(Polignano a Mare 1928- Lampedusa 1994)
By Vito Portagnuolo (Scuola Normale Superiore)
Modugno was thirty years old when the world of music smiled upon him and welcomed him with open arms—the same arms that Mimì (as he was called in Apulia) stretched out to the world on 1 February 1958, when he won the Sanremo Music Festival. Modugno performed on the Ariston stage alternating with Johnny Dorelli, as mandated by the Sanremo format. “Nel blu dipinto di blu” (“In the Blue-Painted Blue Sky”) became soon universally known as “Volare” (“Fly”) and remains to this day, according to Società Italiana Autori Editori (SIAE) data, the most frequently played Italian song worldwide, with 800,000 copies sold in Italy and 22 million across the globe. The following year “Volare” achieved prominence in the United States as well, remaining on the charts for thirteen consecutive weeks—an unparalleled record for an Italian song.
Modugno, “Mimì,” or “Mr. Volare,” succeeded in captivating listeners of all generations with a text both simple and dreamlike, expressing the universal longing of humankind for contact with the infinite—the desire to escape reality in order to live a life “più in alto del sole / ed ancora più su” (“higher than the sun, / and higher yet,”). At dawn, however, with the disappearance of the moon, dreams tend to vanish: “ma tutti i sogni nell’alba svaniscon perché / quando tramonta la luna li porta con sé” (“but every dream vanishes at dawn because / when the moon sets she takes them away with her.”). The narrator nevertheless rediscovers this dreamlike dimension in the eyes of his beloved and is thus able to continue his journey: “ma io continuo a sognare negli occhi tuoi belli / che sono blu come un cielo trapunto di stelle” (“but I keep dreaming in your beautiful eyes, that are blue like a star-spangled sky.”). The eyes of the beloved become the new sky “trapunto di stelle,” the place to contemplate in order to soar and to sing, as reiterated in the celebrated refrain.
The year 1959 marks another crucial stage in Modugno’s career, when he won the Sanremo Festival once again with the song “Piove (Ciao ciao bambina)” (“It’s Raining (Bye, Bye, Baby)”), written with Dino Verde. The piece originated from a few verses jotted down by Mimì while waiting for a train in Pittsburgh, PA, after he had witnessed two lovers in a farewell embrace beneath the rain. Modugno had written the following lines:
Ciao ciao bambina, un bacio ancora
e poi per sempre ti perderò;
vorrei trovare parole nuove
ma piove, piove sul nostro amor
(Bye, bye, baby, one more kiss,
and then I will lose you forever.
I wish I could find new words,
but it’s raining, it’s raining on our love)
The final version, completed by Verde, feature some variations in the refrain, but the verses first penned at the Pittsburgh train station form the backbone of the composition.
Domenico Modugno’s musical production—he also had a career as a film actor—was equally marked by the difficult theme of suicide.
A case in point is “Meraviglioso” (“Wonderful”), which in 1968 was rejected by the Sanremo jury—among them the singer/performer Renzo Arbore—precisely because it told the story of a man who, disillusioned with life, resolves to end it all. An “angelo vestito da passante” (“angel dressed as a passerby”) reminds him how wonderful the world is, with all its gifts: the sea, love. Thanks to this providential intervention, the man is able to rediscover “il bene di una donna / che ama solo te” (“the love of a woman / who only wants you”), “la luce di un mattino” (“the light of a morning,”), “l’abbraccio di un amico” (“the embrace of a friend”), “il viso di un bambino”, (“the face of a child”). The lyrics are in the first person singular, with the narrator gazing into dark waters, “con la dannata voglia / di fare un tuffo giù” (“with the damned desire / to take a dive below”).
The theme of suicide is also central to “Vecchio frak” (“Old Tailcoat”), which, as Modugno himself recalled, was inspired by the story of Prince Raimondo Lanza di Trabia (husband of actress Olga Villi), who in November 1954 died after falling from a window of the Hotel Eden in Rome—an act attributed to suicide, though the circumstances were never entirely clarified.
The atmosphere of the song is somber:
È giunta mezzanotte
si spengono i rumori
si spegne anche l’insegna
di quell’ultimo caffè
le strade son deserte,
deserte e silenziose,
un’ultima carrozza,
cigolando se ne va.
(Midnight has struck
the sounds are fading
the neon sign of that last café fades too
the streets are deserted, deserted and silent,
the last carriage creaks away).
In this town, entirely asleep in the dead of night, only an old tailcoat drifts along the river: its owner is unknown, nothing is known of his story, yet the narrator seems to harbor little doubt about the narrative.
The coat, carried by the current, drifts toward the sea and seems to say:
Adieu, adieu, adieu, adieu
addio al mondo
ai ricordi del passato
ad un sogno mai sognato
ad un abito da sposa
primo ed ultimo suo amor.
(Adieu, adieu, adieu, adieu
farewell to the world
to the memories of the past
to a dream never dreamt
to a wedding gown
his first and only love).
