EdBarbanera: story, voice and personal fight of a creative spirit
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We interviewed EdBarbanera during Pride Month 2021 to find out more about his story and to get infected by the strength he faces his battles with.
EdBarbanera, a.k.a. Edoardo Lazzoni, calls himself a Storyteller. On the occasion of the 2021 Pride Month closing and the release of his new single, we chatted with the songwriter who exorcised his weaknesses, turning them into strength. This urge of telling about himself immediately comes up while talking to him in person, just like in his music, that talks about him in a very introspective and delicate way. It’s his intimate interlocutor and his means of expression.
He graduated in 2014 at Tech Music School (BIMM today) in London, then he came back to Italy to follow his dream and started composing his own songs. Recently he decided to use the art he loves to get into some sensitive issues which touch him deeply: homophobia and bullying.
Since he was a child, he’s been targeted by schoolmates with discriminations and insults, but today he decided to stand up and expose himself in order to face off the pain and traumas that changed him. At the same time telling the world about his story, which is experienced by so many people but faced only by a few. Sexual freedom is a right which bullying victims often deprive themselves of, because they get humiliated by offences and abuses. Rising up against it is necessary, vital, it’s right.
Edoardo rebelled in the gentlest way, writing a genuine song, Triangoli Rosa. The single is addressed to his parents who have always been by his side in the hardest moments.
Here, the reference is unequivocal: the pink triangles, cloth badges sewn over prisoners’ vests in Nazi concentration camps to differentiate homosexual males. The quote is strong and wants to underline the extreme need of a cultural evolution that is still current today. Nowadays, the education of equality and acceptance of diversities remains necessary. EdBarbanera is pushed to speak about these issues by sufferance and traumas he knew first-hand.
About his adolescence as a victim of bullying, he says: “the tipping point is when there’s not only the others who hate you, but there’s also you hating yourself”.
The artist decided to use different channels to share his point of view, not only music. So, during the pandemic he decided to use Instagram to expose himself and talk about his past, to raise awareness to the homophobia issues.
After that, he joined a campaign against bullying sponsored by Sprite with Antonio Dikele Distefano, in which he could spread his message to a wider audience. During Pride 2021, he performed at Blanco, an iconic venue in Milan Porta Venezia, the perfect location to host the event for the official release of Triangoli Rosa. Above all, to celebrate the natural enthusiasm coming from a new project moved by truth and love for art.