"A nameless little girl, belonging to a voiceless people, on everyone's lips yet forgotten." Ermal Meta, winner of Sanremo alongside Fabrizio Moro in 2018 with "Non mi avete fatto niente" (and third place the other three times), returns to the Festival after five years with a poignant poem dedicated to the most innocent victims of all: children. "Stella stellina," which will be included on the album of unreleased songs "Funzioni vitale" out February 27, is a nursery rhyme, a lullaby, sung to his little girl by an adult bearing the responsibility of explaining a reality of constant violence, death, and oppression. Gaza, the setting, is never mentioned. "Because I didn't want to limit the song, but there are so many references," explains Meta, who is now the father of Fortuna Marie, born from the love of his partner Chiara Sturdà, as well as two eighteen-year-old girls, who grew up in an orphanage in the country where he was born 44 years ago, Albania, and from which he moved to Bari at a very young age with his mother, brother, and sister.
Ermal Meta, how did this piece come about?
"A father-daughter moment. I was playing the guitar for Fortuna, as I often do. I improvised the melody of "Stella Stellina," with sweet, comforting lyrics. A few hours earlier, however, I had seen some very disturbing images coming from Gaza, particularly the gaze of a Gazan girl that literally transfixed me."
And then?
When my daughter fell asleep, I went down to the studio and found myself singing the melody I'd invented for her, but with a different intention. I put myself in the shoes of one of the many desperate men living in that land. How do you explain to a child what's happening when it's difficult for us too? I wrote it like that, in one go, with that little girl's eyes fixed on my head and a frustrating sense of absolute helplessness.
The collaboration with Dario “Dardust” Faini, with whom she will duet on Thursday evening, did the rest.
