NICOLE COCEANCIG
Saturday 19 October, 9:00 pm
Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine
NICOLE COCEANCIG (Friuli)
If women’s folk singing is perhaps the most typical and pure expression of Friulian music, Nicole Coceancig unwittingly embodies its legacy. The voice of this young woman in her early twenties is charged with a truth and immediacy that cannot be learned in conservatories or music schools. Zohra, the protagonist of the thematic album she is working on, is a 14-year-old girl who flees Pakistan and represents the dream of redemption, freedom and emancipation.
INTERVIEW WITH NICOLE COCEANCIG
What is an untranslatable phrase, an expression or a word in your language that you love? And why? There are words that cannot be translated (and this is one of the values of a language), but a saying that my grandmothers always told me and that I have always tried to preserve is “do good and forget, do bad and remember.” It is a saying inherent in the Friulian ethos, that of doing good without expecting anything in return and, instead, feeling the weight of having done wrong, with the hope to make up for it.
What are 3 adjectives you would use to describe your language? Why did you choose them?
For me, the Friulian language is STRAIGHTFORWARD, MUSICAL and I like to think INCLUSIVE.
STRAIGHTFORWARD, because in order to say something in Friulian, you only have THOSE specific terms and you cannot beat too much around the bush.
MUSICAL, because to give you just one example, a while back I heard an Italian-American friend of mine sing in Friulian…it was so intense that I thought this language is really perfect for everyone and all musical ears.
INCLUSIVE, because while it remains a unitary language, it encompasses so many local and cultural specificities of the different Friulian-speaking territories.
Some people think that making music/art in a minoritized language closes many doors – what are instead the doors that it has opened to you?
Three things:
1) In my case, instead of opening doors, it has opened worlds: worlds of thought, of research, of stories, of territory, of connections between people from the same land…
2) The Friulian language has been useful to me in forming and building my musical, cultural and personal identity;
3) Suns Europe: also artistically, it has given me the opportunity to be in places and situations that seek one-of-a-kind artistic research, not the homologation of the mainstream market.
If you could make an appeal to anyone to keep their language alive, what would you recommend? What do you see as the biggest challenges or difficulties to maintain your language?
Nelson Mandela once said,”If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
How would you respond to someone who considers your language old and obsolete?
I would say that as long as it exists, nothing is obsolete or outdated.
A short sentence to describe your music
Two words came to mind: I wanted to say FEMALE, but the word music, perhaps not surprisingly, is already feminine. Then I would say social, committed. I think that the opportunity I have been given to make art should come with a duty: that of a social message of inclusion, acceptance and the fight against injustice.