About dal Mississippi al Po and Seba Pezzani

Seba Pezzani is a man with many strings to his bow. Not only does he organise and run the festival, he is a gifted musician, translator, writer, and journalist. Seba has translated many academic books including books by ark Twain, Aldous Huxley, Jeffery Deaver, Clive Cussler, Joe Lansdale and Will Kaufman's book on Woody Guthrie. He's also a published author and has written three books; novel 'Tuttifruitti' with his friend Luca Crovi and two non-fiction books, 'Americrazy' and 'Istruzioni per l'USA'. As a journalist, he's written several articles for two national newspapers, Il Giornale" and "l'Unita', usually focused on American pop culture, arts, music, and books.

Despite being exceptionally busy he always found every available moment to come to ensure that we were happy, well fed and enjoying our experience. 

Our wonderful friend and tour guide Camillo at one of the venues in town

He told us a little about dal Mississippi al Po:

"The festival started 12 years ago from an original idea of Davide Rossi, who thought of conceiving a little local blues festival, with very limited finances, a couple of Italian semi-unknown bands and the extra plan of making it a real festival and not just a showcase for the involved bands. So he immediately thought of blending music and literature, asking me to talk about a book that had been recently released by a national publisher who I would sometimes work for. The funny thing is Davide and I only live 20 miles away from each other but we had never met. So that is how I first got in touch with him: as a guest of the first edition of the festival. We became fast friends. And we immediately thought of repeating the festival and trying to make it a little bigger. That is what we did in the net two years, adding a series of literary events to the music avenue.

After three years, we decided to become a "serious" festival and started inviting pretty well-known writers and musicians from several countries, bu mostly from the US or anyway creative persons who were either musicians, music lovers or musicians with an interest for books. And we have tried to keep this link the focus of our festival. I direct the literary part and Davide directs the musical part. And then there are all of the other persons you have met. We do it for fun and invest our time in what you have seen. But it is fun to try to bring marvelous creative people together."

Ellie, Judy and Fakra with Seba

Check out the books that Seba has been involved in writing and translating HERE
and for more info on 'dal Mississippi al Po', visit the website HERE - (note: the site is in Italian but can be translated to English)