My full name is Dario Amato, and I’m 33 years old. Sometimes I use Guraryeh. It’s a Hebrew word that means young lion. Why? I follow the Rastafarian culture for a very long time and when I start to travel maybe 11 years ago, I went to Holland just to discover other places, and I found a Rastafarian guy. He saw me like a powerful spirit, but I look more young than my age, so he told me, “You are powerful like a lion, but you look so young.” So he gave me this name Guraryeh. Rastafarians are like orthodox Christians; they follow the Ethiopian church, and they have their basis in the Kabbalah. When I started to follow the Rastafarian culture, I made some vows like meditation and the Nazarite vow. I’m a vegetarian. I don’t take anything made by grapes. I don’t cut my hair. I don’t go to a cemetery or follow funerals. I never ever shaved my face. These little hairs is all I have. In Rastafarian culture, we have spiritual freedom, so you have to fit into what you discover in yourself and develop what’s inside of you and express it. To be Rasta, I think is to be a lovely person and to love the others. It means really love. Spread love and good energies and fight for human rights. What’s important is to live the love inside of me, to use love as a weapon. I loved the Reggae Music. I even attended the Rototom Sunsplash Reggae Music festival in Spain near Valencia. I went there years ago.

At the beginning my parents didn’t accept this. They was very scared because I was smoking marijuana and coming home with red eyes. I’m not a lying person. I didn’t want to lie to them, so I said, “OK guys, tonight we are going to talk. I am smoking. That’s right.” But I was very conscious of what I was doing. Only natural stuff, no chemical addiction. They worried I was getting into drug addiction starting with marijuana and then cocaine and heroin. This was not me. It was very hard to explain them because they are old culture. They were worried, but after a few months we talked more. I gave them lots of information about marijuana, all the things that you can do with this plant like making clothes, medicine, food from the seeds and more. They started to say, “Ok, maybe you are not crazy. I don’t join your politics but now I know you are not crazy.” They understood that I am not killing myself. I had my job, relations, friends, driving my car and normal life.

I was 17 years old when I started following this. Since that moment, I lived a lot of strange things, energies and something guiding me. I just felt something, some energy in the words moving through the Reggae music. I discovered the Jamaican Patwah language, and I tried to translate the words to understand the meaning. I had dreadlocks for more than 10 years. I even made dreads for some people. And it’s not easy because so much discrimination when I look for a job. I decide to take my picture off my CV. I say, “Hire me for my skills not my image.” I cut them just one month ago after ten years. I have some pictures to show you. Funny, I had my cat, and he had problems with parasites, and I was scared about the parasites. I followed my feelings and cut my hair. I listened to my body, and it told me it was time to cut. My neck felt better, too. Wow! You can’t imagine how heavy. Dry it’s 6 kilograms! They went from my head to my ass. They were so heavy. When it’s wet it needs maybe 24 hours to dry.

Amato is a Sicilian surname, because my family was Sicilian, but five generations ago my family moved to Napoli, and we settled there. I have one brother with his wife and three childs. They live close to my parents. I am the only uncle because my brother’s wife has no brothers or sisters, so when I come back, the children are so enthusiastic because I am like the legend traveling around.

I had a really good education from my father and mother. They love each other the whole life. I just really appreciate what they taught me as a person. OK, it’s common to say, “I love my mom. I love my dad.” Instead, I talk about them as persons. Wherever I go the people say, “Oh you are the son of Claudio, open doors for you.”

I didn’t finish school because I needed for a period to work because my mother was affected by cancer at the chest. She survived this, but we had to spend a lot of money. My brother was already at the university, so I lost a period of years. I went in a private way and studied all by myself and got my high school diploma at 27 years old.

