Stormy Six and friend/colleague Moni Ovadia recently produced 'Benvenuti nel ghetto', an historic and highly emotional commemoration of the events that took place in the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1943. Through words and music, collected writings and original songs, it narrates the first collective rebellion act against the Nazi oppression, a strong protest that lasted about a month before being violently suppressed by German soldiers and officers.
The show is beautifully documented on cd and dvd (Btf, 2013), recorded and filmed live in concert in Reggio Emilia on April 20, 2013. A somewhat stripped-down version presented at 'Asti Musica' last week also featured a reading of 'Campo dei Fiori' - written by Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) - following the last song 'Invocazione'.
Umberto Fiori : voice, guitar
Tommaso Leddi : mandolin, guitar, vocals
Carlo De Martini : violin, vocals
Francesco Zago : guitars
Archimede De Martini : bass guitar, violin
Salvatore Garau : drums
http://www.btf.it/benvenuti-nel-ghetto.html
Asti (Italy), Piazza Cattedrale
July 21, 2014
photo/video: Sergio Amadori
http://www.hibou-anemone-bear.com
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Campo dei Fiori
(Czeslaw Milosz)
A Roma in Campo dei Fiori
Ceste di olive e limoni,
Spruzzi di vino per terra
E frammenti di fiori.
Rosati frutti di mare
Vengono sparsi sui banchi,
Bracciate d’uva nera
Sulle pesche vellutate.
Proprio qui, su questa piazza
Fu arso Giordano Bruno.
Il boia accese la fiamma
Fra la marmaglia curiosa.
E non appena spenta la fiamma,
Ecco di nuovo piene le taverne.
Ceste di olive e limoni
Sulle teste dei venditori.
Mi ricordai di Campo dei Fiori
A Varsavia presso la giostra,
Una chiara sera d’aprile,
Al suono d’una musica allegra.
Le salve dal muro del ghetto
Soffocava l’allegra melodia
E le coppie si levavano
Alte nel cielo sereno.
Il vento dalle case in fiamme
Portava neri aquiloni,
La gente in corsa sulle giostre
Acchiappava i fiocchi nell’aria.
Gonfiava le gonne alle ragazze
Quel vento dalle case in fiamme,
Rideva allegra la folla
Nella bella domenica di Varsavia.
Chi ne trarrà la morale
Che il popolo di Varsavia o Roma
Commercia, si diverte, ama
Indifferente ai roghi dei martiri.
Altri ne trarrà la morale
Sulla fugacità delle cose umane,
Sull’oblio che cresce
Prima che la fiamma si spenga.
Eppure io allora pensavo
Alla solitudine di chi muore.
Al fatto che quando Giordano
Salì sul patibolo
Non trovò nella lingua umana
Neppure un’espressione
Per dire addio all’umanità,
L’umanità che restava.
Rieccoli a tracannare vino
A vendere bianche asterie,
Ceste di olive e limoni
Portavano con gaio brusìo.
Ed egli già distava da loro
Come fossero secoli,
Essi attesero appena
Il suo levarsi nel fuoco.
E questi, morenti, soli,
Già dimenticati dal mondo,
La loro lingua ci è estranea
Come lingua di antico pianeta.
Finché tutto sarà leggenda
E allora dopo molti anni
Su un nuovo Campo dei Fiori
Un poeta desterà la rivolta.
Varsavia, Pasqua 1943
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In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
baskets of olives and lemons,
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
with rose-pink fish;
armfuls of dark grapes
heaped on peach-down.
On this same square
they burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
the taverns were full again,
baskets of olives and lemons
again on the vendors' shoulders.
I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
one clear spring evening
to the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
the salvos from the ghetto wall,
and couples were flying
high in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning
would drift dark kites along
and riders on the carousel
caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
blew open the skirts of the girls
and the crowds were laughing
on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral
that the people of Rome or Warsaw
haggle, laugh, make love
as they pass by the martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
of the passing of things human,
of the oblivion
born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying,
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine
or peddled their white starfish,
baskets of olives and lemons
they had shouldered to the fair,
and he already distanced
as if centuries had passed
while they paused just a moment
for his flying in the fire.
Those dying here, the lonely
forgotten by the world,
our tongue becomes for them
the language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
and many years have passed,
on a new Campo dei Fiori
rage will kindle at a poet's word.
Warsaw, 1943