Claudio Chieffo (1945-2007)

I Have a Great,
Great Friend
On August 19, just a few hours before the opening of the Meeting and after two years of fighting his disease, one of the witnesses who has most left a mark on our history “has returned to the house of the Father.” We bid him farewell by recounting our continuing friendship

by Massimo Bernardini

Claudio’s contagious and serene smile (though always tinged with melancholy), would burst completely open mainly on two occasions: whenever a song would come to him–and there was something amazing in the grateful awe that event would provoke in him–and whenever he would be able to lead a crowd singing that song. Chieffo bet everything on this unforeseen musical “vocation,” even more than on record sales or the public recognition of his status as a singer-songwriter. (Nonetheless, the balance sheet of his endeavors includes 3,000 concerts, 113 songs translated into several languages, and 10 LPs / CDs.) Right from the start, being in the midst of his people and becoming their voice was for him the highest  satisfaction and the most important responsibility. The old pictures of  the early sixties show us Claudio as an unexpected presence at the first GS gatherings lead by Father Giussani. He spent his life–with limited means but always with the utmost respect for his listeners–generously performing for large as well as small audiences, always aware of the task of carrying everywhere, through his songs, the beauty and the truth he had encountered. That same awareness led him, during the pseudo-revolutionary turmoil of the ‘70s, to visit the Christians of Eastern Europe, beginning with the invitation to “Sacrosong” in Warsaw in 1974 (Chieffo was the only Italian there, and he sang in front of Cardinal Wojtyla and Cardinal Wyszyn´ski), up through the many clandestine visits of the following years. His marriage to Marta, the birth of their three children, Martino, Benedetto, and Maria Celeste, the many encounters with John Paul II, the new recording experiences, and even his participation in television events, as well as the hardship of going back to his middle school students the morning after a concert (for most of his life Claudio taught literature in Forlí, his hometown), are the stepping stones of a remarkable and unique career. Gaber and Guccini (two noted Italian singer-songwriters), whom he met at public events as well as in private encounters, would look at his “itinerary” with dazed regard, surprised by the discovery that this, their same job, could be conducted, year after year, outside of every traditional commercial and theatrical beaten path, and in total and unwavering unity with one’s audience. Maybe Chieffo’s secret was just this: he did not perceive his public as an audience, but as a community, a precious listener, a person, with whom, in time, he grew, being part of the same history, and thus leaving his own indelible mark.