Interesting is that my grandfather was a medium who read the Zener-like cards. He was a painter who painted many symbolic things. He fought in WWII and crashed in an airplane twice and didn’t die. In that period, Italy went to Eritrea and Ethiopia where Rastafari (Haile Selassie) was the emperor in that moment, so I feel so connected with all of this. My father was not an artist, but he loved music. He gave me this. I think my father is the basis for all my music life because he trained me to listen to good music: Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Queen, Beatles, Carlos Santana. He just transferred to me this love for music. When you are young, you didn’t understand that moment. Now I really understand what he gave to me. He gave me eyes for watching, ears to listen, and heart for feeling. He said that “When someone is making something bad to me, don’t answer them with the same way. Answer with what you are, not what they are!”

I moved to north Italy when I was 22 years old. I have living there since then always working in logistics business more or less. First in the warehouse. I was working as a workman in the warehouse with my shoulders, but I have a lot of problems with my back. For me it’s very hard to work with my body. I use my brain mostly. I found the way to start working with my brain managing operations.

When I was in logistics, I see myself like my father working all the time stressed with no time. He was tired always giving everything to the bank. I thought, “OK, maybe I’m going to work my whole life long to get my pension, and then if it happens to me what happened to him, I will never live my life. When do I get to live my life? Life is now. It’s really now.

I also worked a little bit in a bar when I didn’t have this logistics work, and this bar owner was a drug addict and involved in cocaine pushers. The police came for this, and they found me because I was selling a little marijuana.

When I was 26, I have to be really sincere with you, I sold marijuana because I had no job and no money for living. And even with my dreadlocks it was very hard to find a job, especially at that moment. So I sold marijuana to a few persons, very little. The police was looking for someone else and they discovered me. It didn’t help that I had the dreadlocks, right? In that moment, I had a relation with a girl, the only girl that really loved me with no conditions. I had a feeling that something was going to happen. And I told her I didn’t want to get her involved in this. I really suffer from this because she was something. So, I was arrested one week later. One morning the police came to my house at 6am banging on my door yelling, “Where’s the fucking money? Where are the drugs? Where are the guns? Where are the weapons?” I say, “Hey man, I just have a little pack of marijuana over there. I’m not a real criminal.” They say, “I don’t give a fuck! I’m going to call the dogs!” I say, “Hey, you can check wherever.” They see I just have a little marijuana in my house, and they give me a lot of time for jail at the beginning. My lawyer worked out, so I was in house arrest for 6 months. I couldn’t talk to anyone, not even my parents.

When I was arrested, I felt very bad and shame with my family because I knew I hurted them. They were scared. They say, “Now you are more conscious with your life, you know what do to. Don’t do this again.”

But this logistics job was like a real prison. Maybe being arrested was better than this prison. I had time for myself. I had time to talk to myself, “OK, what have I done? What was my purpose in doing this?” I made suffering for my family. Why? I had a lot of conversations and arguments with myself. It’s so important to talk with myself. It was a very important moment. I wrote some harmonica songs then because harmonica for me is the highest level of emotion inside of me. When I feel very blues, maybe that is the best way.

When I left house prison at 27 years old, I really suffered for losing my girlfriend. And at this moment, the blues music came into my life. I discovered the harmonica for no reason. I wanted to make a gift for my friend, and I entered into this shop, and I found this 10 Euro harmonica. It was more like a toy than an instrument. And I just started to play. I was still playing a little with that synthesizer. I was training my ear. I just started to play by myself under this bridge in my town for this suffering in my life. Then, I found one guy who played guitar. A nice guitarist. I asked him, “Can I just play with you?” He said, “OK, how many years have you been playing harmonica?” I said, “Just 3 or 4 months.” He said, “Are you crazy. You made deal with the devil with the blues!”

I started playing more and more. And I think one time under this bridge, an old man was passing, and he said, “Thanks to your father, you are going in the right way. And I remember the fishes.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I thought he was a crazy guy. I told my father this story. He said, “Are you serious?” My father told me about a picture my grandfather was drawing right before he died. It had two fishes. He was in the hospital. This picture got lost, but my father remembers this. My father was terrorized by this. In that moment, I don’t want to say I met my grandfather, but I met some energy of my grandfather. It was some message. Then I started to develop my skills on the harmonica for three years. I started guitar by myself just one year ago because I discovered Robert Johnson. My friend told me, “You know Robert Johnson plays in open tuning with the slide.” He showed me the slide, and I tried it. When I discovered the slide, something under my skin exploded like shivers. Those shivers are the thing I try to give to the people. I was always teaching myself and just playing with my feeling. And I became known as the “blind lion” because I always stay with my glasses. When you have an art and you feel that, and you have inside that thing and you have emotions to share, the people they receive it. I just try a lot to play. I really play a lot by myself for hours and hours every day. I developed more or less my way with Robert Johnson and Delta blues music.

