Erri De Luca, Alessandro Gassmann, Solo Andata, Puglia, Canzoniere Grecanico. Backstage

The collaboration between CGS and Erri De Luca started few years ago with CGS desire to set one of Erri De Lucas poems, to music. Consequently They met with OH!PEN, Alessandro Gassmann and Amnesty International. Everybody joined in with enthusiasm and faith, as this project wants to give human dignity back to all migrants. With their music, Erri De Luca’s words and Gassman as Director, the clip “Solo Andata” (One Way Ticket), addresses the ongoing issue of immigrants arriving from North Africa to Italy’s shores.

Solo Andata has already earned Amnesty International Italy’s 2014 Arts and Human Rights Award Riccardo Noury of Amnesty International Italia called it an “extraordinary piece, it talks about immigrants and refugees trying to give them back some dignity, rights, humanity that are taken away by those who see them as a problem, a number, a menace and a danger.”

SOLO ANDATA

(lyrics: Erri De Luca / music: D. Durante, M. Durante)

We, the uncountable doubling each checkerboard square
we pave your sea with bodies so many you could walk on it
you cannot count us: if you try, we multiply,
we children of the horizon, washing us up, spilling us out.
No police can abuse us
more than what we’ve suffered already.
We’ll serve as your servants the children you never had
our lives will be your adventure tales.
We carry Homer and Dante, the blind man and the pilgrim,
the smell that you’ve lost, the equality you’ve repressed.
No matter the distance, millions of paces, we will come,
we are the feet and we carry your weight.
We shovel the snow, comb the lawns,
beat your rugs, collect your tomatoes and insults.
We are the feet and we know every step of the ground,
we are the red and the black of the earth,
the overseas made of worn-out sandals,
that pollen and powder in the wind tonight.
One of us, in our name, has said:
“You cannot be rid of me.
Yes, I’ll die,
yet after three days I will rise again and return.”

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