ECPCs Kyle King interviews Giovanni Caccamo—”Youth & Future: Manifesto for Change”
May 10, 2024
Kyle King and Giovanni Caccamo in conversation at the Yale Harvey Cushing Historical Library (17 April 2024)
English Season 3, Episode 1
Kyle King, ECPCs Youth Initiative Chair, and Giovanni Caccamo, renowned Italian singer-songwriter, engage in a lively and thought-provoking discussion on the power of youth to elicit change. Giovanni, the visionary behind the global project Manifesto for Change - Youth and Future, aims to collect the stories, hopes, and perspectives of young people of all religions, cultures, gender identities, and social backgrounds from around the world to create a global book that will inspire a new humanism and drive positive change. The project is the outcome of Giovanni’s last album, “Parola”, a response to a call to youth by notable Italian writer Andrea Camilleri, to start a new humanism through the value of words. Hear Giovanni perform a cappella “Change”, his song of inspiration and hope for the youth of the world.
► Discover and submit your essay by July 30, 2024, to https://manifestoforchange.org for a chance to be published!
► YSM News | Words for Change: Yale students join global call to launch a new humanism
► Video interview | Giovanni Caccamo—Youth and Future: Manifesto for Change
Giovanni and his editorial team will select 100 of the most compelling essays for publication in a new volume that will be made available to the global community. Giovanni will donate all proceeds from the book and works to the Andrea Bocelli Foundation to support scholarships for young people in need.
All proceeds from the sale of the future global book will be donated to the Andrea Bocelli Foundation to provide scholarships to needy children and youth around the world.
Sponsored by the Early Childhood Peace Consortium (ECPC) in the Yale Child Study Center.
Research Assistant Yale OCD Research Clinic + PittLab Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit
Yale University
Kyle:
Hello and welcome to the. Joining me today is renowned Italian artist, singer-songwriter and visionary behind the global project, Manifesto for Change - Youth and Future, Giovanni Caccamo. My name is Kyle King, I’m a student here at Yale University and I’m honored to be here today.
While there are a lot of things that we can be grateful for in this world, there are a lot of problems, problems which unfortunately younger generations like my own will inherit unless we act now. It is thus imperative that we listen to and work with youth to set the course for a brighter future. And this is Giovanni’s mission precisely.
Before we begin I’d like to thank the Early Childhood Peace Consortium and its Youth Initiative at the Child Study Center for elevating this important topic just when it feels that peace and humanity are becoming increasingly hard to find in this world.
Now a little bit about my guest. Giovanni Caccamo, artist and award-winning singer-songwriter, was discovered in 2012 by legendary Italian artist Franco Battiato and Catarina Caselli. He has collaborated with Willem Dafoe, Andrea Bocelli, Patti Smith, Lang Lang, Antony and the Johnsons, Franco Battiato, Elisa, and many, many others.
Importantly, he’s the creator of the Manifesto for Change - Youth and Future, a book project that collects the stories, hopes and perspectives of youth from around the globe about creating a new humanism for a better and evolving future. Giovanni, thank you so much for being with us today.
Giovanni:
Hi. Thank you so much to you, Kyle, of course.
Kyle:
I appreciate it. Yeah. So I guess the first thing I wanted to ask you was just very general. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your passion for music and the arts?
Giovanni:
Of course. I was born in Sicily, in Modica in the very south of Italy. And I think that one of my key words in my life is death, because I lost my father to cancer when I was 10. And he was very devout to Our Lady of Fátima. He had a statuette in his room of Our Lady of Fátima, and he used to pray every day for her. Some weeks before he died some nuns came to my house and told my mother, “The suffering of your husband is a gift to your family.” And for many years this sentences destroyed me, because I thought how the death of a young father can be a gift to his family?
Kyle:
Understandable.
Giovanni:
And I started one of the most beautiful and incredible journey that we can do in our lives, so the journey to understand who we are. I start up psychotherapy, and of course it’s a journey that you start in one point of your life but never ends till the end of your days. But I found an answer, an interpretation to these words from these nuns, in a book of Tiziano Terzani that is called Un altro giro di giostra, in which this very famous journalist at the top of his career discovered to had cancer and said that the years of illness was the best years of his life. And I thought, “Okay, another fool here.”