I met a guy from London named Lee who was an English teacher, and he said, “You are nice with the harmonica. We can make some kind of jam in the markets around town.” We started to do this busking in the summertime somedays. I never thought to make this an experience around the world. I earned good money, maybe 40 or 50 Euros each morning. I decided to make a band with a drummer, guitar, bass guy and a lady singer. We make reggae, gypsy jazz, rock, and blues. Then I give a few harmonica lessons. I don’t say I’m a musician. This is a very high word. Very high word. Just I’m capable and I can teach someone what I know. That’s it.

It was so hard to find a job after this arrest. To do this, I have to ask my lawyer to help. You can imagine me with dreadlocks and my lawyer going to a company saying, “Dario was arrested, would you hire him?” Impossible, but I succeeded to find a job again in logistics, and I developed my career. I found a company that gave me a contract, but my boss was so bad and treat me so bad. I ask her, “Why you treat me that way?” She was so stressed and sad because her father, the founder of the company, was affected by cancer. I even hugged them and give her my shoulder to cry on even if she is a fascist cocaine-addicted bastard shifty person, I didn’t treat her in the way she treated me. To be Rasta is to be like this. I know the difference. I believe in no violence. Even with this she continued to treat me this way. I even talked to her father and say, “Why do I have to live this way in your company? If you don’t like me, why don’t you tell me? Or you have me here to give your daughter frustration? You pay me for your daughter’s frustration, and we are OK? I’m human. I don’t need this.”

So, one morning, I decide I don’t want to live this way. When I told them I am leaving my job and going on this challenge, the only thing my mother said was, “Don’t go in troubles again. Don’t be a bastard.” I don’t do this again.

So, I decided to make a blues experience on this travel. That’s why I started the first day not renting a place. Just take a ticket and go because I was thinking too much. When I understood this, I just get my flight and go, just go in 5 days. I have to go. I felt this thing inside of me. And I come to Málaga because I never discovered Andalucia. I don’t know why. I just felt that maybe to go was better than to stay where I was. The weather is good. It’s OK to play here. I wanted a challenge where maybe they don’t know the blues so much. They know mostly the flamenco and the nylon string guitar. So, I make this challenge for myself. I think it is very important for everybody to challenge ourselves and to discover the world. To discover what? I don’t know. That’s why I go.

I’ve been in Málaga for just two weeks. I don’t know how long I will stay. If I find a job, OK. If I make money playing, OK. I’m just living experience day by day. I’m not planning too much, but I’m learning from the people here about how to play on the street, how to involve the people even if they give no money. I don’t have so much practice doing this on my own, so I’m learning.

It was less expensive to come here without my guitar. The flight company could not assure me that the guitar would be safe. So, I make a balance about how to do this. I brought just one rucksack, a sleeping bag, a few clothes, a couple pants, some shirts you know. I find it is cheaper to come without a guitar and buy a guitar here, so that’s what I did. Maybe I will sell it if I have to go back to Italy, but now this guitar has a story.

I never stayed in a hostel before. I’ve been in Ireland, Holland, France, Switzerland, Greece, Czech Republic and a lot of Italy thanks for my family. This hostel experience is amazing to connect with the stories of people. There is a girl of Germany just 19 years old just traveling. What courage she has! In my country it’s very hard to imagine this kind of experience. She’s advanced in these things. I’m 33 years old doing this now! In this hostel I learn so much from the people. I met another girl from Deutschland. I really loved her energy. I wish to have another interaction with her in the future. I was having breakfast in the hostel, and she asked randomly just like this, “Can I have breakfast with you?” That’s all. Then we took a hike to a mountain behind the hostel. I was able to bring my guitar with me. We enjoyed the experience. And there’s another guy who makes pictures with pencils. I give him 4 or 5 pictures of my time with this person and say, “Could you just imprint this moment on paper?” I will ask the girl for her address to send her the drawing of the moment. Maybe we will see never again in life, but this moment is everlasting.

