Gabriele Cau, Davide Soddu, Graziano Solinas, Daniela Cossiga, Roberto Mura, Antonio Papa
Friday 10 May at the Old Mill of Sassari on stage”Mamma mia give me a hundred lire: stories and songs of emigration”. On stage Daniela Cossiga with Gabriele Cau (guitar), Roberto Mura (horn), Anthony Pope (contrabass), Davide Soddu (violin), Graziano Solinas (accordion). Arrangements by Davide Soddu, lyrics and direction by Saint Maurizi. The show, preview of “Thoughts and Words: books and films in Asinara” festival, will start at 8.30pm. Info and reservations: 079.4920324, 339.3407008, [email protected].
Throughout the 20th century, thirty million Italians emigrated “in search of fortune”. Often welcomed abroad with hostility and racism, in the post-war period they were also discriminated against within their own country, with the exodus towards the large industrial cities of the north.
The song accompanied those men and women, recording the pain of farewell, the desire for redemption, the nostalgia for distant loved ones, the fight for rights: the “emigration songbook” constitutes one of the most significant heritages of Italian culture.
The show ideally follows two laborers who emigrated from Sardinia with their families in 1897. Francesco Delrio from Bonorva and Pietro Casula from Santu Lussurgiu were fleeing from bad harvests, from phylloxera, from the olive oil fly. They fled poverty and disease: a fragment of history between Sardinia, the ocean, Brazil, Asinara.
The stories and songs of “Mamma mia dammi cento lire” want to pay homage to that epic, but also to stimulate reflection on ourselves: on being us, today, like those communities that saw millions of immigrants arrive. Who, on the contrary, travel the same routes as our grandparents with the same pain and the same determination. To find a new home and a better life.
