The young man trades his long hair for the soldier’s shaved head, and exchanges his guitar for a gun. Instead he has an instrument that only plays C’era un ragazzo che come me however, does not solely focus on the similarities between its American protagonist and its Italian narrator, but rather concentrates most on the suffering that the young solider experiences in Vietnam. This approach of drawing comparisons between anonymous Italians and those more directly affected by the Vietnam war was common in many protest songs of the period, such as Leoncarlo Settimelli’s America (1968). In these verses, we see a clear parallel between the song’s narrator and its young protagonist, both of whom are really just carefree boys (ragazzi) with a passion for music. The opening lines are significant: C’era un ragazzo The song narrates the war time experiences of a young American musician, from the point of view of his Italian friend. While many of the Italian anti-war songs of the Vietnam era harshly criticize the American intervention in that nation, they also evince support for the Vietnamese people, and compassion for the young Americans sent into battle.Ĭ’era un ragazzo che come me exemplifies this sympathetic view of the soldiers. Characterized by lyrics that examined the social and political turmoil of the times, in Italy, folk was the preferred style for expressing the dissenting views of both progressive intellectuals and the working class (Antonio Fanelli, Contro Canto: Le culture della protesta dal canto sociale al rap (Rome, Donzelli:2017), 4, 47). While C’era un ragazzo che come me was more of a mainstream song, many of the others fall into the genre of contemporary folk music. This piece belongs to a robust canon of protest songs that many Italian singer-songwriters of the 1960s and 70s produced in response to the Vietnam War. The ballad eventually captured the attention of the American folk singer, Joan Baez, who covered it during her concert in Rome in May of 1967, an event which made C’era un ragazzo che come me popular worldwide. Gianni Morandi went on to perform this song at the third annual Festival delle Rose in October of 1966. How strange the fate of some songs is! (Pagina Ufficiale Gianni Morandi, Facebook Post, May 26, 2013, my translation). Then, with time, after Mauro´s version and later mine, there were many others, performed by singers from around the world. In the end, I succeeded in convincing them both to let me record it. Even Migliacci, my producer, and co-author of the song, did not want me to sing a piece so different, that spoke of war and a soldier killed in Vietnam. Lusini was recording it and he did not have any intention of letting me sing it. The first time that I heard it, it gave me goose bumps. Franco was so struck by it that in five minutes, right after eating, he wrote the lyrics to There once was a boy who, like me, loved the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, a song that would change my career. He played him a ballad that he had composed himself, with made up English words. In Rome, in a restaurant, he met the great Franco Migliacci, who had written Volare with Modugno. It was the summer of 1966, when a boy of 20, or slightly older, left Siena with his guitar to find his fortune in the capital. In a May 2013 post on his Facebook page, Gianni Morandi explained the origins of the song, C’era un ragazzo che come me with the following anecdote: “C’era un ragazzo che come me” (by Sarah Annunziato, The University of Virginia) He traveled around the world but ended up
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