HUMANITY - Meaning of the song by Ari

Two languages (one forbidden) for one song. Humanity.

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.

Play HUMANITY

Why Humanity.
​My meaning of the song.

Well, writing a song in these two languages means exactly this to us: clearly placing side by side a language that is disappearing, a language that was even forbidden, and the English language, which, although it is also beautiful and noble, in the everyday life of non-native speakers like us carries with it that meaning I was telling you about — the strong value of institutions and international communication. Both languages are part of our daily life, but one carries the warmth of familiarity and simplicity, while the other carries the full weight of a Western world that also speaks through English in the houses of power. Two languages, and yet the same humanity.


Two languages that personally belong to us and that we live in different contexts, and in this song we say different things in each language. The slow slide into a world made of wars is certainly not something we need to explain to you. It is the world we are all living in, and it is from the bitterness of this reality that this song was born.


Humanity tells the story of disillusionment. When we talk about humanity, we tend to think about positive things such as empathy and affection, which are certainly one side of being human. But unfortunately, if we look realistically at the history of humanity, how many times has the other side of human beings — brutality and arrogance — taken over?


Thinking back to our school years, we realized that studying history was almost like studying an endless succession of wars, from the earliest times of which we have memory as humanity up to today. And if in our youth we studied the World Wars during a time that felt almost like peace, it now seems that we are blindly falling again into the same brutality.

Times change. Weapons change. Technologies change.
And yet humanity always manages to reveal its brutal side as well.

This is a very harsh song.

​People search for security, and that becomes the excuse to start wars. And so, finding ourselves falling again into the same cycle — when not long ago we felt as if we had finally moved beyond it, as if wars belonged to the past — and now seeing them reappear before our eyes, is what led us to write this song.

"Wake up to reality
When you say “humanity”
It seems to be something positive
I’m looking for security
‘Cause I found brutality 
Every single day I sew my penalty"
​

And so, in the language of the people, we sing this moment of awareness. History is a succession of barbarities. At least the history we studied. Isn’t it time to realize that?
And then we move into English: we must be realistic, right? Wake up, because there are threats and we must attack first. Either us or them… War is presented to us as a necessary evil, because outside there is cruelty and brutality.
But can we really not see that we are all one single humanity? Or maybe we do see it, and our humanity is not as positive as we once believed.


This song is born from all of this. But it is also born from rebelling against all of this.
Just like in Step Down, and like in Invincible, and throughout the album  Ruins of Silence , being small will never stop us from challenging great powers. Not in our name. An album that one of our listeners described as much darker — and that is absolutely true.
​

"RUINS OF SILENCE" ALBUM

​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.
​

"Karate ni sente nashi" (空手に先手なし)

​As you know, we both practice martial arts. First principle: Karate does not know attack: "Karate ni sente nashi".
​This will always be true for us. And we wish it were true for the world as well.
Just as we see martial arts only as an act of personal self-defense, we will always reject power and arrogance, and we will never justify massacres or military interventions meant to harm. Not in our name.
The color red is also a tribute to the blood shed by all people and animals who are victims of human violence and wars. This song stands with oppressed peoples, with the poor, and with those who have no voice.

Because it may sound unbelievable to some, but for us every human being has the same value and the same dignity — whether they are the leader of a great nation or the last forgotten person sitting by the side of a road in a distant country.

In the Golden Salt world there are no peripheries and no margins. There is no North and no South. There is no West and no East. There are no borders, no races, no ethnic divisions separating us. Free and independent, without labels and without powers, we have the privilege and the duty to stand up and say this clearly.
In the Golden Salt world there are only human beings.

And this will always be Golden Salt.

Humanity.

Arianna Mazzarese

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”