2013
Canti, racconti e battaglie

La battaglia della Piana dei Merli, nota anche come battaglia di Kosovo Polje venne combattuta nell'omonima località il 15 giugno 1389 (secondo il calendario giuliano vigente all'epoca dei fatti) ovvero il 28 giugno 1389 (secondo il calendario gregoriano entrato in vigore nel 1582), giorno di San Vito, tra le forze cristiane guidate dal principe serbo Lazar Hrebeljanović e le truppe ottomane.

La battaglia della Piana dei Merli non fu uno scontro tra cristianesimo e islam. Infatti, nello schieramento serbo, assieme al principe serbo Lazar Hrebeljanović, vi erano Tvrtko I Kotromanić, signore della Bosnia, che aveva ricevuto da poco la corona dal re di Ungheria, oltre a contingenti valacchi, croati, bulgari e albanesi. Di contro, nello schieramento ottomano vi erano diversi vassalli cristiani.

L'esercito cristiano, composto da una coalizione tra la Serbia... (Continues)

2024
Comfort Food (Kiran Music, 2024)

This song is a musical response to cultural intolerance. My words are aimed at reminding us that we all bleed the same red; our tears taste of the same salt – we’re the root of one tree – we’re all part of the same human species, but can we call ourselves humans when we lack humanity? The impetus for this song is the rise of Hindu fundamentalism. This movement marginalizes Muslims and other ethnic minorities and is an ideology embodied in the political party which currently governs India. This wave of religious hatred has also spread in the Indian Diaspora, and many who are against it do not speak out for fear of repercussions. Social preservation dictates that they stay quiet even in the face of injustice to others. The wound I refer to in these lyrics is the partition of India and Pakistan – once a united people – it is the story of the loss of brotherhood.... (Continues)

2024
Comfort Food (Kiran Music, 2024)

This song is about feeling overwhelmed with the current state of political polarization in the world. Nationalist politicians around the globe are targeting ethnic minorities and immigrants. Most of us have strong opinions on these issues and it’s sadly often impossible to talk with those we disagree with without the conversations turning into yelling matches. I’ve found it very hard to control my anger when talking to family members about the cons of fundamentalism and tribal thinking. So instead of talking, I‘m singing my opinion – this song reminds us that we are all from one root; we all bleed the same shade of red.

English translation from the Album booklet.

“Tera Jugg” parla del senso di sopraffazione dovuto allo stato attuale di polarizzazione politica nel mondo dove i politici nazionalisti stanno prendendo di mira minoranze etniche e immigrati.
blogfoolk.com

2023
tiny notes

t ends with one last unaccompanied number, Iuventa, which is about the ship belonging to [Jugend Rettet, a Berlin non-governmental organisation dedicated to rescuing drowning people in the Mediterranean. To date she’s saved some 14,000 but was seized in 2017, the crew now awaiting trial accused of colluding with people smugglers. It’s a quietly rousing anthemic reminder that we are one world and one planet, echoing the refrain from the album opener as they declare “We’re not the clothes we wear/We’re not the scars we bear/We are the song we share”.
brightyoungfolk.com

2023
tiny notes

There’s one final real life story of an inspirational figure. Cooney was commissioned to write The Surgeon, a slow waltzing ballad with sweeping strings and sparse, plangent, piano, for the BBC’s 21st Century Folk project, in tribute to David Nott, a British surgeon who, putting his Christian principles into action, has volunteered to work in many war zones. This song is about a time in Aleppo where he found himself operating on “a man in distress/With a bullet hole wound torn in his chest” only to discover when six men “with knives and machine guns and uniforms black” burst in and watched as he worked, that he was saving the life of a young ISIS fighter. Asked later if he regretted saving him, his reply was no, “for life it is precious and life it is rare/And may my arms always be able to bear”.
brightyoungfolk.com

2023
tiny notes

In 2018 Rachel Robertson asked us to write a song for her brother, Tim Burman. Tim was one of 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing on 21st December 1988 when flight PanAm 103 broke up above the small Scottish town killing all those on board and 11 people on the ground. He was 24 and on his way to New York to spend Christmas with his girlfriend, Rose. Rachel said she didn’t see it as being a sad song but a love song and a song to keep the Lockerbie families' campaign for justice alive.
genius

2023
tiny notes

Trespassers is the last of the 17 songs written for our theatre show The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff. It’s the story of Johnny’s participation in acts of civil disobedience in the 1930s to advocate the Right to Roam – that ‘the right of walking was free’. The most famous trespass took place at Kinder Scout, Derbyshire in April 1932 and led, eventually, to the creation of the National Parks.

