Dreams come true. Not always, but yes sometimes. That is the difference between opening a window, jumping into the void believing that we can fly and dreaming of being happy and doing it. Fortunately, the percentage of people jumping out of windows is minimal. In fact, they jump not to fly, but because they can no longer do so, unable to dream that things can improve, that their dreams, at least some of them, can come true.
Nel blu dipinto di blu canción premiered by Domenico Modugno (Polignano a Mare, 1928-Lampedusa, 1994) talks about both things. Theme that most people know as Volare, as if the public were family of the song and at home, as everyone knows, they call you whatever you want.
Let's go first to the birth in Italy of what came to be called the summer song. The reason was to create a festival competition in imitation of the one in San Remo that was held in February, and where, by the way, N e had been a hit years before. In this new contest format, it was about summoning new talents whose reward was to be the song of the summer. It was called Un disco per l'estate. It was convened by the Italian Phonography Association and the first edition was in 1964. There was a first phase on radio and the second on RAI, for several weeks. In a vintage frenzy to today's digital eyes, the contest was based on a popular vote sent via postcard. Such was the success that the model was contributed to other countries. Among them, to Spain, in 1966.
Years before, on a tremendously hungover morning, a guy, Franco Migliacci, wakes up in a bed that is not his and the first thing he sees, hanging on a wall, is a reproduction of Le coq rouge dans la nuit, a painting the Belarusian painter Marc Chagall. The original dates from 1944 and was painted by Chagall shortly after the death of his sentimental partner since he was 14 years old, Bella Rosenfeld. It shows the head of the couple floating in the ether, accompanying each other, without any grimace of pain or loss. Next to them, part of the particular symbology of Chagall (of Jewish descent): a goat, a violin, the full moon and a rooster as an announcement of the new day. And of course, the blue, all those elements floating in blue.
Migliacci worked hard together with Modugno on that song. The Italian recording industry was showing muscle in both the domestic and international markets, and to hit it was to win at the casino. It certainly was for Modugno, who had had to ask one of his cousins for a loan to leave his native Polignano and go to Rome in search of his fortune. As an all-round singer-songwriter, he was making a name for himself and with all the dreams he treasured, he went to the Sanremo festival in 1958. The format was somewhat curious, since the prize being to go representing Italy in Eurovision, the song had to be defended by two performers in different performances. In that contest in which our song won, it was defended by Modugno and Johnny Dorelli. In Eurovision it was third, a disappointment that the public and time amended. Nel blu dipinto di blu was a sweeping success all over the world, being covered from its very baptism date by all kinds of performers, some of heavenly size such as David Bowie, Al Martino, Dean Martin, Paul McCarney, Mina or Alex Chilton.
Modugno was the ideal performer for that song. There was a kind of honesty about him, as if he had never met a cynical guy or a disappointment. Modugno wants to share something. It seems like a dream, but it is more like a dream in which he has seen himself in the sky, himself painted blue. He was flying. He had looked down and was not afraid. He was flying, yes, but he also wanted to sing because he was not afraid of waking up or falling. Modugno's own life was being the dream of being nobody and suddenly opening his arms like a windmill and singing with all possible audiences on stages, kitchens, streets and bedrooms. Ineffable, direct, singing the same song thousands of times but always as if he were presenting it for the first time, in society. In the song, his dream is inside another and that is something we should have suspected: he is in love, the world has disappeared and he doesn't even need it as a runway.
