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Rating: There are tracks (those of the Palermo-Trapani line) that, once cleaned from the remains of the hero of the moment, return to being like new.
On May 9, 1978, Giuseppe "Peppino" Impastato was found dead, run over by a speeding train. Coming from a criminal family, he redeemed himself while still young, without gaining any leniency, and was kicked out of the house by his father. A representative of the new Left, he was famous for his anti-fascist activism and his anti-mafia activities. In 1976, he founded the famous Radio Aut, a free and self-funded station, where he mocked politicians and mobsters (synonyms?) with that irony that only someone with guts like him can have, despite knowing he had hundreds of sights constantly aimed at his temples.
The compilation in question contains twenty-six songs in his honor. It doesn't matter the origin (the Turinese band Perturbazione sing in Sicilian) nor the musical genre played (ranging from the most rustic folk to the usual punch in the stomach by One Dimensional Man and Zu), what matters are these twenty-six artists who do not want to let the spirit of Peppino be forgotten, who never died but each of us pretends not to hear it. Some songs are even musical transpositions of Impastato's poems, like "Ventu" reinterpreted by Uzeda or "Amicu di la Storia Mia" here performed by the Collettivo Musicale Impastato, a project founded by Peppino's famous comrade in struggles, Gandolfo Schimmenti. Twenty-six sincere tributes to this little big man rather than twenty-six theme songs and above all no rhetoric and no bullshit idealisms: here there are only music and art that want to remember one of the little flowers that sprouted in this immense heap of shit shaped like a boot.
No investigation was even opened on the death of this little flower. For the magistrates, it was suicide: Peppino, according to them, smashed a rock on his head and immediately after tied himself to the train tracks awaiting its passage. On the same day, the body of Aldo Moro was found in Rome. The death of Peppino soon ended up in the general oblivion.
Oh yes, won't we have love? Because there are consciences (ours) that, unlike the tracks, can never be cleaned. Because we need and will always need a hero of the moment, a scapegoat (what is the name of "that young man with the always stern look?")
Clouds of congealed breath
thicken on the eyes
in a weary flow
of shadows and memories:
a celebration,
a rustle of skirts,
a glance,
two dewdrop eyes,
a smile,
a woman's name:
Love
Not
We
Will Have
(Peppino Impastato)
(Only the love of mamma Felicia and brother Giovanni, who publicly broke with their mafia relatives, and the persistence with which they pursued their accusations, led to the life imprisonment of the Cosa Nostra boss Gaetano Badalamenti, the instigator of the murder, on April 11, 2002, that is twenty-four years after Impastato's death. Happy ending and end credits. W Italy.)
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