In the 9th episode of the 2nd season of the podcast “Flasim”, the guest in a conversation with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was renowned singer Elsa Lila, who revealed the ups and downs in her career.
At the beginning of the conversation, Prime Minister Rama asked the singer about the recital held in Tirana a few days ago.
“It has been a long time away from the cameras, away from the public, but for me, time is totally relative. In fact, I didn’t disappear. I lived in Rome. I studied baroque music. I have had many other experiences that have enriched me and allowed me to return even stronger, more artistically prepared, with more innovative ideas, also because I have evolved in my artistic ideas. In my concert, which was a revival of these 27 years of my career since 1996, I performed the songs I have realized in these 27 years. But, conceptually and artistically, I have evolved because I am dealing with baroque music, music that happened between the 1600s and the mid-1700s, experimenting with the natural voice. Of course, music is not told with words; it needs to be heard, and I hope to come to Albania, to opera this time, because it is music that is more suitable for opera. Let me finally tell you specifically about this famous baroque music that I have been talking about in interviews for a long time,” said Lila.
“The idea is very revolutionary, in fact. This music has been sung for 300 years, I’m talking about sung baroque music, not played. It is sung with an imposed voice, that is, with a classical imposed voice. And I think this kind of imposition separates the listener a bit from baroque materials,” said the singer.
“Baroque materials are a bit difficult to listen to, but when conveyed with an imposed voice – which is wonderful, of course; my father is a tenor, and I adore imposed voices. I grew up in the opera of Tirana, among imposed voices – the audience that doesn’t have its ear cultivated with this kind of music is somewhat afraid, creates a kind of distance between the performer and the listener,” she added.
“I have, in the meantime… I have recorded all of ‘Stabat Mater’ by Giovanni Battista. So, I thought of interpreting baroque works with a natural voice. It is a vast process. In the sense of vastness, not on my part, but to serve it to the public. It is difficult for them to digest it, and I am gradually bringing it to them,” Lila continued.
The singer also revealed a novelty she introduced in the recital, which Rama said, “her craziness is fantastic”.
“I combined Lasgush Poradeci’s ‘Dremit Liqeri’ and added Mozart to it. From a piano concerto, I transformed it into a song, and it’s an experiment that in Italy, baroque experts who have heard it, have called fantastic craziness. I really want you to hear it because when you hear it, you will understand the experiment. In other words, the artistic world I was living in was not enough for me anymore,” said Lila.
Prime Minister Edi Rama and singer Elsa Lila also recalled the time when the Socialist Party organized a hunger strike as a protest against the government of that time.
“Yes, fantastic madness. For example, I remember a madness you told me back then, that you were into diving and that you were very eager to reach a point underwater where your breath would stop and then live without breath for as long as you could and then with the dilemma of whether you really should come out to seek breath again or wait for another breath that is not breath. Did you reach that point where you could breathe?” asked Rama.
“Yes, I lived in Madagascar for 4 years, in Africa, and since my ex-boyfriend, Eva’s father, was a professional diver, I became an almost professional diver, so in those years, I lived more underwater than on land. The silence of living underwater, given that I dived three times a day, also at night because the depth is enchanting, and the ocean always takes you deeper. Like thoughts. The ocean is like thoughts. The more you deepen, the deeper it goes down, and then you need a hand to pull you out to get out of those complicated thoughts we have,” continued the singer.
“I was in Madagascar when I was on a hunger strike. It was a pit stop in Albania, and I found myself here those days for family reasons when that fantastic madness happened that you all rose together. After Eva’s birth, when she turned 1 and a half, I decided to return to Rome because things between me and my ex-husband did not go well. I was tired of staying on an island. The island was too narrow for me; I wanted to return to civilization, to Rome. And I did return. And when I returned, I dived into the baroque from the Indian Ocean,” she added.
During the conversation, the singer also revealed her passion for creating artistic things manually. “I have learned to work with wood. I have become a very good woodcarver. There came a time when I wanted to work with my hands. To use my hands. You know because with hands, you create, and you know how necessary it is to create with your hands from scratch, something. Or to transform something from a material. So, the passion for working with wood was born in me, and I started to build wooden objects; I continue to do so. It’s an art,” she said.
“I do it at home because I have a very large space and a very large terrace that allows me to work. For a while, I had a woodcarver in Rome with whom I collaborated to learn how the work was done. Above all, in the treatment of wood, what you should put on it, the first layer, the second layer, etc, so that it then lives. So, I dealt with woodcarving and botany, with flowers, with plants. The passion for plants was born in me. I started to grow plants; on my terrace, I have about 150 plants that I planted myself from the beginning, I put music on them, mostly Vivaldi, they like it a lot. You immediately see how they change their face when you put music on them. It’s a kind of way to stay in touch with nature, with the energy of nature in a city as large as Rome and chaotic and noisy, which removes the spirit, removes the contact with the truth, with reality. So, among wood processing and plants, the growth of plants is a kind of way to stay strongly connected to reality,” Lila continued.
The singer further stated that she has been in Tirana every year.
“I come; I have come all the time to Tirana. I just haven’t appeared. I have come with my Eva every year. I usually spend New Year’s here; I spend Easter here. In summer, I come often because Eva prefers to spend the summer in southern Albania. So, I have seen Tirana gradually develop, gradually clean up, gradually evolve, and we have reached a fantastic moment, I think, where I come with my Italian band, and half of them say they want to move here, it’s so beautiful. How clean it is compared to Rome, how safe it is as a city compared to Rome, I’m talking about street crime at night in the center. There, I don’t go out alone in the evening because it’s dangerous to go out since many ethnicities coexist, and crime has reached very high levels. I like Tirana lately as much as I am thinking that when Eva finishes this cycle of studies, why not transfer here; it is lived very well now; it is no longer that Tirana of some time ago. You have done a fantastic job all together as a team,” said Lila.
For Prime Minister Rama, Tirana has come to that point where it is more enjoyable when he visits. “Meanwhile, when you live, consider that it has its own problems like any other place and still has many things to do. I think they are doable, I think it is a time of Tirana, and Albania, when not only things are beautiful, but there are also people who can do them, and, moreover, the most important thing is that there are always many, not all, but many people who believe that things are being done and always do better, always more, so to speak, without cursing, things that do not have to be cursed; you can make remarks, but at this point, we are, and of course, this translates automatically into a lot of tourism. Tirana, for example, this year has had a super tourist boom that it has not had before. Even when more tourists started coming to Albania, it’s not that they focused on Tirana, but they mainly came to go to other places. This year has been something extraordinary. I may have noticed it for the first time, perhaps because it has been massive; I did not notice it in previous years. For the first time, I noticed that in July, but especially in August, when Tirana usually has only those who could not have the opportunity or did not want to go on vacation at that desired time, it was only for them. In the summer, Tirana has become international,” said Rama.
“It is absolutely true. You have done a fantastic job. For me, it is always more beautiful when I return here,” added the singer.
