'Ama chi ti ama' Art Contest - Si lui la vole, a song of Love and Death

Dec 22, 2017
1 min read

The second entry for the contest 'Ama chi ti ama' is free choice: I was intrigued by this song from the southern regions of Italy.

'Si lui la vole' -'If he want it' (track n. 7) sings the story of a man who killed his wife in a burst of jealousy. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he recalls the love and dedication of his victim when crafting the very shirt he still wears.

Listening to this song transported me back to one of my last visits to my grandfather, who lives in the harsh mountains of Calabria.

After the usual frugal meal, we sat together on the old balcony, listening to the peculiar silence of the Aspromonte; in the little square on the village a crowd of people stood, surrounding a white sheet on the ground.

Nothing of the scene apparently seemed strange to my grandfather, nor the cadaver under the sheet, nor the (by then) deafening silence.

He later explained the situation as a thirty years long showdown ('regolamento di conti') involving an old love story.

Many things had changed in the South of Italy in the last decades, still the society suffers from its patriarchal asset, and the idea of harming or killing someone for 'honour' reasons is widely tolerated; women, in this old song as nowadays, are the most harmed by this.