Versione italiana di Gian Piero Testa

"The song is about serious problems that haunt the Italian land: the deaths at work, the lack of health and safety in the workplace and the moral and political impunity of the owners and employers."

"For a period the inquiry was dismissed and sidetracked. Peppino’s comrades, his mother Felicia, Giovanni Impastato, the latter’s wife Felicia and the Impastato Centre, while receiving some help from honest magistrates, often met opposition on the part of their fellow townspeople, the newspapers and the police, who even described Peppino’s death as the suicide of a misfit. Finally, twenty years later, events reached a happy ending. In the background is not only the trial of the instigators of Peppino’s murder, but also the moral trial of those who continued to glorify the winners and benefit from their protection, only to label them as crooks and abandon them for a new shady winner as soon as they had met their ruin. This is the story of a land and of its conspiracies of silence, which are no less morally to blame than the fear which grips the country, scared as it still is of looking to a future of courage – the very courage the Impastato family gave proof of."

"It was the day of Peppino’s funeral. He had been killed near a cottage just above the tracks of the Plermo-Trapani railway line. As attempts were already being made to sidetrack the inquiry, under the closed windows of the houses in Cinisi a funeral procession set off: the first demonstration ever against the mafia, this cancer that held the country in its grip. Peppino’s comrades carried his coffin through the streets of Cinisi, taking up the torch their friend had lit. Peppino’s brother answered the call of the crowd that had assembled to raise its voice against the mafia with his clenched fist, while his mother expelled her mafia relatives who were talking of vengeance from her house."

"Tune in on Radio Aut: the “Foolish Comedy” is being staged – a living hell filled with mafia bosses, whoremongers and toadies in which a jester, now resting in the limbo (a happy oasis and secular, earthly paradise), is running after virtues to save his land. He will tell us about the misdeeds of a “contemporary past”, certain that his journey will lead to the awakening of a new and more fruitful reality."

"Caught between desperate and euphoric moments, Peppino’s work intensified as he found himself having to deal with those sharing his “barricade”: on the one side, a commune founded at Terrasini, which instead of engaging in any serious struggle against the mafia was organising frivolous events based on the idea of regaining control over one’s own body; on the other, the Historic Compromise between the PCI (Italian Communist Party) and the DC (Christian-Democrat Party), which had ties with the mafia – a political manoeuvre that alienated many political and social groups. Peppino reacted with anger and frustration to these events in a letter that was later exploited to sidetrack the inquiry about his death. Once again, time has frozen."

"According to the mafia’s code of conduct, when a son turns his back on a system he is meant to be a part of, his father is authorised to “straighten him up”, even by killing him if necessary. In a way, Luigi Impastato transgressed this code, for he sought protection in America. On his return, he was killed in a simulated car accident. In a milieu utterly foreign to Peppino, Luigi Impastato had been led by his fatherly love to resort to one final action that was in its own way a humane one. At Luigi’s funeral, Peppino refused to shake hands with his father’s “mafia friends” and stood between them and the coffin. Peppino’s brother Giovanni and his mother, who were not ready yet to take the path they later so courageously choose to follow, tried toning things down."

"With biting irony, a radio spoke of what people had never dared discuss: the story of a man feared and revered, someone nourished by the terror he inspired in others – the son of a lowly cowherd who had made his way through violence and corruption. To this day, few bells are sounded for those men who have regrettably made their way to the top, not least thanks to the cunning and cowardly silence they command. * “Battagghi” is the Sicilian word for “cowbells”."

"Peppino chose to denounce the hypocrisy behind the Cinisi Carnival by organizing a mock version of it. The show began with workers and builders searching for “fathers” capable of reliving the suffering they felt for never having been given their due at work and in life. These characters were then approached by a priest, who invited them to calm down and seek redemption in other alleged lives, and by a trade unionist, a son of compromise, who preached obedience to the party in the name of a resigned alliance with the bosses. The show ended with a coffee being offered to a mafia boss and the latter silencing everyone. Time comes to a halt here and merges with our own in the farce of an ongoing wretched carnival..."

"One of the most important struggles of Peppeno’s, in the years around 1968, was that against the building of a third runway at the Punta Raisi airport. Under the leadership of the PCI (Italian Communist Party) and PSIUP (Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity) a Syndicate of the Dispossessed was set up intended to safeguard the legitimate protest of the farmers who had been deprived of their primary source of income – their land. The Syndicate actually stipulated agreements for the beginning of the work at the airport: all farmers were to receive in exchange for this was more misery. One morning, facing bulldozers and the army, Peppino, the farmers and their families chose to remain in their homes to defend their rights against those who had abandoned them and the criminal speculation of the Christian-Democrat local government and PSDI (Italian Social-Democrat Party), which had ties... (Continues)

"Peppino and his brother Giovanni spent their childhood on the farm of their uncle, Don Cesare Manzella, who was the head of Cosa Nostra in the 1950s and 60s. They would hide in a cave there and play away from adults’ sight. While they were still too young to take up any definite role, a specific way of life was already in store for them. The murder of Manzella, who was blown up in his car, soon cleared all existing doubts surrounding Peppino’s youth: at the age of 15 he chose to shed light on an apparently kind world that actually concealed a violent and bloody code of conduct based on the oppression of the weak."

"Introductory track of the album, in which Peppino is imagined knocking on the doors of our present generation. Relating the struggles of the times of Peppino to today’s environment is the common thread throughout the disc."

Versione italiana di Gian Piero Testa

Versione italiana di Gian Piero Testa

Versione italiana di Gian Piero Testa

Chanson italienne – Canto degli ultimi partigiani – Franco Fortini – 1944.

Ceci, dit Bartelby, est un poème et je ne sais si quelqu'un a jamais eu l'idée de le mettre en musique. Toutefois, le fait que ce soit un chant, et des plus durs et des plus crus qu'il me soit jamais été donné de lire ou d'entendre, en rend nécessaire la publication sur ce site.

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Oui, Bartelby a parfaitement raison... Il est des milliers (au moins) de chansons qui attendent les musiciens... Ceux-ci sont simplement en retard...
De toute façon, dit Lucien l'âne, la musique est dans la voix, la musique est dans les mots.
Pour appuyer encore, la résolution prophétique de Franco Fortini, traducteur, poète, écrivain pour lequel nous avons une sympathie particulière, quand il termine cette chanson en disant :« nous tenons serrée au dedans de nos mains de morts. La justice qui se fera.
Voici venue du fond des mêmes temps... (Continues)