Between travel, music and global energy, Nyco Ferrari reveals himself: “This is who I am”

Sciuscià’s editorial team interviews the graduates of Musicultura 2024

Nyco Ferrari: today singer-songwriter, yesterday poet, tomorrow raver; always an insatiable traveler. On his Spotify profile he writes: «I find songs around (…) I play the stories I have collected as if I were closing the pages of a travel diary». To cope with the different cities in which he lived – London, Dublin, Paris, Shanghai, Milan, New York – he also served as a waiter when needed. His artistic name, in fact, was born in the cellar of a restaurant in Central Park, in front of a Pepsi box with “NY-Cola” written on it. It all started from there. An artistic project where he collects all the musical gifts taken around the world and unites them in a formula based on indie, pop, jazz, songwriting and electronics; Arabian balance minor scales and Celtic ballads; the depth of the intimate lyrics and the lightness of the dance sound that makes everyone stand up and dance. The result is music that moves from vital energy and, like a ritual, connects people to the ultimate meaning of existence and renews them. The song she will perform at the 2024 Alumni Concert, how i am it’s a real business card: a program statement that Nyco Ferrari speaks for itself with great confidence. A little like he does in this interview.

Nyco Ferrari: today indie-pop singer-songwriter, yesterday student and poet, tomorrow raver. They write about you that the words “ritual”, “connection” and “rebirth” contain the formula of your music. Can you tell us more about this?

It has to do with my worldview. I strongly believe in the energy that surrounds us as humans, and that this is the same energy that the universe is made of. Music, art, like a thousand other disciplines, allow us to reconnect with this energy, rediscover the meaning of what we do. Let’s just say that I see music as a ritual that regenerates us by connecting with the world.

Nyco Ferrari – Live Review – Musicultura 2024

Nyco Ferrari – Live Review – Musicultura 2024

In your Spotify profile you write that your stage name was born in the cellar of a restaurant in New York, after seeing a box of Pepsi Cola written “NY-Cola”. It all started from there. Would you like to tell us the source of your music project in the Big Apple?

I came to New York two months after releasing the self-titled album Curtain, under the stage name Nicola Savi Ferrari. But in the Big Apple everything is fast, everything is practical, work. And that music, that identity with a double surname, was too heavy to find its place among the crazy gears of that great machine. There, swinging like a pendulum between the cafe in Central Park where I worked and the jam sessions in Greenwich Village, I had to ease myself. That bad Pepsi Cola box changed my name, and two days later I went to a famous Irish bar in Times Square to propose for a concert. I shook hands with the owner, an old Irishman with a strong accent, saying “Hi, I’m Nyco Ferrari”, and he looked at me and said: “nice name”. There I realized that I had just been born a new song of music.

You are an insatiable traveler, constantly traveling the world: at 19 you left everything and left for London, then Dublin, Paris, Shanghai and the aforementioned New York. What are the most important gifts – in terms of musical and material appeal – that you have brought with you from the cities you have lived in so far?

In London I played for Camden Town drum and bass. In Dublin I listened to Celtic songs in the bars of Temple Bar. In Paris I filled my heart with Aznavour, accordions under bridges and the songs of singer-songwriters from all over the world who gathered every Tuesday evening behind the Pantheon to sing in the open square. Petit Bonheur la Chance microphone. But already in France I traveled between the restaurant where I worked with the jazz of the Duc de Lombards. In Shanghai I tried to listen to jazz at Xin Tian Di, but it bored me; I preferred listening to old people singing songs with lots of “OO” and “AAA” in the park or Czech Er Hu dancers in the tourist streets. And then, in New York, lots and lots of jazz. But living in Milan was also a continuous journey. For me it is a city of musicians and singers, and it is thanks to him that I understood who I wanted to be an artist.

The arrangements, instruments and tribal rhythm of some of your songs, however, reveal Arabic and African influences. How did you approach the Middle Eastern world?

I think it’s about some of the trips I took as a child with my parents, as well as my vision of music as a ritual. Non-Western musical scales, especially those associated with the Arab world and the Middle East, bring me back to thoughts of sunny days and distant lands where one can leave his metropolitan structure, reconnect with the senses and, because of the absence of the world . the world, in the literal sense of ‘existence. When I sing improvising one of these scales, chess, small harmonica, I travel. With the right acoustics I could go for hours without noticing.

Nyco Ferrari – Live Review – Musicultura 2024

Nyco Ferrari – Live Review – Musicultura 2024

“Living as I am / then turning life into sound”, you sing in the song that was chosen by them for the Musicultura Alumni Festival. It has been named How I am and it’s like your business card. How did the need to speak for yourself in a sincere and free way come about in this song and in the album of the same name?

After New York, back to Italy, I started releasing some songs that were more popular than my pre-New York songs. But I had the impression that, despite the simple music compared to that of the first album, I still could not communicate with my audience. One day, sitting on the pier, I wondered what connected great songwriters to their listeners and it immediately became clear to me: loyalty. “I have to tell myself,” I told myself, “or no one will know the true meaning of my music”. The first verse, already set to music, formed itself in my head How I am: “I never told you who I am”. And from there I just followed my speech, talking to an imaginary listener, and then I continued into the other nine songs on the album.