This piece is born in two opposite languages, and neither of them is my mother tongue.

English, in fact, is a powerful international language that both Ele and I learned in public school here in Italy. It is the language of science, the language of computer technology, the language of international relations. In a certain sense it is the language of power, which we still understand and speak today, but do not fully master — like many others in the non-English-speaking world. English is a beautiful language that allows us to communicate internationally as best as we can.

The other language is Sardinian. Now, for those of you who live abroad, you may never have heard of this language. In fact, it is a language spoken only in one region of Italy, a region that coincides with an island — Eleonora’s island: Sardinia. Sardinian resembles Latin, Italian, and Spanish, but it is none of the three. It is a very beautiful and very musical language, spoken by a people who are as proud as they are hospitable (for those of you who know Eleonora, this should sound familiar, right?).


Over the years I have personally learned to know and understand this language a little, somewhat against the trend, because unfortunately Sardinian is actually a language that is disappearing. It has an ancient history that perhaps Ele will tell you more about, and it is right that she does. I will only tell you one thing to help you understand the value it has for us in the context of this song: during the fascist era in Italy, in the years when Ele’s grandparents were growing up, this language was forbidden. The Italian dictatorship banned Sardinian and imposed Italian on the Sardinian people. But this language continued to live on. It was still spoken in private, outside institutional contexts, and it survives even today. Like all languages, Sardinian carries much more than words: it carries an entire culture, a way of seeing the world. 
For Ele, Sardinian is a mother tongue together with Italian. And yet this language was opposed and suppressed for years. The power of the dictatorship did not like the fact that the Sardinian people had their own language. But a language cannot simply be erased from one day to the next. Sardinian represents the identity of the Sardinian people, and trying to erase what people are is a form of violence.
Although today, fortunately, institutions are completely moving in the opposite direction compared to the fascist era and tend to promote, rediscover and revive this otherwise endangered language, even simply speaking Sardinian can represent an act of courage, rebellion, and revaluation. This language was considered vulgar, second-class, the language of poor people without power. And yet it is a language that belongs to people, like all languages — made of feelings, strength and dignity, just like every human being.

Alright, let’s come to Humanity.

​Our message of peace is unconditional. It comes with no compromises, and without the need to claim that we must defend ourselves by attacking. Just as we are small, we are also proud, and wars will never be in our name.
This song is about standing up and saying this: you may destroy the world, but it will not be in our name.
​

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?