Rosa Balistreri ‘ I am not a singer, I am an activist with guitar’

Rosa Balistreri (1927–1990) was the indomitable voice of Sicily—hoarse, urgent, and incandescent with the stories of the island’s working poor. Born in Licata to a carpenter father and a housewife mother, she grew up without schooling, sent to menial work as a child. At sixteen she entered an arranged marriage with Gioacchino Torregrossa; when he gambled away their daughter Angela’s dowry, Rosa attempted to kill him. He did not die; she was sentenced to a few months in prison. On release, she moved to Palermo and, at thirty-two, learned to read and write—an awakening that sharpened her sense of language and protest.

In the 1950s, she emigrated to Florence “by necessity”: to escape the economic precarity, social constraints, and local hostility that hemmed her life in Sicily, and to find work and artistic freedom in a more receptive city. There, in the orbit of painters, poets, and theatre makers, she lived for twelve years with Manfredi Lombardi and met Dario Fo, who cast her in ‘Ci ragiono e canto’ (1966)—a turning point that thrust her onto national stages. Her records followed quickly: La voce della Sicilia (1967) and Un matrimonio infelice (1967) introduced a repertoire that braided ancient ballads with newly minted laments. Returning to Sicily in 1971, she sang poems by Ignazio Buttitta and won admirers across the arts—Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri, Renato Guttuso—who recognized in her timbre a people’s memory: violent and tender, bitter and sweet.

Her career was punctuated by public battles, none more famous than Sanremo 1973, where ‘Terra ca nun senti’—her searing love-hate address to Sicily—was excluded for having been previously published. The omission only amplified the song’s stature: a symbolic “winner” that still makes exiles weep. Through the 1970s and 1980s she toured tirelessly, often with musician Mario Modestini, releasing albums that documented prisons, protest, and everyday miracles. She died in Palermo in 1990 after a brain stroke; her legacy has since been renewed by interpreters such as Carmen Consoli and Etta Scollo.

Selected publications (books, recordings, and notable reissues)

• La voce della Sicilia (1967, Tauro Record)
• Un matrimonio infelice (1967, Tauro Record)
• Amore tu lo sai la vita è amara (1971, Cetra Folk)
• Terra ca nun senti (1973, Cetra Folk)
• Noi siamo nell’inferno carcerati (1974, Cetra Folk)
• Amuri senza amuri (1974, Cetra Folk)
• La Ballata del Prefetto Mori / Il prefetto di ferro (1977)
• Vinni a cantari all’ariu scuvertu (1978, Cetra Folk)
• Concerto di Natale (1985, PDR)

Posthumous reissues and collections: Rosa Balistreri (1996, Teatro del Sole); Un matrimonio infelice (1997); Rari e Inediti (1997); Collection… la raggia, lu duluru, la passione (2004, Lucky Planets); Rosa canta e cunta. Rari e inediti (2007); Amuri senza amuri (2007)

Films and documentaries dedicated to her

• Rosa Balistreri. Un film senza autore — Rai Storia, “Italiani” series (dir. Fedora Sasso; monograph by Marta La Licata)
• Regional and TV tributes; concert-documentations (CRICD and local archives)

Awards and recognitions

• Premio ufficiale della critica discografica
• Premio Tenco per operatore culturale (1982)

Best recordings (quick-list for listening)

• Terra ca nun senti — stark, orchestral folk lament; emblem of Sicilian protest
• Cu ti lu dissi — intimate, dramatic love song
• Mi votu e mi rivotu — classic ballad, definitive delivery
• Buttana di to ma — prison-days invective, raw and unforgettable
• I pirati a Palermu — narrative verve and grit
• ’U cunigghiu — playful edge beneath a tough exterior

Soundtrack and screen uses (notable)

• La Seduzione — collaboration context with composer Luis Bacalov; selections documented in discographies
• Frequent licensing in Sicilian TV features and cultural documentaries; concert footage in regional film archives

Photographs (caption-ready suggestions)

• Rosa at Sanremo, 1973: black-and-white press image with guitar, mid-gesture—eyes blazing, hair pinned, dress modest yet defiant.
• Early Florence years, late 1960s: café performance shots—small stage, cigarette haze, audience tight and intent.
• Palermo return, circa 1971–74: portrait with Ignazio Buttitta—two figures of Sicilian culture, Rosa holding guitar, Buttitta’s hands mid-poem.
• Late-career concert, 1980s: close-up under warm spotlights—weathered face, resolute smile, the guitar a second heartbeat.

Piquant anecdotes

• “I’m not a singer; I’m an activist with a guitar.” She turned rallies into recitals and vice versa.
• The Sanremo saga: when Terra ca nun senti was excluded for being “non-unprecedented,” she joked, “They can exclude a song, but not a pain.”
• Learning letters at thirty-two in Palermo, she reportedly practiced by tracing lyrics onto butcher paper saved by market vendors.
• In rehearsal with Dario Fo, she refused to polish a Sicilian vowel: “If I iron my voice, I iron my island.”