Commentary
At Sanremo, two singers, but one without a voice
Even in the smallest things, even on the Sanremo stage – much like in the looming plans being made above their heads for Gaza and the West Bank – the Palestinians remain shut out.
Imagine if all it took was one good song. There are so many songs out there that are both good and righteous, just like John Lennon’s Imagine and even more so, that they would have been enough to retroactively fix up everything that’s wrong in the world. The war in Vietnam would never have started, Leonard Peltier would have been free for over 40 years now, and the only reason we’d be talking about the Congo would be to celebrate the recognition of the Congolese rumba as a monument of world cultural heritage.
And we’d also have a “Sanremo style” ceasefire in the Middle East after Tuesday night's performance by Noa and Mira Awad on the first night of the Sanremo Music Festival at the Ariston Theater. This “guest performance” marked the renewal of the bond between an Israeli artist of Yemeni descent, Achinoam Nini (Noa to international audiences), and an Arab-Israeli artist of Palestinian and Bulgarian descent, Mira Awad. The latter grew up in Tel Aviv and endured harsh criticism for singing under Israel's flag together with Noa at Eurovision 2009 – something one can hardly imagine ever happening again after Oct. 7 – while staunchly holding on to her views as a Palestinian left-winger. Two singers that represent two segments of Israeli society – which, with great difficulty, have managed to maintain at least a semblance of mutual respect over the past year and a half.
The point is that even in the smallest things, even on the Sanremo stage – much like in the looming plans being made above their heads for Gaza and the West Bank – the Palestinians remain shut out. Two voices, one song, like two peoples, one state – but the latter does not consider them equal. And now that the unimaginable is being said and done about Palestine, the imagination that John Lennon sang an ode to seems to have broken down completely.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/a-sanremo-due-popoli-ma-uno-e-senza-voce on 2025-02-12