But after he described how… He was living his dream, he realized his dream. He was traveling around the world, but he was living the life that other people wanted for him. He was doing what other people wanted for him. And so illness became an excuse to start doing only what he really wanted, to love only people that he wanted to love. And so I understood from this page of Tiziano Terzani, what was the gift that my father gave me, to understand at 18 years old that my life was a precious gift. And I started to live for light, for beauty behind music, all days of my life.
And so at one point my mother asked me, “And now, what do you want to do in your life? What do you want to became?” And I told her, “I want to be a singer-songwriter. I’m a singer-songwriter.” And she told me, “Okay, that’s not a job.”
Kyle:
My parents wouldn’t be okay with that.
Giovanni:
Yeah. So it’s a passion, not a job.
And so I started, I went to Milan, I started learning and study in architecture university in Milan, the Politecnico. During the day a student, and after 6:00 PM a dreamer. I try to understand how music and words can dance together. And my grandfather is a farmer, my mother is a teacher. So when I arrived to Milan I didn’t know anybody from the music business to help me to realize my dream. And so the only thing that I could do was to transform myself in a gentleman stalker.
And for 38 times in four years I stayed for hours down some offices of managers, producers and music labels, to wait for some people that could hear my music. And I gave my album, my first album, several times to these men and women, but nobody called me the first year. And so I thought, “Okay, maybe they listened to my music but my music is not enough.” And so I crashed this first album and I wrote another. But the second year, nobody called me. And so I thought, “Okay, maybe also this album is not good.” So I crashed it and I restart writing a third one.
And after four years of this I understood that maybe my mother was right. And I came back to Sicily and I said, “Okay, mom, I will be an architect with a passion for music.” And a very friend of mine few days later told me, “You cannot stop now. You know Franco Battiato, that is a very, very important songwriter, like a guru for us in Italian culture, a philosopher. Rented a house in Donnalucata that is very near my little city, Modica. And I decided to stay behind some bushes for hours, the 9th August of 2012, waiting for him.
My mother was very angry. “What are you doing? Are you going there outside his house?”
Kyle:
Just waiting.
Giovanni:
Yeah, “The police will catch you.” “Mom, I did this thing in Milan several times, you know? But no police came.” And so after four hours waiting under 40 degrees, very hot temperature in Sicily during summer, Franco Battiato came out from this house, looked at and told me in an horrible way, “What do you want from me? Do you have a CD?” “Yes, this is my CD.” “Okay, thank you. I will listen. Bye.”
I came to my house, I came back to my house, my mother told me, “Oh, how was the meeting?” “Very nice, yes, it was very funny”.
Kyle:
Encouraging.
Giovanni:
Encouraging, yes, of course. I went to the beach, and after I came back to my house and I found five missed calls in my telephone and one message from Franco Battiato. “I’m Franco Battiato, I tried to call you several times. I listened your CD and I want to produce it. Let’s meet tomorrow morning at the beach at 12:00.” Oh.
Kyle:
Wow, that’s incredible.
Giovanni:
Incredible, yes. And that was the start of a great journey with a great artist and incredible soul that was Franco Battiato, that for 10 years was behind me and behind my heart.
And so I think that the two word for change of my past life are death and dream. And Kyle, only when I found a place for death in my heart, in my soul, I start living. I have a little question to you, Kyle, why diamonds are more precious than iron for you?
Kyle:
I don’t know. I guess I never thought of it. Why?
Giovanni:
Because they are rare, more rare than iron. So you have less number of diamonds, and so they are more precious. No? And I think that death is a passage that put a limit to our days. And so our days transform their material from days of iron to days of diamonds. And so I think that the problem, it’s not death, the death of our bodies that will come for everybody. We are all the same in front of death. And the ancients said, “Memento mori,” that is, “Remember that you must die.” I want to transform this in, remember to live. We have to ask ourselves each day of our life, “Am I really feel alive?” And so…
Kyle:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things that are really interesting about that answer. First, I’m astonished at your passion and perseverance to get that music in front of people and do exactly what you wanted to do in this life. And I think it makes a lot of sense, that if you think about each day as this precious resource, like a diamond, that you want to make everything out of each day as you possibly can. It’s really, really inspiring. I’m glad you shared everything.
