Abstract

This article examines how allegory, fable and musical performance mediate political truth, tracing an Aesopian lineage from Gianni Rodari and Akaki Tsereteli to Italy’s 2018 Sanremo winner, Ermal Meta and Fabrizio Moro. It argues that "Non mi avete fatto niente" transforms lament into collective witness – encoding responses to terrorism through lyrical enumeration, melodic affect and visual staging – and situates the duet within broader traditions in which song operates as ethical persuasion. The piece links artistic rhetoric to civic memory, considers limits of cultural agency under commercial pressures, and identifies diminished public attentiveness (the loss of silence – the capacity to listen to one another) as a barrier to political empathy. The analysis combines literary, musicological and political perspectives to assess music’s role in moral mobilisation.