Music, paper and life
12 9 2022
Music, paper and life

When music meets comics

There is a universe where music and comics, dreams and reality come together as one. The world of Giorgio Poi, singer of the Italian indie wave, and ZUZU, cartoonist, collided a few years ago, and now they are launching their first collaborative project. Giorni Felici (Happy Days) is ZUZU’s second and latest comic book, telling the story of a young girl. Claudia, who faces the joys and difficulties of life. The soundtrack of this cartoon is Poi’s discography that includes songs such as Vinavil and Tubature, tracks that accompany Claudia during her journey.

The two guests, interviewed by Irene Graziosi, talked about their creative process. For ZUZU everything starts with the concept she wants to express. Once she finds the right words she then shapes the characters and draws the first trait or a sketch on the sheet. For Giorgio, instead, it’s a matter of improvisation. A flow of random chords or some vocals can be the starting point for a song. When he has a first draft of the track he writes the lyrics, then thinks about the arrangement for each instrument.

But there’s another important aspect that influences the creative process of both artists and that’s the one of the oniric world. ZUZU, indeed, confessed she quite often paints some drawings from the memories of dreams she made. Also Poi said that sometimes he dreams about melodies or riffs but he struggles to remember them in the morning.

The two authors then talked about the origins of their creative journeys. ZUZU started to make actual drawings when she was four and since then she never stopped. As regards Giorgio Poi, he grabbed the guitar for the first time when he was fourteen, but he wrote the first song when he was just eleven years old. When Graziosi asked them about what scares the most about the future, the two guests agreed that it is the fear of remaining the same. As people that seek art in everything they do and see, for now they seem to have a lot more to tell us.