The first time I played here on the street I was a little shy because it’s a new place and new situation. I didn’t know where to play actually, and I have no amplifier. Now, I think I could use one for backing tracks when I play harmonica. This would be better. The second day I bought the guitar and was tuning and playing a little with the slide just practicing, and a couple old people sit down beside me and say, “What is this evil thing, the slide?”

The first time I played near the main street near the Malagueta beach near the port. I felt shy and the people can see. When I am sure, the people enjoy more. When the people listen to me, they teach me a lot. They teach me how to get in contact with them, to establish a connection. Sometimes I just give a smile and say, “Hola,” and be sunny. Even if I want to make some kind of sad song, I have to find the right moment to do that. I learn what the people are asking for by watching the people, look in their eyes and feel the moment. Today I was up near the castle, and I played Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. I saw a guy with kids and family. He took a step and then looked back at me. I start even to sing it a little because I see singing gives more emotion, and I’m improving step by step. He was really enjoying, and he paid me for that. It was the right song for the right person for the right moment for the right atmosphere for the right place, and the guy really enjoyed it, really really loved it.

In my case, I feel so much blues inside. Blues is like a feeling, not only a music, like any art, a specific feeling. Since I have the bluesy demons inside me, I play so much. I told myself, “What does it really mean to live the blues music, to live this feeling? Staying in my home with my cat and playing the guitar alone all by myself? Or just going discovering the world and making experience, making no plan like a rambler, like the Robert Johnson song Rambling On My Mind.” So, I’m now understanding what he was trying to tell in that song. I got rambling on my mind. I hate to leave you baby, but you treat me so unkind. I need to do the same. I feel inside of me that I have to go meet the people. Maybe because I have some kind of suffering inside myself, I feel like the blues is like an exorcism for the sadness more or less.

I don’t want to give people the sadness, but maybe some kind of reaction to the sadness instead. I feel that way. I feel that story inside of me. You can’t go to the people and say, “I’m sad for something.” No. They say, “What? You complain me? Oh so poor guy?” No, I need to make experience to really understand what blues means, to discover the world. To discover what? I don’t know. That’s why I go.

I think that all my experiences, even the Rastafarian culture, taught me to not be narcissist. Nowadays with the social media culture, the people want everyone to look at them. Me, me, me, me. No, I’m playing on the street not for earning money. I earn money because I need them not because I want you to pay me to feel happy. I’m not happy because of the money. I’m happy when the people enjoy. It’s different. Money, I just use them because I need them. Society forces you to use money. If I could live with no money and I could just play and have food and a bed, it’s OK. I leave my open bag now and if people enjoy and want to give money, fine. If someone comes to me and say, “I give you money because you look poor,” I give money back. No. I say, “No. Don’t give me money for this reason. Give me money if you enjoyed and if you think what you heard gives you emotion.” I love this sharing with the people. A lot of musicians think, “You have to pay me because I studied my whole life to do this.” No, man. For me, for me, I think this is not the right way to ask people for money. I want to look at myself from above and say, “What are you doing? You are just one of the people playing music around.” If you just give me the money with no interest, it doesn’t matter to me. Yeah, I need the money because I have to pay the food, the house, if I break some strings.

