HUMANITY

HUMANITY - meaning of the song by Ele

If the Overture of Ruins of Silence represents the secular requiem of our humanity, vibrating from its own ashes, Humanity asks a question: are we truly aware of the kind of humanity we are? And above all, what kind of humanity do we want to be?
In this piece I use Sardinian and English. Sardinian is the language in which my thoughts move most instinctively, while English is the language through which we have shared our music with the world for many years, reaching our international fanbase, something we really love! Arianna has already written in her diary about the significance of the two languages we chose for Humanity.
Humanity is an original and unreleased track that first appeared with the release of the album Ruins of Silence on November 21, 2025, and was later re-released as a single on March 27, 2026. Its lyrics include a reference in the phrase ‘su mundu est gai.’
In Sardinian culture there is a famous song that has become part of popular tradition. There is hardly a Sardinian who does not know it. The phrase comes from a poem written at the end of the nineteenth century by the poet Peppino Mereu. The original text is actually a poem in the form of a letter, titled A Nanni Sulis, addressed to a dear friend of his, Nanneddu, a diminutive of Giovanni.
Mereu was a bohemian poet from Tonara, often at odds with the authorities and deeply sensitive to the suffering of ordinary people. The text of Nanneddu Meu says:
“Nanneddu meu, su mundu est gai: a sicut erat non torrat mai”
That means:
“My dear Nanneddu, the world is like this: it will never return to what it once was”
The poem describes an extremely poor Sardinia, devastated by what Mereu calls “tyrannies, infamies, and famines.” He speaks of people who are starving, forced to eat “bread made of chestnuts and even earth mixed with acorns.” When he writes “su mundu est gai” the poet is not saying that things should be this way. He is simply telling his friend a painful truth: the world is governed by injustice, and the poor are destined to suffer.
Toward the end of the poem, he gives Nanneddu a bitter piece of advice in order to survive in such a world: “faghe su surdu, ettad’a tontu” (“play deaf, pretend to be a fool”). In other words, that is the only way not to be crushed when “the world is like this.”
But when I hear these words, I also hear a kind of resignation, a resignation to being this kind of humanity.
And that is not how I want to think.

Our Humanity asks a different question: isn’t it time to finally face the truth about what kind of humanity we are, and what kind of humanity we want to be?
“No at ‘a esser s’ora de ischire e ita est sa beridade
Dae su chi fiat e dae su chi est oje, dae custa umanidade”

When someone tells me “that’s just how the world works” my answer is: "then let’s break it open with blows of love"

“Tui naras ca su mundu est gai?
Deu naru, arrogaddu a croppus dde amori”

“The world I dream breathe soft and slow, in silence, untouched by violence”