A life cut short, a dream never dreamt—nothing to do with the dreamlike voyage of “Volare.”
Herein lies the complexity of Modugno’s universe, suspended between a hymn to life and a sense of disenchantment, between the dream of a better existence and the stark drama of the present. That very sense of drama led Modugno to interpret the Abruzzese folk song “Amara terra mia” (“My Bitter Land,” in the adaptation by Giovanna Marini), a song that depicts with unflinching harshness the difficulties of leaving one’s native land: a land that is bitter and yet, paradoxically, beautiful—loved and despised at once. The desolation of the countryside is captured in the image of a child crying at a withered breast that cannot nourish him: it is the hour of farewell, of parting from one’s love, to abandon one’s land in search of an elsewhere.
The bond with this bitter land is equally evident in Modugno’s dialectal production. From his youth he had experimented with the dialect of San Pietro Vernotico (in the province of Brindisi), where the young Mimì had moved in 1932 with his family due to his father’s work. The dialect of San Pietro, belonging to the Salentine group, was immediately associated with Sicilian dialects, as part of the same linguistic region.
Modugno himself confirmed, after the triumph of “Volare,” that he had written those lyrics in Sicilian: while Sicilian was more widely recognized and, according to the Apulian singer, corresponded to a choice made by RAI, the Apulian public did not take kindly to this statement, and relations between Mimì and his homeland became increasingly strained as the years passed and as his dialectal production continued.
Among the earliest songs in the San Pietro dialect are “La cicoria” (“Chicory”), “Musciu niuru” (“Black Cat”), “La donna riccia” (“Curly-Haired Woman”), and “Lu pisci spada” (“The Swordfish”).
Modugno drew extensively from the reservoir of folk songs and became an interpreter of celebrated traditional pieces, among which stands out “Malarazza” (“Wicked breed”), in Sicilian dialect, published in 1976. Mimì—Apulian by birth and Sicilian by adoption, especially after his marriage in 1955 to the Messinese actress Franca Gandolfi—also embraced Neapolitan musical culture. In 1957, for example, he co-wrote with Dino Verde “Resta cu mme” (“Stay With Me”), a song that over the years has been performed countless times by the most influential artists of the Italian musical panorama. Equally significant is Modugno’s composition of the music for “Tu sì ‘na cosa grande” (“You Are a Big Deal”), written with Roberto Gigli, which immediately achieved great success, winning the 1964 Festival of Naples.
Here we encounter a multifaceted artist who engaged with different styles and languages, creating a dense diorama of dialectal interweaving while keeping a keen eye on cinema. The most emblematic instance of the fusion of cinematographic and musical language in Modugno’s career is undoubtedly his collaboration with Pier Paolo Pasolini, who wrote the lyrics of “Che cosa sono le nuvole” (“What Are Clouds”); Modugno performed the song in the film “Capriccio all’italiana” (“Caprice Italian Style”), in a scene bearing the same title. Also worth noting is his brief but intense partnership with the poet Salvatore Quasimodo, who, after meeting Modugno, granted him permission to set to music two of his poems: “Ora che sale il giorno” (“At Day’s Break”) and “Le morte chitarre” (“Dead Guitars”).
Perhaps already aware of the few years he had left after his stroke in 1984, Modugno, together with his son Massimo, composed his final tender masterpiece, “Delfini (Sai che c’è)” (“Dolphins (You Know What)”), in 1993, the year before his death.
In a world of “rifiuti, pescecani ed SOS” (“garbage, sharks and SOS”), where drowning is all too easy because, as “un grande filosofo indiano” (“a great Indian philosopher”) once said, “nel mare della vita / i fortunati / vanno in crociera / gli altri nuotano / qualcuno annega” (“in the sea of life/ the fortunate / go on cruises / others swim / some drown”), the two protagonists of the song—two dolphins—swim on, oblivious to the troubles around them.
Like a kind of spiritual testament, the final verses of the song resound and defy death, since life itself is “morire cento volte” (“to die a hundred times”):
sai che c’è
non ce ne frega niente
la vita è, è morire cento volte
siamo delfini\ giochiamo con la sorte
sai che c’è
non ce ne frega niente
vivremo sempre
noi sorrideremo sempre
siamo delfini
è un gioco da bambini il mare
sai che c’è
è un gioco da bambini il mare.
(you know what?
we don’t care
life means dying a hundred deaths
we are dolphins
we play with fate
you know what?
we don’t care
we will live forever
we will smile forever
we are dolphins
the sea is child’s play
you know what?
the sea is child’s play).
I like to think that Mimì was himself somewhat like a dolphin—dying and being reborn a hundred times, through countless languages and states of mind, he traversed currents and faced waves with a smile. For, in the end, as he sang shortly before his death, “è un gioco da bambini il mare” (“the sea is child’s play”).
Herein lies the poetry of Modugno’s “blu dipinto di blu.”
