Two of Italy's most beloved singers and songwriters were born a day apart during World War II, on March 4 and March 5, 1943. Lucio Dalla (top) died last week. Lucio Battisti (below) died in 1998.
Dalla had his musical roots in jazz, which expanded into folk and pop music. His most well-known song, Caruso, was written as a tribute to opera star Enrico Caruso. He wrote the words he imagined Caruso spoke as he lay dying in Sorrento, in the arms of his wife. The beautiful refrain of the song, which sounds better in Italian (what doesn't?):
I love you very much,
very, very much, you know;
it is a chain by now that heats
the blood inside the veins, you know...
The song was covered with great success by Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, and more recently, Lara Fabian.
Lucio Dalla had a great love of the sea, a theme that appears often in his music. One of his most beautiful songs is Com'e' Profoundo al Mare (How Deep is the Sea). Listen to it. You don't have to know what the words mean to feel what they mean.
The other Lucio, Battisti, was born in a small town north of Rome. Dalla's and Battisti's music has been the background of many Italian road trips for us. I like Dalla's music very much, but I love the music of Battisti.
Do you know how you can sometimes forget aspects of important events in your life but remember every detail of something insignificant?
It was 1980 and I was browsing in the Rizzouli bookstore (long since gone) in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The lively music playing in the background caught my attention because the voice was distinctive and the language was Italian. By the end of the second track, Arrivederci a questa sera (see you tonight), I had bought the album. The singer was Lucio Battisti and I've been listening to him ever since. My husband and daughters are fans now, too. They really had no choice.
Battisti is known for his beautiful love songs, with lyrics that transcend sappiness. Before I could translate any of those lyrics, though, there was something in the music itself that conveyed a powerful sense of romance and longing.
Mindful that translations don't always work, there is Amarsi un po', (Loving a little) with lyrics:
Loving a little...is easier than breathing...is like blooming a bit...but, but liking each other...is difficult...how many obstacles and how much suffering and also discouragement and tears in order to become us, united, indivisible, close together...
or Ancora Tu (You Again):
It's you again, I thought we'd never meet again...I know what you want to know...no, there is no one else, I just went back to smoking instead...you're the only one left, the only one incorrigible, but it's impossible to leave you...impossible to leave you...I'll be yours again, hoping it's not crazy.
One Lucio may be your cup of tea and the other not, or maybe neither speaks to you. That's okay. If you weren't before, at least now you are acquainted with each of them un po' (a little).
