An Italian commemoration

I blogged about Italy in the past. Today, I have a perfect excuse to blog about it more. I learned from an Italian friend I mentioned before that today is the anniversary of the death of Fabrizio De André. I know close to nothing about the man, even his name I had forgotten until yesterday. Back in my younger years, in 2000, my Italian friend made me listen to De André's take on Georges Brassens's songs. He admired Brassens a lot she told me, so it is enough to like the guy.

I have never been as into Italy as I was into England, but I have some kind of attraction towards it. I love the language quite a lot, the gastronomy, some of their writers. I always regretted I never learned Italian properly. I always wanted to learn a third language. Being bilingual is nothing, inconsequential almost, in our day and age. And I always wanted this third language to be Italian. Strangely enough, I never had much interest about Italian music. I enjoy Ennio Morricone and of course a lot of operas are sung in Italian, but while I always loved the operas in Italian, I have never been a big fan of Italian operas, operas composed by Italians. A bit too sugary for my taste. And of modern Italian music, of course, I know close to zilch. However, I am always willing to learn more. My friend seems to consider Fabrizio De André has high as I consider Leonard Cohen. That is also enough for me to decide to gather more about him and listen to him. I found this song on youtube, which is quite poetic and I love the tune, so I decided to put it here. It will change from the usual stuff I put on this blog and it is a new musical experience to me. I am getting into uncharted territories. Here are the lyrics in their original Italian and translated into English.