The promotion of the Palermo team to the first division came in 2004 and the positive results that the team has achieved to date apparently only constitute ludic events. In actual fact, though we are far from wanting to attribute vital connotations to sporting events, they constitute pleasant signs of recovery for the city and some of those rare moments of unanimous joy that unite the most different social classes and the most disparate human categories. The spontaneous celebrations by Palermo people for the promotion of the city football team in some respects can be comparable to other “ritual” events, both sacred (feast of Santa Rosalia) and profane (the Carnival). The football feast took on a character of solemnity, since it was shared by practically everybody. It was shown and represented in music, in dances, in acute aphorisms, in the form of colour and disguise, and in the decoration of roads, piazzas, cars, shops and private residences. These are all signs that are continuous with the forms of traditional expressiveness and that UNDA MARIS set out to analyze and to discuss thanks to the contribution of anthropologists, sociologists of communication, ethno-musicologists, etc., in a seminar entitled “Palermo in the 1st division. Practices and tribal symbols of our time.”

The natural extension of these popular expressions also manifests itself in song and in choirs and, in actual fact, almost at the same time as the promotion of Palermo there spontaneously arose the demand for a musical tribute to this event. So a musical tribute was composed, a sort of pacific “song of victory” that is not only a soccer hymn with triumphal tones but the expression of the appropriation (for some acquired – also through the sporting growth of the city – and for others renewed) of those roots and those old values that from Palermo and from its history extend towards the world and towards the future. The catchy melody also confers on the text those characteristics of singability that represent a “transversal” adhesive for society and for the expression of a shared joy. The soloist voice is that of Federica Foresta, an eight year-old child with a remarkable singing talent. The CD “Magic Palermo” was produced by Unda Maris Editions.

Singer: Federica Foresta

Orchestra Musica Contemporanea Coro dei non vedenti dell’Istituto dei ciechi Opere riunite I. Florio e F. e A. SalamoneResponsabile del coro: Maria Antonietta Lo Cicero

Sax alto: Orazio Maugeri

Music by: Davide Vaccaro e Aurelio Fragapane

Arranged by: Aurelio Fragapane

Lyric by: Filly Di Chiara, Domenico Napoli, Salvo Foresta

Recording, editing and mixing carried out at Unda Maris Studio by Aurelio Fragapane

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