A Tirannia

Anthology of traditional songs, speaking about society and politics in Sicily between thirteenth and twentieth centuries.

Project, research, arrangements, production, by Matilde Politi.

Voice and guitar - Matilde Politi
Featuring also: Massimo La Guardia (frame drums), Lajos Zsivkov (jew's harp), Lelio Giannetto (double bass)
Released in 2007, Teatro del Sole, Palermo (Italy)

“In the history of Sicily, the people have chosen different strategies to survive while mainteining the dignity.

In some moments the strategy was fighting together against the stranger oppressor, like in the Vespro revolt, in 1282; in others the choice was going up in the mountains becoming bandits, us the only way to rebel oneself to the submission to iniquitous laws.
In some cases the strategy was tenaciously standing the inhuman conditions of working in the mines or in the fields; in others the choice was coragiously taking up all together, to occupy the fields that should be divided among the poor workers.
From the enthusiasm for Garibaldi’s wishes to unify the State of Italy, to the delusion of all the difficulties born from the unity, and then the desire of independence, and the second world war with the final arrival of the Americans, like the umpteenth stranger...
The testimonies arrived through oral tradition, in the people language, of all these moments, can be listened like a single cantata, that shows how, in some way, at least a part of the people have always
proudly reacted, with determination, to every kind of tyranny, and they will always react.

Dedicated to all the women and the men that don’t bend the head under the tyranny, of any kind.

Dedicated to the mothers, strong and tenacious, that even after seeing their sons killed by the mafia,
keep on bearing, head-high, the flag of the downtrodden people.”
(from the inside booklet; all songs lyrics in Sicilian dialect and Italian traslation)