The man who tamed the harmonica

The band members join Pasi to sing at the stage. [Photo by Ruan Fan/chinadaily.com.cn]

When did you pick up the harmonica, as a child?

An old teen actually, I was seventeen then. I loved Bob Dylan, I love the sound of harmonica. It's the signature in his music. But he was an average player on harmonica. For me, that was it. And when I discovered the real solos in the blues, I was amazed by this instrument. In the first place, I didn't want to be a harmonica player, I just bought one, and then I got curious about who did what with the harmonica, and I discovered James Cotton, little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson…all these great guys, and I was like, this can't be that they are doing this good with the harmonica. And I thought I wanted to do it. So I went to a group class, it was not really effective. And then a spent a lot of hours by myself.

Do you also play other instruments?

Yea, I play guitar, I bought a guitar, and a trumpet. When I was discovering harmonica, I really wanted to discover everything else, so I bought a lot of different instruments, and started singing, writing, composing. It's an open door to a wild world.

You grow up in a family where the mother is a French and the father is Italian, which culture has influenced you more in your music?

The two cultures are pretty alike, they match very well. I'm both of them. But personally, I think Italian songs are more romantic, because French songs are always about love, which can be cheesy sometimes. Italian songs are directly inspired by the opera, you can feel that directly from pop songs.

Where do you get your inspiration for writing songs? Can you give an example?

Something affected me, or I personally feel touched. It can be the loss of someone, end of a relationship, or something that happened to someone else.

I have a friend of mine, he's 35, and he's getting close to 40. And he's a homosexual, and he came from Spain, a country that has Catholic beliefs, which makes it very hard to admit the fact that he's homosexual. That was a real pain, and he used to tell me about this. He said he really needed to tell people but don't know how, so I wrote a song about it–A man I know.