Giovanni:
Thank you so much.
Kyle:
I guess I kind of wanted to ask about your last album Parola, if you would be willing to tell us a little bit about it.
Giovanni:
Of course. My last album was a different album between the first three albums, because it was an answer. An answer to a mission that Andrea Camilleri, that is a very famous writer, Italian writer, asked to young generations. He said, “I’m very scared about the future, but I am sure that young generations will save the world and will create, will start a new humanism.” And he told us to start this new humanism from the value of words.
And so I thought, “Okay, we young people? We have to save the world?”
Kyle:
“What do you mean?”
Giovanni:
But I tried to answer to this question, and I create Parola, that in Italian means, “Word.” Each song is inspired by a poem, by texts from literature, a text from literature that was read in the album by some incredible voices, incredible friends of mine like Patti Smith, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Paris Smith, Aleida Guevara, Michele Placido, Liliana Segre, that created with me a bridge beyond generations.
So I think that we young people have to restart a dialogue with masters to create something special. So have the perception of our roots to create a new spring over our heads.
Kyle:
And those roots have to combine, intergenerational collaboration working with the masters that have come before us.
Giovanni:
Of course, of course.
Kyle:
I guess one thing that’s interesting about that is you transitioned from doing strictly music to then wanting to expand beyond the stage and talk to youth and pursue advocacy. So what made you want to make that transition and incorporate it into your music?
Giovanni:
Yes, because when I released my album I did a great concert with Patti Smith, Jesse Paris Smith and Rebecca Foon at MAXXI Museum in Rome. That night I thought that my answer was not enough to start a new humanism. And that Andrea Camilleri asked it to all young people, not to me, to start this humanism. And so I decided-
Kyle:
So maybe your album, you needed to go beyond just that.
Giovanni:
Of course, yes. And I decided to launch a call for ideas to all young people within 35 years old in Italy, first, asking them two questions. What do you want to change in our society and how? What is your word for change? Because you know, Kyle, we live in a world that talks about young people without listening to us.
Kyle:
Yeah, all the time.
Giovanni:
And we are living in the most productive age, the age of love and opportunity. I want to read you something that I didn’t know before, that a lot of incredible things happened in this life, in this age. For example, Bach wrote his Toccata and Fugue in D Minor at the age of 20. Michelangelo sculpted the Pietà at 23 and began painting the vault of the Sistine Chapel at 33. Joan of Arc successfully led the French army to free the city of Orleans at only 17. James Watt at 20 developed the first steam engine, and at 24 Michael Jackson released Thriller, today the best-selling album of all time.
Steve Jobs founded Apple at 21, Malala at only 17 said, “A child, a teacher, a book and a pen can save the world.” And she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, thanks to her enduring battles for the right to education. Marie Curie at 34 isolated the weight of a radium atom, a revolution in the history of science. Lewis Carroll at 33 wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Walt Disney invented Mickey Mouse at 27.
Kyle:
So these are clearly very important and productive years.
Giovanni:
Yeah. So it’s our time. We have to carpe diem.
And so in Italy, we created this Manifesto del cambiamento, that is the Italian version of the project. And now we decided to open this call for ideas from Italy to all the young people from the world, to all religions, backgrounds, gender identity and social classes, to build together our Manifesto for Change, a global book that will collect the stories, the longings and the outlooks of the new generations, we hope recreating a new humanism and marking the course of a possible future.
Because I think that the way you live, the way you vote, the way you perceive the world, the way you give a voice to the voiceless, the way you reach out to the most vulnerable people has an impact on everything around you. So only with the perception of our power, little but very big, to create a big choir of lights we can change something.
Kyle:
And so you kind of heard this call for a new humanism and heard it kind of said that we should do this through words at first. And then you extended this call to people in Italy and now you’re extending it worldwide. And that’s this Manifesto for Change project, if I understand it correctly?
