#fabriziodeandrè Supramonte e Sardegna: intervista esclusiva

Fabrizio De André, 1983, exclusive interview with l'Agnata (Tempio Pausania) In the second half of the 1970s, in anticipation of the birth of his daughter Luisa Vittoria De André (known as Luvi), he moved with Dori Ghezzi to the Sardinian estate l'Agnata, in the municipality of Tempio Pausania. On the evening of August 27, 1979, the couple was kidnapped by the anonymous Sardinian kidnapping group and held prisoner on the slopes of Mount Lerno. They were released after four months (Dori was freed on December 21st at 11:00 PM, Fabrizio on the 22nd at 2:00 AM, three hours later) upon payment of a ransom. The experience of kidnapping added to the already consolidated contact with the reality and life of the Sardinian people, and became the inspiration for several songs, written again with Bubola and collected in an album by Fabrizio De Andrè, released in 1981, commonly known as L'indiano (The Indian) from the cover image depicting a Native American. The thread that links the various songs is the parallel between two very special civilizations: one vanished (that of the Native Americans) and the other, the Sardinian one, on the verge of extinction. There are many points of contact: subsistence economy, love of nature, respect for children and the elderly. Making do with the little that always seems insufficient to us, enriching moral qualities and inner reality, much more than we have ever managed to do. An anarchic reality, certainly, lived in complete freedom, a respect that we have managed to destroy towards others and even towards ourselves. There are also references to the current events of the period (Se ti tagliassero a pezzetti—a hymn to personified freedom, whose line "Signora libertà, Signorina fantasia" was often changed live to "Signora libertà, Signorina anarchia"—contains an allusion to the 1980 Bologna massacre). The allusions to the experience of kidnapping are subtle, but not veiled: from the very repetition of the phrase "Hotel Supramonte" (a code name used by the bandits, even though they weren't actually on the Supramonte), to the description of the improvised bandits (present in Franziska), to whom, however, he does not intend to deny notes of a certain romanticism and a connotation of peripheral proletariat that deserved attention, consistent with his privileged themes.