Gipo Farassino

Giuseppe "Gipo" Farassino (11 March 1934 – 11 December 2013) was an Italian singer, songwriter, musician and politician. As a songwriter Farassino produced more than 30 albums and virtually 50 singles. Most of his songs were in Piedmontese language and were directly inspired by French chanson and chansonniers. Farassino, who was also active as an actor, obtained his first major success in 1968 with Avere un amico, a collection of his most well-known songs in Italian. Contextually, Farassino became a friend of Fabrizio De André and started to be active in the Italian Communist Party (PCI).Having abandoned the PCI and having endorsed more and more Piedmontese nationalism, Farassino first joined the Piedmontese Union, founded and led by Roberto Gremmo (another former Communist), and later was the founder and leader of the "Piedmontese Autonomist Movement" in 1987. The party, which took the name of "Autonomist Piedmont", was soon involved in the formation of a federation of Northern Italian regionalist parties, Lega Nord, and was transformed into Lega Nord Piemont (LNP). Farassino, who would be the "national" secretary of the LNP until 1996, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the 1992 general election. Having been defeated in a Senate single-seat constituency in the 1994 general election, he was elected to the European Parliament in the 1994 European Parliament election. He did not stand for re-election in 1999 and briefly left politics. Farassino was finally regional minister for Piedmontese Identity from 2004 to 2005.