Delia Buglisi, Sicilian singer-songwriter and pianist born in 1999, conquered the X Factor audience with her powerful voice and visceral performances. Through his thrilling performances in which he mixes Sicilian with other languages such as French, they managed to get straight to the heart, striking spectators and judges.
This evening, in the episode (broadcast on Sky and Now) dedicated to the songs of the 90s, Delia will perform “Dolcenera” by Fabrizio De André, an unforgettable song to which the artist is very attached given that she listened to it with her grandmother, as revealed during rehearsals with Jake the Fury.
“Dolcenera” is one of Fabrizio De André’s most intense and symbolic songs, contained in the album Anime salve (1996), written together with Ivano Fossati. Behind the hypnotic rhythm and the poetic text lies one of the most powerful metaphors in his repertoire: love as a destructive and salvific force, a flood that overwhelms everything, just like nature when it rebels.
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A love that submerges everything (like the devastating flood in Genoa)
The song takes inspiration from a real event: the Genoa flood of 1970, which devastated the city and took away lives, homes and dreams. In that catastrophe, caused by heavy rains and the consequent flooding of the Bisagno, Fereggiano and Leira streams, 43 people died, while over 2000 people were displaced. But De André, as always, transforms the news into poetry. The flood of the river becomes the flood of feelings: Dolcenera is both a woman and a metaphor. It is “black” because it brings with it destruction, the blindness of absolute love that no longer distinguishes good from evil. But it is also “sweet”, because in that ruin there is an inevitable sweetness, the surrender to passion, to destiny, to the most visceral humanity.
“Black at the edges, like the night, like the night will be.”
The water of the river is the same that flows in the body, in the blood, in love. It is no coincidence that, in the text, the two dimensions – natural and sentimental – continually merge, to the point of becoming indistinguishable.
“Dolcenera” opens with the phrase in Ligurian dialect “Amiala ch’a l’arìa amia cum’a l’è cum’à l’è”, which can be translated as “Amala, the air is bitter, as it is bitter, as it is bitter.”
The song is not just about an external flood, but also an internal one. De André describes love as a force that overwhelms, floods, destroys and regenerates. There is no judgement, there is no morality: only the recognition that love is a form of necessary catastrophe. In this sense, water is the primordial element, a symbol of life and death together.
The lyrics of the song
Love her who loves the air as she is as she is
Love her who loves the air who loves her
Love her in the air, my love in the air
Love her who loves the air who is there for her
Black that takes away, that takes away the way
Black that hadn’t been seen in a lifetime
So sweet, black
Black girl hitting hard
Who kicks down doors
There is no equal who makes you goofy, goofy, goofy
Black of bad luck that kills and passes on
Black as the misfortune that makes its lair where there is no moon, moon
Black with bitter layers that coffins pass through
Atru from stramuà to nu n’à to nu n’à
But Anselmo’s wife must not know this
That she came for me, she arrived an hour ago
And love has love as its only subject
And the tumult of the sky was at the wrong time
Water that you don’t expect, nothing but blessed
Water that brings bad luck, rises from the stairs, rises without salt, salt
Water that splits the mountain, that sinks land and bridge
There is no equal to ‘na rammà ‘n calabà ‘n calabà
But Anselmo’s wife is dreaming of the sea
When it blocks the ravines it retreats and goes back up
And the sheet swells on the hollow of the wave
And the fight becomes slippery and deep
Love her who loves the air as she is as she is
Love her who loves the air who loves her
Water of pinpricks thick from the sky and the ceilings
Water for photographing to look for accomplices to curse
Water that tightens the hips, trap of passers-by
Atru from camallà to nu n’à to nu n’à
Beyond the glass wall life awakens
Who holds hands when the battle is over
How does this love give rise to the anxiety of getting lost
In one day he had the certainty of having it
Water that evening has now receded
Bassa parades among the people like an innocent who has nothing to do with it
Cold as a pain, Heartless Dolcenera
Atru from rubella to nu n’à to nu n’à
And Anselmo’s wife hears the water falling
From clothes glued from every skin frost
In his tram disconnected from any distance
In the middle of the time she now has left
So was that love with no ending
So splendid and true that it can fool you
Love her who loves the air as she is as she is
Love her who loves the air who loves her
Love her in the air, my love in the air
Love her who loves the air who is there for her
