What does it mean to be born, raised and living under a communist regime? This is explained by Ermal Meta, born in Albania in 1981 and moved to Italy with his mother at the age of just 13.
He studied in Italy and became a successful musician, obtaining citizenship, and in 2018 won the Sanremo Festival with “Non mi avete fatto niente”, in collaboration with Fabrizio Moro. Last year, he came third with “Vietato morire”, inspired by his youth. His heart was divided in two. But with a clear vision.
Interviewed by Il Giornale, he shared his memories of the death of the communist dictator and "father of the nation", Enver Hoxha: "I was 4 years old, it was 1985. Everyone was crying. It was a place in tears, but tragicomic. Those who were loyal to the regime would come to your house to check if you had taken any photos near Hoxha's grave. Even the poorest - we all were at that time, but there were some who were poorer than others - had to go to the grave. And take a photo with their fists raised high."
“The dictator, rest in hell, left scars that are still visible. Everyone in Albania was afraid of everything,” says the musician, now also a well-known composer. “Unbelievable things were happening. The dictator spoke of Albania as a fortress of Leninism on the shores of the Adriatic. Everyone wanted to conquer us and, to convince us, he scattered Albania with bunkers. And the roads? There were no straight roads, not even those in the fields. After two or three hundred meters, there was a bend. The propaganda said that we should not allow enemy planes to land.”
The psychosis of the regime: “You couldn’t listen to foreign music. It was easy to find Rai Uno from the coastal towns. But anyone caught watching foreign television or listening to Italian songs on the radio was arrested. Everyone knew the songs of Sanremo: it was the only week of the year when even the neighborhood spies – because every neighborhood had its spies – watched Rai Uno. Everyone knew the songs, but no one could sing them.”
When the communist regime fell in 1991 in Albania, as in most of the former Iron Curtain, it was a real social bomb: “Foreign embassies in Tirana were occupied by young people who couldn’t wait to leave and go to Germany, France, Italy…
Meanwhile, the crowd had taken the symbolic statue of the dictator in Tirana and toppled it; and the same thing was done with the statues of the dictator in all the other cities. “In my city, the statue was thrown into the river. And everyone had to throw a stone at it: I threw one too, but I didn’t make it.”
