La poesia originale di Salvo Vitale 1980

d'après la version italienne FIORE DI CAMPO d'une chanson sicilienne – Ciuri di campi – Peppino Impastato
Musique et interprétation : Carmen Consoli e i Lautari

Je reprends ici le commentaire de la chanson Cent Pas (I cento passi) des Modena City Ramblers :

La lutte de Peppino Impastato, assassiné par la mafia car il avait le don d'être courageux, honnête et cohérent avant tout avec lui-même pour être généreux avec les autres. (fragment du dialogue du film Les Cent Pas de Marco Tullio Giordana).

« Entre la maison de Peppino Impastato et celle de Gaetano Badalamenti, il y a cent pas. Je les ai parcourus pour la première fois un après-midi de janvier, avec un sirocco glacé qui lavait les trottoirs et gonflait les vestes. Je me rappelle le ciel oppressant et la route blanche qui coupait en deux le village dans toute sa longueur, de la mer jusqu'aux premières pierres du mont Pecoraro. Cent... (Continues)

Version française – AU CARNAVAL- Marco Valdo M.I. a – 2010
Chanson italienne – Al carneval – Talco – 2010

Quatrième morceau de l’album «  La Cretina Commedia », dédié à Peppino Impastato.

« Les premières représentations du groupe de Peppino, organisé dans le Cercle Musique et Culture, prélude à un projet plus important dans les années qui suivirent – Radio Aut – eurent lieu dans les rues à l'occasion des fêtes du village. Une celle-ci, le Carnaval., Peppino organisa une farce, la l'insinuant dans la foule masquée et mettant en scène une représentation théâtrale, où des paysans et des édiles se plaignaient des patrons, calmés par un prêtre qui prêchait le calme en attente d'une vie meilleure au-delà de la terre. Arrivait alors un fonctionnaire de parti corrompu qui incitait au retour au travail sans se plaindre. « Car le Parti voulait qu'il en soit ainsi »... Puis le mafieux qui faisait... (Continues)

"For a period the inquiry was dismissed and sidetracked. Peppino’s comrades, his mother Felicia, Giovanni Impastato, the latter’s wife Felicia and the Impastato Centre, while receiving some help from honest magistrates, often met opposition on the part of their fellow townspeople, the newspapers and the police, who even described Peppino’s death as the suicide of a misfit. Finally, twenty years later, events reached a happy ending. In the background is not only the trial of the instigators of Peppino’s murder, but also the moral trial of those who continued to glorify the winners and benefit from their protection, only to label them as crooks and abandon them for a new shady winner as soon as they had met their ruin. This is the story of a land and of its conspiracies of silence, which are no less morally to blame than the fear which grips the country, scared as it still is of looking to a future of courage – the very courage the Impastato family gave proof of."

"It was the day of Peppino’s funeral. He had been killed near a cottage just above the tracks of the Plermo-Trapani railway line. As attempts were already being made to sidetrack the inquiry, under the closed windows of the houses in Cinisi a funeral procession set off: the first demonstration ever against the mafia, this cancer that held the country in its grip. Peppino’s comrades carried his coffin through the streets of Cinisi, taking up the torch their friend had lit. Peppino’s brother answered the call of the crowd that had assembled to raise its voice against the mafia with his clenched fist, while his mother expelled her mafia relatives who were talking of vengeance from her house."

"Tune in on Radio Aut: the “Foolish Comedy” is being staged – a living hell filled with mafia bosses, whoremongers and toadies in which a jester, now resting in the limbo (a happy oasis and secular, earthly paradise), is running after virtues to save his land. He will tell us about the misdeeds of a “contemporary past”, certain that his journey will lead to the awakening of a new and more fruitful reality."

"Caught between desperate and euphoric moments, Peppino’s work intensified as he found himself having to deal with those sharing his “barricade”: on the one side, a commune founded at Terrasini, which instead of engaging in any serious struggle against the mafia was organising frivolous events based on the idea of regaining control over one’s own body; on the other, the Historic Compromise between the PCI (Italian Communist Party) and the DC (Christian-Democrat Party), which had ties with the mafia – a political manoeuvre that alienated many political and social groups. Peppino reacted with anger and frustration to these events in a letter that was later exploited to sidetrack the inquiry about his death. Once again, time has frozen."

"With biting irony, a radio spoke of what people had never dared discuss: the story of a man feared and revered, someone nourished by the terror he inspired in others – the son of a lowly cowherd who had made his way through violence and corruption. To this day, few bells are sounded for those men who have regrettably made their way to the top, not least thanks to the cunning and cowardly silence they command. * “Battagghi” is the Sicilian word for “cowbells”."

"One of the most important struggles of Peppeno’s, in the years around 1968, was that against the building of a third runway at the Punta Raisi airport. Under the leadership of the PCI (Italian Communist Party) and PSIUP (Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity) a Syndicate of the Dispossessed was set up intended to safeguard the legitimate protest of the farmers who had been deprived of their primary source of income – their land. The Syndicate actually stipulated agreements for the beginning of the work at the airport: all farmers were to receive in exchange for this was more misery. One morning, facing bulldozers and the army, Peppino, the farmers and their families chose to remain in their homes to defend their rights against those who had abandoned them and the criminal speculation of the Christian-Democrat local government and PSDI (Italian Social-Democrat Party), which had ties... (Continues)

"Peppino and his brother Giovanni spent their childhood on the farm of their uncle, Don Cesare Manzella, who was the head of Cosa Nostra in the 1950s and 60s. They would hide in a cave there and play away from adults’ sight. While they were still too young to take up any definite role, a specific way of life was already in store for them. The murder of Manzella, who was blown up in his car, soon cleared all existing doubts surrounding Peppino’s youth: at the age of 15 he chose to shed light on an apparently kind world that actually concealed a violent and bloody code of conduct based on the oppression of the weak."

"Introductory track of the album, in which Peppino is imagined knocking on the doors of our present generation. Relating the struggles of the times of Peppino to today’s environment is the common thread throughout the disc."

Chanson italienne – Ricordo d'autunno – Gang – 2008

Giovanni et Peppino étaient deux frères qui avaient décidé de rompre avec leur père et l'ambiance mafieuse de Cinisi, province de Palerme. Ils firent de la politique, soutinrent les luttes des paysans, des travailleurs, des chômeurs; ils dénoncèrent la mafia, ses crimes et ses affaires à partir de leur radio Aut (onome). Peppino Impastato est donc ce jeune sicilien, militant socialiste qui s'en prit à la mafia. Il s'engagea si fort dans cette lutte au travers de sa radio – Radio Aut, qu'un jour, il n'y survécut pas. On le fit taire... définitivement. Le 9 mai 1978. La presse, la police et les juges tentèrent de faire croire à un suicide (par le plastic ? Sur une voie de chemin de fer ?). Sa mère Felicia et son frère Giovanni firent rouvrir l'enquête en condamner à la prison à vie le chef mafieux Gaetano Badalamenti en 2002.
Il y a déjà... (Continues)