My love
With peace I have placed loving flowers
at your feet
With peace
With peace I stopped the seas of blood
for you
Forget anger
Forget pain
Forget your weapons
Forget your weapons and come
Come and live with me my love
Under a blanket of peace
I want you to sing, beloved light of my eyes
And your song will be for peace
let the world hear,
my beloved and say:
Forget anger
Forget pain
Forget your weapons
Forget your weapons and come
And live in peace
These I believe are the words of a widow at the tomb of her beloved. I got the words from this italian website.
It was used in a seminal Italian anti-war song "Luglio Agosto Settembre Nero" by the band Area (although I guess they weren't called anti-war songs then) - whose vocalist Demetrio Stratos indirectly gives the name to this blog, and whose music is the inspiration for a lot of my mine. It's adapted in turn from a greek folk song, but no-one knows who wrote the original words, except that Stratos was probably the one who made this pirate recording when visiting Cairo.
By the way, I'll be playing this live at the open mic at the greenbank pub on my new Setar/Rabab. Rehearsing it "furiously", but I guess, peacefully.
(If that Italian site disappears before this one, here are the words:)
(Mio amato/ Con la pace ho depositato i fiori dell’amore
davanti a te/Con la pace/con la pace ho cancellato i mari di sangue
per te/Lascia la rabbia/Lascia il dolore/Lascia le armi/Lascia le armi e vieni/Vieni e viviamo o mio amato/e la nostra coperta sarà la pace/Voglio che canti o mio caro “ occhio mio “ [luce dei miei occhi]/E il tuo canto sarà per la pace/fai sentire al mondo,/o cuore mio e di' (a questo mondo)/Lascia la rabbia/Lascia il dolore/Lascia le armi/Lascia le armi e vieni/a vivere con la pace.)
Comments
Lorenzo di "Canzoni contro la guerra"
Ho fatto la traduzione e l'ho messa sul tuo sito. Pero' vedi te se preferisci questa qua - non volevo metterla li per non riempire troppo:
Play with the world, taking it apart
Children aged prematurely by the sun
It's not my fault if your reality
forces me to make war against Omerta
Maybe one day we will know what it means
to drown in blood with all humanity
Discoloured people, almost all the same
my anger reads above the daily news
reads the past all of my pain
sings my people that don't want to die
When you see the world without having problems
seek the essence of things
It's not my fault if your reality
Forces me to make war against humanity.
Grazie!
Lorenzo
Man, I love this song since I was young, in the 70'... I remember all the story about the lyrics and interviews with Demetrio, which works and books tells what he did for experimental music, experimental vocals. Amazing.
Well, I would ask if you have the Arabic transcription of the wonderful intro, "Peace's Song", found in Cairo Museum.
I really must thank you, if you do that. I had all the transcription, I could read along and so on...
but I lost everything on my PC .
A Lebanese friend had transcript for me, we lost contact...
Thnaks a lot, good luck, nice blog!
Marcelo