2023
tiny notes

Lyra McKee was an investigative journalist from Belfast. She was killed whilst observing a riot in Derry, Northern Ireland in April 2019. She was 29. In her 2017 TED talk she spoke movingly of the moment she came out to her mum. ‘Don’t tell me there’s no hope,’ she said. Her family are still campaigning for #Justice4Lyra. The first three lines are taken from the traditional song The Croppy Boy.
genius

2023
tiny notes

Richard Moore grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland. He described his childhood as growing up in a war zone. When he was 10 years old in 1972 he was hit by a rubber bullet on his way home from school. He was blinded for life. With the help of his devoted family and community he rebuilt his life and went on to found Children in Crossfire, a charity which has for 30 years helped vulnerable young people in developing nations. In 2007 he found, befriended and forgave the soldier who fired the bullet. The Dalai Lama wrote ‘I preach forgiveness, Richard Moore lives it.’
genius

2023
tiny notes

Jack Merritt ‘lived and breathed fire in pursuit of a better world for all humanity’. He worked for an organisation called Learning Together which put Cambridge undergraduates alongside prison inmates to share their unique perspectives on justice. On 29th November 2019 he was killed, along with his colleague Saskia Jones, in the Fishmonger’s Hall terror attack. He was 25. His dad, David Merritt, wrote an incredible tribute to his son in the Guardian a week later, urging people to ‘borrow his intelligence, share his drive, feel his passion, burn with his anger, and extinguish hatred with his kindness’ and to ‘walk through the door he has booted down with his black Doc Martens’.
genius

Jack was proud. Jack was absorbingly intelligent. Jack was fiercely loyal. Jack loved music, art, eating good food with his family, and having more than one pint with his mates. Oh, and in... (Continues)

2001
S. Anna di Stazzema: per non dimenticare

L’anno scolastico 2001/2002, anno in cui insegnavo nella scuola Primaria “Fabio Filzi” di Madonna dell’Acqua (Istituto comprensivo “ Livia Gereschi” - Pontasserchio) nella classe V, ho partecipato ad una manifestazione commemorativa presso il monumento dei caduti de La Romagna (PI). Per questa occasione, ho elaborato un progetto che prevedeva la lettura, rielaborazione e ascolto delle vicende di alcune delle 69 vittime che durante la guerra si erano rifugiate proprio in quella valle dove furono barbaramente trucidate dalle S.S. tedesche l’11/8/del 1944.

I bambini, dopo avere ascoltato poi alcune testimonianze di superstiti che avevano vissuto sulla propria pelle l’orrore e le crudeltà della guerra, hanno riflettuto sull’educazione al valore della pace, che valorizza – invece - la bellezza, e che diffonde il dialogo per il diverso. Durante la... (Continues)

2024
Culla e Tempesta

Under the Sea (nella versione in italiano In fondo al mar) è un brano musicale composto da Alan Menken e scritto da Howard Ashman, tratto dal film Disney La sirenetta del 1989.

N.B. la parte in salentino è trascritta (da un non salentino) all'ascolto basandosi sui sottotitoli in italiano, quindi sicuramente deve essere corretta

1976
nell'album Se non ora... quando?(2017)

Tall el Zaatar: campo profughi palestinese in Libano dove si consumò uno dei peggiori massacri ad opera delle milizie cristiane sostenute da Israele, ancora prima del massacro, ancor peggiore, di Sabra e Chatila (1982). Con il massacro di Tall el Zaatar si ebbe anche la totale espulsione dei palestinesi dal sud del Libano.