On March 23, 81 years ago, the great maestro Franco Battiato came into the world. The eclectic and visionary singer-songwriter has left an indelible mark in the history of Italian music. But not only that. The unforgettable artist of Sicilian origins gave us a precious lesson in life and respect for nature.
Not everyone knows, in fact, that Battiato was a vegetarian: a choice dictated by his boundless love for animals, for which he felt great empathy.
Battiato’s love for every living being
I have been a convinced vegetarian for many years, I don’t even remember how many. Even as a child I rejected meat, I really didn’t like it. – he said in an interview given to Repubblica in 2008 – Then traditions had the upper hand and the scent of fried fish ended up hitting the senses. Later, after ten years of macrobiotic fanaticism, little by little, over time, being vegetarian became an existential necessity. I can no longer feed on something that is close to human sensitivity. And one day now far away I understood that mine was an irreversible choice.
For Battiato, respect for Mother Nature was not limited only to eating habits. In another interview the Sicilian singer-songwriter explained that he had also given up riding:
Why does he have to feel my eighty kilo weight on his back? I know that many say that he was born for that, but I don’t accept the rule of prey and predator even in nature. I understand it but I don’t accept it.
Franco Battiato also had a special relationship with animals, which he preferred to leave free instead of locking them up in the house.
Dogs and cats that I don’t consider animals, but beings. – said the artist who passed away last year – I have real communication with them. I don’t like captivity, I don’t keep them tied to chains, which is why four dogs were poisoned.
Battiato and the defense of the Planet through music
Franco Battiato was not only a great animal rights activist and convinced vegetarian, but also a precursor in the fight against pollution. His profound ecological sensitivity is tangible in his music album Pollutionreleased in 1972, in which he already addressed issues that are highly relevant today.
Furthermore, 24 years ago the singer-songwriter won the 2000 Environment Award from the Municipality of Pantelleria. On the Sicilian island the artist performed in concert in the military area of the Nervi hangar, using his music as a tool to protect nature and to finance the creation of a marine reserve.
In Battiato’s music his visceral love for the sea and Planet Earth often recurs, a place to be defended from man’s selfishness.
“Humanity will wake up to the sound of the spheres
we will be surrounded by background noise among the colonies of Mercury
and nothing will remain of the Earth but a pale memory” sang the maestro together with Giusto Pio in the 1984 song Auto-motion.
And those words are frighteningly relevant today…
