Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of a character I am very fond of and about whom I have also written a book, the singer-songwriter Rino Gaetano.
In these days, among other things, "Se mai qualcuno capirà Rino Gaetano" (Edizioni Arcana) is back in the bookshops in paperback.
What does this have to do with Kenya and Africa?
Apart from the fact that everything that concerns my cultural and social formation has to do with Kenya, because it helped to bring me there and make me understand it better.
But there is also another reason.
My first dreamed Africa was a musical Africa.
Since I was a child, tribal rhythms have always enchanted me.
They inspired wild dances, as disjointed as children are when they jump and struggle.
Then there was the shouting, the expressions in unknown languages of which one could recognise guttural sounds, even funny ones: "gula gula" "ungu badungu" and so on.
Someone in Milan sang the cabaret song, a bit heavy-handed but funny, of the bantu chief Balalonga of the Vakaputanga tribe, while at the oratory echoed the phantom battle cry 'Oh alele, alele cikatonga, ambassa ambassa ambassa, oh alé baloà baloè' which did not belong to any language or idiom and did not mean anything, but it gave an idea of how in the Dark Continent people were always ready to party or to go to war, but always with the same predisposition to dance and sing happily.
My approach to Africa as a land further south than Italy, and like our south (that of part of my origins) full of contradictions, came with a song by Rino Gaetano: Metà Africa, Metà Europa.
Many times I sang it on my Italian tours (a beautiful reggae version during the promotion of the album "Nel regno degli animali" and a more country version for the tour of Esilio Volontario in 2016) and many times I also played it at shows in Malindi and Watamu with Sbringo.
I listened to it for the first time in 1980, when I bought the cassette of the newly released album 'E io ci sto', without knowing that it would have been the last of the just 31-year-old Salvatore Antonio Gaetano, known as Rino, originally from Crotone like my grandfather Francesco, who crashed his car on 2 June 1981 on the Via Nomentana in Rome, without ever knowing that world beneath the Sahara desert that fascinated him so much. 
"Africa, the sun the dunes is Africa,
far away but linked to America
The tribal rites of cardinal sorcerers,
of trivial ministers is Africa.
Africa, burnt black soil is Africa
The bombs, the blood is Africa
A mother praying, a police stop
A shot, an injured person is Africa
Africa but for you who work and don't laugh
For those who like you no longer play
This land is still Europe..."
Well, Rino Gaetano's Africa, like my twelve-year-old self, was a dreamed Africa, idealised but alive in the memories of a boy from the south.
A wonderful but poor south, rich in resources but also in abuse and ignorance, in traditions and mysteries. But in the end, the message that came through was the one I still firmly believe in now, after 40 years: for those who no longer know how to laugh and play with their lives, with the light-heartedness of a child, this land is still Europe.