Giovanni:
Exactly, yes. And of course you are in our project. And what I am asking to all young people, to answer, to write a text, to go to the website, of course, official website that is www.manifestoforchange.org, and download the PDF with the instructions in which you can find some examples of texts from the Italian version, of course translated in English.
Kyle:
And what do they normally express? What do the youth typically say?
Giovanni:
Oh you know, a lot of incredible pages of our emotions. For example, beauty of the relationship between humanity and virtuality, or there’s loneliness and alienation. And also welcoming. For example, there’s an Egyptian boy, Raymond Karam that came to Sicily in an horrible way, from Mediterranean Sea, drinking gasoline in an horrible way. And this story help us to reflect about welcoming. We have to… Of course empathy, you know?
Kyle:
Yeah, and what it means to be welcomed to a new country and…
Giovanni:
Yes, yes. And understand that each one has a story, has a past and can create a future, and can help us to understand who we are. Only together we can do something special in our life, and we are not alone.
And I think that the most important thing, if you want to participate to this project, not you of course but you that are looking this interview, this special interview, is to decide to share your soul. Share something that made you suffer, maybe, something that was not good in your life in the past, but you used this page of your life to create something more, something new, like the death of my father or like the indifference of the labels in my life. And are very little things rather than wars, climate change.
And we are in a very, very delicate page of humanity. And so it’s our duty to understand what are the most impressive change we need.
Kyle:
Yeah, and think about how we’re going to get there together.
Giovanni:
Yes. It’s our world. We have to imagine something new, as Yoko Ono and Joe Lennon did with Nutopia, with Imagine, the song that moved all the world. And we have to do something. We need to do something.
Kyle:
Yeah, it certainly feels like we need to do something in this day and age. I’m curious, what’s your word for change and what’s the change you want to see in the world?
Giovanni:
My word for change is gratitude. And it was very difficult to found it, because I thought, “Okay, the first word for change of this project, it’s very important and should be a positive word for change.”
And I think that gratitude is perfect, because I traveled a lot in my life and was very curious how, when you go to some poor countries, it’s very easier to find somebody smiling. When you go in our cities it’s often rare to find somebody smiling. And so I think that we are losing something in our humanity, and gratitude is the first instrument that we can use to percept the gift that every day we receive.
So I think that we have two exercises to do in our life to improve our gratitude. The first is we wake up in the morning, we take a coffee, and after a few minutes we are angry for five, six little problems that are a poison that poisons our day. No? And we have to stop and think about these five problems, and after try to think, to feel positive things that are in a right way in this day.
You know, pandemic suddenly turned off one of the button, the green button of our life, the button of freedom that we have ignored until then. And we start to desire, to dream to go out and to hug some friends. That was something that before was…
Kyle:
Yeah. Well you didn’t think about it, it just happened.
Giovanni:
And I thought, “Why?” I didn’t…
Kyle:
“Why wasn’t I grateful for this when I had it?”
Giovanni:
Yes. And so we can continue focusing on what we don’t have and be angry of this, or we can change our perspective and start to give value to the green button, when our green. Okay?
Kyle:
Yeah, when we have the opportunity to do these things.
Giovanni:
Where we have the opportunity, yes. So coffee, hungry, we stop, we breathe and we think. I’ll give you an example. My father died when I was 10, but my mother is still alive and she’s a green button. And so I put off my mother and I try to imagine my life without her. Will arrive a moment in which she will die and I will say, “Okay, I was so happy when she was there.” So I put off my mother, I put off, I don’t know, the sun. I put off my legs. And after a few minutes of this exercise you will suffer about this. And when you can start, you can push the reset button and all the patterns will-
Kyle:
Everything comes back.
Giovanni:
Yeah, you will understand that your day is great. And so you have only to say thank you and [inaudible 00:25:45] over.
And the second exercise that is very simple, at the end of our day when we go to sleep and we scroll all the Instagram pages with our eyes that are full of light…
Kyle:
What? I never do that. What?
Giovanni:
Oh, nice. Very nice.
Kyle:
No, I’m joking.
