Nicola Salerno, also known as Nisa (11 March 1910 – 22 May 1969) was an Italian
lyricist
A lyricist is a songwriter who writes lyrics (the spoken words), as opposed to a composer, who writes the song's music which may include but not limited to the melody, harmony, arrangement and accompaniment.
Royalties
A lyricist's income ...
. He formed a famous
songwriting
A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...
duo with
Renato Carosone
Renato Carosone (; born Renato Carusone; 3 January 1920 – 20 May 2001) was an Italian musician.
He was a prominent figure of the Italian music scene in the second half of the 20th century. He was also a modern performer of the so-called ' ...
.
Career
Nicola Salerno was born in
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
, Italy.
His first hit was "Eulalia Torricelli" of 1947, about the unhappy love story between a wealthy girl from
Forlì
Forlì ( , ; rgn, Furlè ; la, Forum Livii) is a ''comune'' (municipality) and city in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. It is the central city of Romagna.
The city is situated along the Via E ...
and a guy named Giosuè. Nisa put the whole team of songwriters in the lyrics, as heirs to the beautiful Eulalia: "Un castello lo dà a Nisa, un castello lo dà a Redi, un castello, ma il più bello, al maestro Olivieri lo dà" ("she gives one castle to Nisa, one castle to Redi, but the most beautiful ones goes to Maestro Olivieri").
Nisa and Carosone met in 1955. It was
Mariano Rapetti
Mariano is a masculine name from the Romance languages, corresponding to the feminine Mariana.
It is an Italian, Spanish and Portuguese variant of the Roman Marianus which derived from Marius, and Marius derived from the Roman god Mars (see also ...
,
Ricordi
Ricordi may refer to:
People
*Giovanni Ricordi (1785–1853), Italian violinist and publishing company founder
*Giulio Ricordi (1840–1912), Italian publisher and musician
Music
*Casa Ricordi, an Italian music publishing company established in ...
record company's director - and father of lyricist
Mogol - who suggested that they should work together to enter a
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...
contest. Nisa brought Carosone three texts to be set to music. One of them was titled ''
Tu vuò fà l'americano''. Carosone had an instant inspiration and started composing a
boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since 1870s.Paul, Elliot, ''That Crazy American Music'' (1957), Chapter 10, p. 229. It was eventually extended from pian ...
on the
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
. It took just fifteen minutes to create Carosone's most famous song, that became a worldwide success.
Their most famous hits include "'O suspiro", "Torero", "Tu' vuo' fa' l'americano", "Caravan Petrol", "Pigliate 'na pastiglia" and "'O Sarracino".
Nisa worked also with other songwriters. Among his best-known lyrics are "
Guaglione
"Guaglione" is a Neapolitan song with music by Giuseppe Fanciulli and words by Nicola "Nisa" Salerno. This original version of the song was the winning song at the IV Festival di Napoli which was broadcast on radio in 1956. ''Guaglione'' () is N ...
", winning song of the
Festival of Naples in 1956, and "
Non ho l'età
"Non ho l'età (per amarti)" (Italian for "I'm not old enough (to love you)"), usually given as just "Non ho l'età" (), was the winning song in the Eurovision Song Contest 1964, held in Copenhagen. It was performed in Italian by Gigliola Cinquet ...
", with which
Gigliola Cinquetti
Gigliola Cinquetti (; born Giliola Cinquetti on 20 December 1947) is an Italian singer, songwriter, and television presenter.
Life and career
Gigliola Cinquetti was born into a wealthy family in Verona. From the ages of 9 to 13, she studied and ...
won both the
Sanremo Music Festival
The Sanremo Music Festival, officially the Italian Song Festival () and commonly known as just (), is the most popular Italian song contest and awards ceremony, held annually in the city of Sanremo, Liguria. It is the longest-running annual ...
and the
Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...
in 1964.
Besides writing lyrics, Nicola Salerno was also an
illustrator
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...
. He was the author, for example, of cover designs for some
Neapolitan music
Naples has played an important and vibrant role over the centuries not just in the music of Italy, but in the general history of western European musical traditions. This influence extends from the early music conservatories in the 16th century t ...
scores published between the 1920s and 1930s.
He died in Naples in 1969.
See too
*
We No Speak Americano
"We No Speak Americano" is a song by Australian band Yolanda Be Cool and producer DCUP. It was released on the independent Australian label Sweat It Out on 27 February 2010. The song samples the 1956 Italian song " Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano" in ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salerno, Nicola
Italian songwriters
Male songwriters
Eurovision Song Contest winners
1910 births
1969 deaths
Musicians from Naples
20th-century Italian musicians
20th-century Italian male musicians
Lyricists