Listening today: Noa – No potho reposing
by Marialuisa Veneziano
Before you start music
This Sunday the music comes once again from one of you.
A reader has proposed No potho reposing and chose, in particular, the live interpretation of No..
And maybe he couldn't choose a version more suited to the spirit of this column.
Because there are songs that belong to an author.
Then there are others who, at some point in their history, seem to stop belonging only to those who wrote them. They pass by mouth, from generation to generation, enter into marriages, departures, returns, memorials. Someone sings them and someone else, without knowing well why, feels like he's home.
No potho reposing It's one of these.
It is not officially the hymn of Sardinia — since 2018 it is Procurade and moderate — but it was even among the songs taken into consideration for that recognition. More than an institutional anthem, it has become something perhaps even more difficult to decree by law: a place of collective memory.
🎧 Open listening. Then he keeps reading
This page is designed to be read with music next door.
(click on the black arrow to make the listening appear).
The recording that accompanies our listening dates back to Christmas concert of 9 December 2006. Noa dedicated her to Andrea Parodi and Sardinia. The video is now published on the official channel of the artist.
Let her go.
And for a few minutes don't worry about understanding every word.
First he listens to what the voice does when words belong to something bigger than her.
Inside the score
The title with which today we know the song comes from poetry To Diosa, written in 1915 by Salvatore "Badore" Sini, lawyer and poet of Sarule. In 1920, Joseph Rachel made his famous musical appearance; from the following year the composition appeared in the repertoire of the Philharmonic Musical Body of Nuoro directed by Rachel himself.
And it's important to point out something.
No potho reposing was not born as an ancient anonymous song mysteriously emerged between the Sardinian mountains.
He has authors. He's got a date. He's got a story.
Yet time has turned on it a fascinating transformation: a song has been gradually absorbed by tradition until it is perceived as a common heritage. Cori, popular singers, classical musicians, jazz musicians and rock artists crossed it into dozens of different interpretations.
This, for a musicologist, is already a wonderful story.
Folklore is not always what is born without author.
Sometimes it's also what a community decides not to let go.
A melody that can't stand still
The meaning of the title is simple and terrible:
"I can't rest. "
He who speaks does not find peace because thought continually returns to the loved one.
Today probably someone would recommend distraction, exit, do sports, silence notifications and possibly not control the last access.
Salvatore Sini did something less practical.
He wrote a poem.
Lucky for us.
Rachel's music has a wide, cantabile performance, supported by a ternary pulsation that gives it something of the cradle and something of the incessant movement.
And here's the little paradox.
The music waves gently.
The text, however, says there is no peace.
The musical body seems to cradle what the heart cannot placate.
It does not need a great harmonic complexity to achieve this effect. Strength lies in the continuity of the line, in the melodic opening and in the return of phrases: love is not represented as a momentary explosion, but as a thought that insists.
Come back.
And he's still coming back.
As some names do within us.
🎧 Listen to this.
Now try to stop following the translation.
Listen the direction of phrases.
You will feel the melody continuously upwards and then falls, as if it tries to reach something that remains a little further.
Listen to the repetitions.
In a bad song, repetition may be a lack of ideas.
This is the opposite.
Repeating means not being able to stop thinking.
And then listen to Noa.
Do not try to determine whether its pronunciation belongs to Sardinia. That's not the point.
This is a voice coming from elsewhere and entering a music received as a gift.
And it is precisely this distance to make interpretation so meaningful.
A handy song
Here history becomes almost more beautiful than musicology.
Noa says that Andrea Parodi invited her to Sardinia and taught her No potho reposing. In the description published on his official channel, he recalls his voice, his artistic audacity and the deep bond he had with the island. Shortly after that meeting Parodi died, at 51. When Noa participated in the 2006 Christmas concert, she chose this song and dedicated it to her memory and Sardinia.
Let's think.
A poet writes for a woman.
A composer turns those words into song.
An island adopts that song.
Andrea Parodi takes him in his own voice to make one of the symbolic interpretations of his path.
Then he teaches it to an Israeli singer.
He is gone.
She sings it.
This is what music can do with time.
Don't cancel it.
He crosses it.
Andrea Parodi had made No potho reposing a constant presence of its repertoire; the Foundation that bears its name also documents the collaboration with Noa in 2006.
And then the performance we are listening to is not just a cover.
IS a return.
The note remains
There are music that remind us when we no longer know how to do it.
This is perhaps one of the reasons why No potho reposing has crossed the border of the simple love song.
He speaks of a precise person, and yet everyone can live it.
It's about distance, but it's become a member.
He speaks of someone who cannot rest thinking of those who love, and over a century he was sung for loves present, distant, lost, for a land left and found, for people who continue to live in memory.
Something happens here that belongs to music rather than words.
A poem says:
I love you.
A song sung by thousands of people ends up saying:
we know what it means.
And it is in that passage from me to us that a song begins to become heritage.
🔎 One thing to know
No potho reposing is also known with the original title To Diosa.
Salvatore Sini's poem dates back to 1915; Joseph Rachel put it in music in 1920. In the course of the 20th century the song passed through choirs, interpreters of tradition, cultured music, jazz and popular music, until it became one of the most recognizable sound symbols of Sardinia.
And a curiosity says a lot about its identity value: in 2018 No potho reposing was among the alternatives discussed to become official anthem of the Sardinia Region. In the end it was chosen Procurade and moderate.
Maybe that's okay.
Some songs do not need a decree.
They have already been elected from the heart.
Take him with you
When the last note is over, think for a moment about the journey that made this music.
From Sarule to Nuoro.
From paper to voice.
From Sardinia to the world.
From Andrea Parodi to Noa.
And now from our reader to this page.
That's exactly why we wanted to open it. Sunday listening to your proposals.
A beloved music does not remain firm.
It's delivery.
Somebody let us know.
We keep it for a while.
Then we'll go to someone else.
And perhaps this is the most beautiful form of immortality that music can grant: do not prevent things from ending, but allow them to continue in another voice.
No potho reposing speaks of a love that does not let rest.
But after more than a century he also tells something else.
A land.
A language.
A man who gave a song to another voice.
A singer who, when that man was gone, returned her singing.
And a reader who today decided to pass it to us.
The music, basically, does this.
Don't keep it.
Pass.
And by the way, he can stay.
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