Giovanni:
The angel Kyle. We switch off our telephone, we switch off our telephone, we close the lights and also our eyes, and we try to rewind our day and try to find 10 or 12 little things that changed our day in a positive way. Little windows of happiness, you know? Our speech today, New Haven, that is a new city for me to discover. Yale University, the blue sky, my favorite ice cream, something simple.
Kyle:
Yeah, just everything. All those slices of life that put a smile on your face throughout the day.
Giovanni:
Yeah. The smile of a passerby. And try to go to sleep with these images. And the director of our dream will put in our mind a great film, a positive film.
And so I hope that in your life there will be some more gratitude.
Kyle:
Yeah. I certainly think I should incorporate those, ‘cause there’s certainly times in my life where I’ll wake up and I’ll have assignments to do and I’ll get super stressed and then I’ll get all bummed out and angry, like you said, about all the stuff that I have to do that day. And I probably don’t take enough time to think about all the things that I do have, and the blue sky and a library like this to study in.
Giovanni:
Yes. We have to, we have to think about it.
And there’s a song that inspired all this project, that is the collaboration in the album with Patti Smith and Jesse Paris Smith that is called Change. I released in an Italian version of course, but I did an English version that is not released yet. But I want to sing for you.
Kyle:
Yeah, please.
Giovanni:
Yeah. And I think that can be a little hug to all of you.
MUSIC:
A drop into the ocean
breath upon the wind the beauty of the silence
The chance to breathe it in
Freedom feels alive and full of hope
For tomorrow
Look back on our reflection
So Far from all intentions
We’re paving over cracks that
Are craving our attention
And when we look and see what we’ve become
It’s hard to swallow
All the excuses all the reasons for the hunger
We’re just trying to resist from going under
But there’s still a chance for us to turn the page, to make a change
All humanity faces
an interior reflection
Re-awake our hope and
Be the drop in the ocean
Find the deep in the shallows
Breaking through like an arrow
If we do they will follow
Everyone has the mission
To reawaken this fighting
For whatever we build and believe in
We got the chance in our hands to lead the way
The power to wound, the power to heal, the power to feel
the power to change
The choice is here for making
The chance is here for taking
There’s lesson to be learned
Some rules needing breaking
Reimagine our world and all of that will be done
We were all once just a child full of wonder
With our hearts upon our sleeves not hiding under
There’s still a chance for us to turn the page, to make a change
All humanity faces
an interior reflection
Re-awake our hope and
Be the drop in the ocean
Find the deep in the shallows
Breaking through like an arrow
If we do they will follow
Everyone has the mission
To reawaken this fighting
For whatever we build and believe in
We got the chance in our hands to lead the way
The power to wound, the power to heal, the power to feel
the power to change
Kyle:
That was beautiful. And I really like what you said about sometimes, especially as a younger person, it feels like the world is pressing down on you and you feel like you might be going under, like you said in the song. But it’s nice to think about the other side of that song where there’s hope. And together we can…
Giovanni:
Of course. We can do something.
Kyle:
Yeah, we can both be drops in the ocean and make a change.
Giovanni:
And so Kyle, of course you will write your text, you did it maybe. But I’m asking to all Yale students, all special souls to reflect about some aspects in our society that we want to change, or something that we want to paint in a new way in our society. And try to open your heart, your soul to other people and share the more intimate part of your life to others.
I think that mistakes like my English are part of life and we have to hug them. We have to hug death to create a peaceful society, a lighter society together. And so thank you so much.
Kyle:
And thank you so much for being here. Just thank you so much for your commitment to raising youth’s voices, both here at Yale and around the world. I’d like to think that the younger generations are going to be tomorrow’s leaders, and that they definitely need a chance to have a say in what tomorrow looks like if they’re going to be the leaders.
Giovanni:
Of course, it’s our time.
Kyle:
It is.
And to all of the people watching, I’d ask you the same question that Giovanni is asking the youth. What do you want to see change in society in which you live, and how do you want to see that change happen? Your answer is not just important in these times, but it’s necessary. You can learn more about Giovanni and how you can participate in the Manifesto for Change at manifestoforchange.org. Your voice matters.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
For breaking news and to stay connected, follow us on social media. Sign up to get our E-News delivered straight to your inbox.