Here's to you

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Here's to You (Nicola and Bart) is a song by the American singer and political activist Joan Baez . It was released in 1971 as the final part of the soundtrack to the film Sacco e Vanzetti , a film adaptation of the trial of the US judicial authorities against Sacco and Vanzetti , which attracted international attention in the 1920s. The lyrics are from Baez, the music was composed by Ennio Morricone .

After the first screening of the film, various other prominent performers adapted this song with their own partially multilingual arrangements and cover versions. Thus evolved Here's to You , with its catchy melody into an internationally understood anthem for the victims of political justice that continues to resonate in the present, today as Evergreen applies.

background

Ennio Morricone, the composer of the song (2007 in Cannes)
Joan Baez, lyricist and singer of the song (1973 at a performance in Hamburg)

The song commemorates the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti , who were sentenced to death by American courts in a sensational trial in the 1920s and executed on August 23, 1927. In public, however, strong doubts about the correctness of the litigation and the subsequent guilty verdict were expressed, which was mainly motivated by the disgust for the political attitudes and the origin of the accused, and less by clear evidence of the robbery, of which they were accused. Baez 'song is the third and final part of the Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti , which was composed for the film directed by Giuliano Montaldo . It consists of four lines of text that are repeated eight times in succession. The last two lines take up a sentence from one of Bartolomeo Vanzetti's letters in which he wrote:

"The last moment belongs to us, that agony is our triumph!"

"The last moment is ours, this agony is our triumph!"

Baez changed this sentence to "The last and final moment is yours, that agony is your triumph". It reached chart positions in 1971/72 in France (number 1 of the international chart songs), Italy (as La Ballata di Sacco e Vanzetti ), the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Israel and Argentina, and in 1975 also in Mexico. Around 790,000 records were sold in France.

The song became an anthem for the human rights movement in the 1970s .

The piece was used, among other things, in the documentary episode film Germany in Autumn (meaning the German Autumn 1977 ), accompanying funeral scenes for the RAF terrorists Andreas Baader , Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe who died in the Stuttgart prison (Stammheim) as a result of alleged suicide . By using the song, the filmmakers created a direct reference to the case of the Italian anarchists and thus provided an interpretation of how state powers around the world would deal with anti-authoritarian political idealists. Another interpretation sees it as a conscious comparison and connection of the situation in Germany to earlier political left movements and their dead. At the same time, as a transition to the framework sentence of the film ("At a certain point of the cruelty, it doesn't matter who committed it: it should just stop."), It expresses the hope that the further conflict will take place peacefully in the future.

The song was also used in the film Die Tiefseetaucher and the computer games Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes .

Adaptations and cover versions

The song has been adapted and covered several times

  • The French version with slightly modified text was published by Georges Moustaki under the title Marche de Sacco et Vanzetti . Further French-language adaptations of the song were recorded by Les Compagnons de la chanson and Mireille Mathieu (on the 1974 album Mireille Mathieu chante Ennio Morricone ).
  • A Greek version of The Olympians appeared in the same year as the original under the title Ευχές για σας .
  • In 1972 the Israeli singer Daliah Lavi adapted the song in English, French and German.
  • In the same year Franz Josef Degenhardt published the song Sacco and Vanzetti . In his adaptation, Degenhardt also links the original theme with the case of the women's rights activist Angela Davis . This variant was again covered in 1991 by the German punk band Normahl on their album Blumen im Müll .
  • Also in 1972, Agnetha Fältskog published a German version of the melody of the song entitled Geh 'mit Gott , the text of which, however, has neither a political reference nor a reference to Sacco and Vanzetti.
  • 1997 Nana Mouskouri interpreted the song together with Les Enfoirés in a mixture of the English-language original text with the French text by Georges Moustaki.
  • In 2006 dance and electronic producer and DJ Stéphane Pompougnac released a cover version entitled The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti . The piece was part of the compilation Hôtel Costes 9 . The singer was the North Carolina American Linda Lee Hopkins. In addition to the long, regular version, Pompougnac produced a shorter acoustic version.
  • In 2010 Emma Marrone covered the song together with the band Modà in English and Italian ( La ballata di Sacco e Vanzetti ), released it as a single and presented it in 2011 at the Festival della canzone italiana in Sanremo .
  • In 2011 the Turkish band Bandista released a variant called Selam Size on their album Daima! .
  • For the credits of the computer game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots , composer Harry Gregson-Williams wrote an arrangement that was sung by Lisbeth Scott .
  • Together with Hayley Westenra , Ennio Morricone released the song in 2011 on the joint album Paradiso .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Montgomery: Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth . Devin-Adair, New York 1960, pv
  2. ↑ See foreword in William Young & David E. Kaiser: Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti . University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst MA 1985, ISBN 0-87023-479-X .
  3. ↑ Songs that made history. In: ZDF-History , July 24, 2011 (after 17 ′ 30 ′ ′).
  4. ^ In: Billboard , July 17, 1971, p. 47.
  5. ^ In: Billboard , June 14, 1975, p. 48.
  6. ↑ Les Meilleures Ventes Tout Temps de 45 T. singles . Infodisc.fr
  7. ^ Nora M. Alter: Projecting History: German Nonfiction Cinema, 1967-2000 . University of Michigan Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-472-02257-1 , p. 72.
  8. ↑ Jan Henschen: The RAF story: A media historiography of terrorism . transcript Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-8394-2390-5 , p. 230.
  9. ^ Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien: Post-Wall German Cinema and National History: Utopianism and Dissent . Boydell & Brewer , 2014, ISBN 978-1-57113-596-4 , p. 72.
  10. ^ The Deep Sea Divers (2004) . In: IMDb (English).
  11. ^ The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. In: musicbrainz.org , August 19, 2014 (English).
  12. ↑ a b 2008 - Metal Gear Solid 4 - Old Snake. In: hans-zimmer.com (English).
  13. ↑ Metal Gear Solid V Original Soundtrack. In: renzogheredia.com (English).
  14. ↑ Katharina Gerund: Transatlantic Cultural Exchange: African American Women's Art and Activism in West Germany . transcript Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-8394-2273-1 , p. 135.
  15. ↑ Stéphane Pompougnac - Hôtel Costes 9 . Information on the compilation at discogs, accessed on June 2, 2018