preceded the concert, in fact, did not interest me that much since they were "ordinance rejects", eye training that a photographer records without thinking. Then I saw those last shots, exactly those ranging from 32 to 36, produced with my Olympus OM 35mm: they gave me shivers! I was able to capture exactly what I had in mind: a single image in which the artist is portrayed in a plastic pose, sitting at the piano, with the microphone element that seems to be one of his eyes protruding from the orbits of another galaxy that is not and certainly cannot be ours. What really mattered to me that night was to be able to see a genius live, to try to understand what was the source of his musical inspirations.

Ray Charles began to be blind from an early age, when he was struck by a glaucoma of the eyes around the age of 4 that caused him to quickly go blind. I wondered seeing him play, how many and what images he had managed to memorize before the light disappeared from his sight. All of us who see each other do not realize in the least how important it is to treasure the things that our senses produce. Let's try to imagine making a long, very long journey, something abnormal. We take our legs, they start walking without worrying about the time that passes. Then at a certain point we stop and we realize that we have made a journey that not even our car, however comfortable it may be, could have allowed us to take. Throughout history all the great artists have used their senses to tap into their creativity, and we who have all the organs in place are making the grave mistake of to delegate all our potential to ephemeral technology.

Click Luca Periotto
NP May 2021