THE BLUES IS ALIVE

Mauro is an Italian from Ascea (Sa), who has lived in Dallas, Texas, for over thirty years. After work, he plays the blues in small clubs, forgotten bars, and suburban jam sessions. A man out of place, out of touch with time, yet profoundly sincere. For him, the blues is much more than a musical genre: it’s a form of truth. Playing is his way of being in the world, of resisting, of healing old wounds that date back a long time, some from his childhood in Italy, others from the experience of emigration, loneliness, and disillusionment. One day, Gianni, a filmmaker friend who lives in Ascea, joins him in Dallas. They haven’t seen each other in thirty years, and Gianni gives Mauro an old photo of the two of them together in the ancient excavations of Ascea-Velia (Sa) during a field trip. Gianni is a television director. He’s ironic, rational, and ambitious. He regards Mauro with a certain condescension: he considers him a kind of voluntary castaway who has abandoned his goals and glory. Yet he decides to follow him on his nocturnal adventures with a camera, to understand why that musical genre has captivated him. Through Gianni’s eyes, but always within Mauro’s world, we discover a different America: the nightclubs of Dallas, Mississippi, Memphis, and New Orleans.
The many foreign immigrants who populate the musical life of the South, the daily lives of those who have chosen to remain faithful to an almost niche genre. This journey reveals the faces that populate Mauro’s microcosm: legendary modern bluesmen and others now retired, club owners, street musicians, African Americans who accept him. Every time Mauro and Gianni meet the musicians, something unusual happens: to each person Mauro interviews, he gives a small white note—white for us viewers of the series because we never see the details on it—so its meaning remains secret and is revealed only at the end. The gesture is silent, intimate, and never explained. The series follows Mauro for 30 days: the days Gianni spends in Dallas and then in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
In this short span of time, Gianni senses a change and begins to see Mauro with new eyes, for who he is: not a castaway who hasn’t found his way, but a man who had the courage to be radically honest with himself. Mauro manages to change Gianni, who, thanks to the blues, learns to listen, to consider others, to be free of prejudice. The blues, initially rejected, becomes the key to embracing life, its wounds and its beauty. In the final scenes, something unexpected happens: All the musicians encountered in the documentary reappear, this time together, on the same stage, for a powerful impromptu concert organized by Mauro. Only then will we understand: the blank note each of them had received was an invitation to this moment where there was a date, a time, a place, a call to unite in a single, shared celebration of music, memory, and connection. At the end of the thirty days, Gianni leaves. But something inside him has changed. He is a better person.