Italia d'oro
Pierangelo Bertoli wrote a song that won 4th place at the San Remo music festival in 1992. It is one of his most popular, from a career spanning decades and well over a dozen albums. Yet there isn't a translation for it on lyrics translate.com into any language. To be fair, lyricstranslate skews to new popular music, since it's powered by volunteer translations, but the rest of his 5 or 6 most popular songs have translations, many into English. I thought, maybe I can contribute something! This was even on of the most famous Italian protest songs, so it was one of the reasons I discovered Bertoli.
Then I read the lyrics. I understood all the, after looking up a couple, but I had no idea what it meant. So I started reading backward looking news stories praising the song and telling its context. “Italia d'oro” came out near the beginning of 'tangentopoli' and 'Mani Puliti' and 'Italia d'oro' and 'Napoli d'oro' and the like. It was experienced by many as profetic of what would unfold in the next years.
You probably feel as enlightened as I did. So I dived into the Wikipedia rabbit hole of 1990s Italian history. I'm still not sure I've put it all together right, but I'll share what I took away:
* Government and businesses in Italy had formed hidden partnerships
* All across the country, businesses bribed politicians and politicians gave them lucrative government contracts and regulations.
* Over several years, or maybe a decade, starting in the 1980s, investigative journalists and some dedicated members of law enforcement and the judiciary, carefully and quietly collected evidence about the corruption.
* In the early 1990s, with the most memorable and traumatic events happening in 1993, I think, they started to act on the information they had collected. Politicians were brought down. Mafia bosses were tried and convicted. Scandals were everywhere
* At least one judge, other less prominent figures, and too many innocents, were killed in Mafia violence, including bombings, against the efforts to hold them to justice.
* The main ruling parties in the Italian parliament lost power, new parties began, and Italian politics was drastically changed.
* I think 'Italia d'oro' was a reference to the politicians and corrupt businesses enriching each other at everyone else's expense.
* 'Mani Puliti', meaning clean hands, was a movie quote, and was actually said by one corrupt politician, telling people that his hands were clean of the horrible wrongs done by the Mafia, all while he had been taking bribes for years.
All this history, and I'm sure more that I don't have a clue about, but is known to all Italians, shows up in the lyrics of Bertoli's song. No wonder no one had translated the song. You could translate all the words, and half the song would still make no sense.
Do I have to say that this quickly became an irresistible challenge? I'll show you where I landed in my next post.