Rosa Balistreri

Amore tu lo sai, la vita è amara
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Rosa Balistreri – Amore tu lo sai, 
la vita è amara
Cetra, LPP 184
Made in Turin, Italy, 1971

While Rosa Balistreri is not as generally known as, say Edith Piaf, locally in Sicily, and throughout Italy, she is as highly regarded by the people as any of the 'chanteuses' that acquired a world-wide recognition. What she has in common with some of the greatest European (female) folk singers, such as Piaf and Amália Rodrigues, is that she is of the people (meaning: grew up in poverty, had a life of hardship and sorrow, and eventually the triumph of the individual). Rosa Balistreri was born in 1927, grew up in a very much brutal, feudal Sicily. As an escape she began to sing Sicilian folk songs but it took her through many inhumane jobs and relationships before she was, at the age of 39, able to make a recording. Balistreri fled from Sicily to Florence in the 1960s, but moved back again in the 1970s. She died in Palermo in 1990.

I find it very strange that I never came across this singer, never in my 30+ years of interest in European folk music. While I have several records of musicians she's associated with, and even a Sicilian folk record or two (be it that of the celebratory tourist kind), I had never heard of Rosa Balistreri before.

The song below is called Mirrina and it's an agricultural song (and that's the extend to which I can translate the Italian liner notes).