When Gino Paoli died last week, most of the reactions went back to a handful of songs that, over time, almost detached themselves from the rest of his catalogue. Among them, Il cielo in una stanza is probably the one that people recognize best, after just a few notes, even if they are not particularly familiar with Italian music of that period.
Paoli’s career had started in a very specific context. He was part of the group of songwriters later called the Scuola Genovese, alongside names like Luigi Tenco, Fabrizio De André, and Bruno Lauzi. It was not a formal movement, but rather a cluster of artists working in and around Genoa at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s.