Today, I see a nice family walking by. They listen to my music. The kids start to dance a little. And then a girl was making a video and making a little dance because she enjoyed the rhythm. She enjoyed the sensation, the feeling. She give me one Euro. OK. But even if she don’t give no money, I happy because I just reached my target. My target is to share feelings. I don’t look for the money. I look for the interaction. I could be like them on vacation in a place. I would really love to see art, to see people enjoying, to see people making music. It’s like you are full from the beautiful experience people make in that place. When you go out to get money, this could be a kind of success. But in my opinion, you shouldn’t follow the success. The success follows you. It’s different. If you go for success, you could do some stupid thing like pull down your pants and poop in the street and put it on social media and everybody look at you. This is success because many people look at you? This Tik Tok thing? I would be ASHAMED of these things. Basically, I’m not looking for success. I’m looking to reach people. Today this old man standing next to me and my harmonica. He really loved it and say, “Guy, I really enjoy what you are doing.” That’s the best for me.

I play with a guy who used my guitar. I play harmonica, and we had little jam session. The people really enjoyed and saw I enjoyed with this guy. The people was applausing to us, to the situation. Seeing the enjoyment is the best. That’s the best. If you don’t do it for this reason, then for what? If you just make art by yourself in your house and keep it for you, OK. But if you bring your art outside into the world, you can give the people something. Yes, you can find people who say, “What the fuck is playing this guy?” You have to check the judgement, but the judgement doesn’t make you. It’s just a part of the world, a part of the game. Even you told me someone threw an egg at you. What the hell? That’s not your problem. Maybe you can use the egg for breakfast!

Happiness is a choice many times. If you choose life, you will be choosing emotion and experience. That’s what I’m talking about. I suffered with my job, with my place so little, with the people so cold, with the people who don’t enjoy music. In my city, when I play around, a lot of people think I am disturbing the people with music. It’s the mentality that music is disturbing the people. If you are just complaining for music, you don’t understand the life. Silence is OK, too, but the music can be the life. I think this is a good way to enjoy life and enjoy experiences.

I’m just going day by day, step by step. We will see what’s going to happen to me, but now I am not scared of the future. I’m stopping the rat race. I can learn other ways. I’m learning this. I’m learning how to live. Now I’m living. Yes, I need money. Yes, I have my problems, but I’m not scared. I know how to live now. I’m really living life. I’m seeing all things I could not see from my position where I was in my comfort zone in my little place, my little town, my little job, my little bar, routine, routine, routine all the same. Work in the morning, go back, do dinner, prepare for tomorrow. Watch my car to go to work because I need it to go to work to buy a car to go to work. What the fuck!? It’s crazy. But this life doesn’t let me live, or raise a child or free to go to a restaurant. That life doesn’t give me this chance. Because ten hours per day you stay with the company, not with your child, not with your family, not with your people. For me it’s better maybe I have a little place, maybe in the woods, maybe in Málaga, I work a little because I need money.

I would like to be a father and teach children what I learned. Giving life to another one is the highest gift I can have. But now I am alone, but I am free. I am living, even if I am single. If I find another girl one day, who knows. I leave my heart open to chances to be a good father, not just a father, a good father. When you have childs, they are not yours. They are free persons, free spirits. You have to let them be free to live their lives, guiding them but not forcing them. Be present for all their experiences. Be open.

I’m writing a little in a book now. I wrote down in my book, “Don’t rush from yourself. The world is a very small place, but you are infinite, you have no limits.” It’s all up to you. Maybe our reality, our society, just wants to trap us in our routine. Stop with the cycle. Just feel that the world is in your hands. Maybe it’s not the same for everybody because I understand that for me, I’m one of the lucky persons of the planet that I was able to manage my situation and just take a ticket and don’t think about it anymore and just go, just go.

And with music, I would like to give feelings because it’s more important to share what is inside of us. The other day in Málaga, I met a homeless guy with a guitar, and I just started to play my blues with my slide and open E tuning. I talked to him about how to do this. We made a few Euros, but I gave it to him because he needed it more than me. When I was going away, I heard him trying to make this on his guitar. You see I left more than 3 or 4 Euros. I left a piece of me with this guy. I’m open to all that comes. Yes, we can be hurt, but we are really living.

Before this experience, I think I was more scared to open myself to the world. Now, I understand it was so dangerous before to don’t open myself. Yes, you take your risks, but you don’t have to be scared to open yourself.

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