BARI – “And the years pass and you grow up, a thousand memories in your head, instead of your blood a thousand questions, you feel like a lonely dog and zero hope”. In the song “Senza Cancellare” from 2010, Gionnyscandal screamed out his pain. He was 20 years old and had gone through the orphanage and then the deaths of his adoptive parents and grandmother. Today, however, today that he is 31 years old and has become a popular singer-songwriter thanks to the Mediaset program “Le Iene”, Gionnyscandal or Gionata Ruggieri or better yet Gionata Di Dio as a teenager and pre-teen He has mother and Being able to organically hug father again, rediscovered his roots and discovered so much about himself including the fact that he has 100% Apulian blood.
In Carlotta Bizzarri’s beautiful, moving television service – La Gazzetta has previewed it and we publish three images here exclusively – correspondent Veronica Ruggeri traces the story of Gionata Ruggieri, aka Gionnyscandal, with her usual charming tact.
The photos of him as a child with bangs and pubic nose appear in the foreground while the artist recalls how he discovered he had been abandoned “on the stairs of an orphanage in Pisticci” in the Matera area and how he had that Lombard couple Ruggieri adopted. He, a tall man, 1.90 tall, died at the age of 5. Antonella’s mother when she was 10 years old. Gionata then anchored himself in the embrace of his grandmother from Veneto, but in the meantime he became rebellious, uncontrollable at school. When she too dies, the world falls upon her. Sharp questions explode in him like “Why was I born?”, “Why did everyone leave me?”.
Meanwhile, the boy luckily opens a creative breach in the dam of anger and emotion that could have derailed him. Gionata becomes Gionnyscandal and writes songs and sings. Videos on Youtube, concerts, record deals, success and yet an abyss of emptiness in my chest.
He tries unsuccessfully to find his birth parents through social media, then turns to the “hyenas” and the search intensifies and becomes more systematic. Appeals come from RadioNorba and Telebari. Nothing.
The turning point is when Gionny and the Italia 1 squad break the delay and go to Pisticci. There, in the community, an excerpt from the birth certificate shows that this child was not abandoned. His parents recognized him, but then the court ruled that they obviously could not raise him for very serious reasons and made him adoptable. Gionata turns this document over in his hands: “I’ve had 30 years of questions on one sheet,” he comments, visibly enthusiastic. So he finds out that his last name is Di Dio and that he was actually born on October 27, 1991 at 6.50 p.m. in Pisticci, but at the same time he is more Apulian than Lucanian: his mother Rita comes from Salento and his father Antonio comes from Taranto.
Word has now gotten around the village and a number of reports are reaching the “hyenas” editors, allowing the boy to hug his birth parents again and replenish the kisses and cuddles he missed.
Tears of joy flow in the video and we are sure that they will flow into cats and dogs among the – many – fans of the “Reservoir Dogs” at prime time today.
All that remains is to prepare a supply of tissues and then settle into waiting for the artistic dimension of Gionnyscandal to have time to metabolize and elaborate. Waiting for these new words, these new tones that today beat jubilantly in the chest of this boy who – to say “without erasing” – no longer has a thousand questions instead of blood.