Rosa Balistreri: the Voice of Sicily

Sicilian music is not very known or appreciated most of the time, except for some of the most traditional popular folk songs – Ciuri ciuri, Vitti na crozza,U sciccareddu, Quant’è laria la me zita.
However, one of the most important singers and songwriters is able to carry on her shoulders the vox populi, the voice of the people, as an act of protest in order to highlight societal problems and inequalities. This was Rosa Balistreri.

“Si può fare politica e protestare in mille modi, io canto. Ma non sono una cantante… sono diversa, diciamo che sono un’attivista che fa comizi con la chitarra.”

“It is possible to talk about politics in thousands of ways. So I sing, but I’m not a singer… What I do is different, let’s say I am an activist who does political speeches with a guitar”.

Rosa Balistreri was born in Licata. Agrigento, in 1927 in a very poor family. She was a daughter of a housewife and a carpenter and was sent to work very early in her life without having the chance to attend school.
However, since the beginning, she have showed a particular vocal talent which gave her the possibility to arrange the Sicilian traditional songs in a very dramatic mood.
She was naturally talented and passionate, something not very common for a young girl of her age and who came from that social background. She was clever and sensible, she understood the social dynamics of her time very well and had the competencies and skills to understand all the injustices happening in Sicily in the early 1900s.
She really had a peculiar personality, a very deep soul who knew how the world around her worked even without having attended any primary education, something unique and rare for a young girl like her, who did not even know how to write.

Rosa has not had a happy and easy life: at the age of only sixteen, she was given in an arranged marriage to Giacchino Torregrossa, an alcoholic who later lost all their daughter’s dowry gambling.
For that reason, Rosa tried to kill him and since she was sure to have done so, she turned herself into the police. However Gioacchino did not die and she got out of jail after few months.

Thus, Rosa started working multiple various jobs in order to support her daughter Angela. From working for a glassmaker to picking up and selling snails, prickly pears and sardines to later serving a noble and rich family in Palermo, which is the place where she would finally learn how to read and write at the age of thirty-two.

Nevertheless, she would soon be accused of thievery and imprisoned for another six months. Out of jail again she found a place as a sacristan and caretaker in the Church of Agonizzanti of Palermo, where she took her brother Vincenzo with her. Unfortunately, she was once again obliged to move to another place because of the harassment of the priest, therefore she took the money from the church charity donations and left with her brother heading to Florence.
In Tuscany both of them finally found a little peace and tranquility, where Vincenzo worked as a cobbler and Rosa served in noble houses.
Then, Rosa’s mother and one of her two sisters joined her. However, their life would once again fall apart, broken by the murder of her sister by her husband and then, because of this very sad event, the suicide of Rosa’s father who hung himself because of his grave pain and sorrow.

Nonetheless, it is right in Florence that Rosa met and fell in love with the poet Manfredi Lombardi with whom she would live for twelve years and thanks to him would also have the chance to make the acquaintance of the intellectuals of that time, such as the playwright Dario Fo who invited her to take part in one of his shows in 1966 – this time about folk songs – called Ci ragiono e ci canto.
In her songs, her will to express the misery, but also the pride and indignation of Sicilian people is clear.
After participating in Dario Fo’s show, she moved to Palermo in 1971 and met the painter Renato Guttuso and the poet Ignazio Buttita, where the latter described Rosa as “a person of resolute desperation and tragic sweetness”.

In 1973 she almost took part in one of the most important Italian musical Festivals since 1951, the Festival di Sanremo, where one of her masterpieces Terra ca nun senti (Land, you that do not care, lit. “that do not hear”) was unfortunately expelled because it was already previously published. However, this episode raised so much rumour, that her song was symbolically the real winner of that year’s Festival.

Terra ca nun senti is a cry of pain to a land much loved but hated at the same time, the land where the artist was born, where she has all the affections and memories but that cannot offer much to its population and does nothing to keep them from leaving.
This song still manages to describe the current situation, affecting a big part of the young Sicilian population which nowadays still very often struggles in finding a good and proper settlement for their lives without leaving their motherland.

Terra ca nun senti ca nun voi capiri
ca nun dici nenti vidennumi muriri.
Terra ca nun teni
cu voli partiri e nenti cci duni
pi falli turnari

Land, you that do not care and do not want to understand
You that do not say anything watching me die
Land, you that do not keep
The ones who want to leave and do not give them anything
to make them come back

Amongst her most important and famous songs we remember Cu ti lu dissi (Who told you), a passionate and dramatic love song that is still very often sung by folkloristic Sicilian musicians; Mi votu e mi rivotu (I turn again and again)is probably her most popular song and is the one which is mostly attributed to Rosa’s repertoire. However it is actually an ancient ballad written by an unknown author, as it happens for the majority of the folk songs and apparently already existed in 1867; Buttana di to ma (Slut mother of yours, – figurative sense, in Sicilian is very often used as an imprecation – )is most likely one of the songs that Rosa wrote during her days in jail, it is unknown if the artist refers to one of the imprisoned fellows or if it is an autobiographical song recounting her experience in jail.

Rosa died on September 20th 1990 in Palermo at the age of sixty-three and her stories still live with us nowadays. Thanks to some new musicians’ performances keeping her legacy alive, such as Carmen Consoli, who is probably the only rock-pop/folk singer songwriter who has given new life to Rosa’s songs.

Simona Lo Piccolo