The EUtopia project explores the utopia world and provides ideas on using this concept to raise awareness among young people and make them more active players in building their future.
In our Guide, we have already explained that Utopia is also a literary genre deriving from Greek (“ou topos”, a place that does not exist, or “eu topos”, place of the good), which consists of the literary elaboration of utopian societies, i.e., not real societies, which however aim to shake up readers by implicitly criticising the society in which the author himself lives.
The first to deal with this theme, although not using this term, was Plato in ‘The Republic’; subsequently, Utopia made its official debut with Thomas More, author of ‘Utopia’; it progressed with Francis Bacon in ‘New Atlantis’; Tommaso Campanella in ‘The City of the Sun’; Italo Calvino with ‘Invisible Cities’.
These are just some of the literary authors who Utopia inspired. But there are also numerous examples of the ‘utopian genre’ in music. John Lennon’s’ “Imagine” is one of the earliest and perhaps most famous. He wrote this song imagining a world without wars and invites us to imagine this world at peace where everyone feels like brothers, without struggles for power and possession… a world so beautiful and so different from what we see. The song also represents Lennon’s commitment to peace.
Later, in “L’isola che non c’è” (The Neverland), Edoardo Bennato stages a journey to the Neverland, described in the fable of Peter Pan, where ‘there are no thieves, no war, no soldiers, no weapons’. It is a criticism of the violent world, which accepts the use of weapons is based on the pursuit of success at any cost, preferring to focus on cunning rather than on merit and commitment. But Bennato leaves a positive message: ‘And they’ll make fun of you if you keep looking for it, but don’t give up, because those who have already given up and are laughing at you behind your back maybe even crazier than you are’. Bennato seeks here to consolidate the ideals of the dreamers, righteous, and those who do not lose heart and believe that it is more important to go forward under one’s own steam than to resort to illicit means.
In “Man in the mirror”, Michael Jackson also left a great message. About the song, he said “I love that song. If you want to improve the world, you have to work on yourself and change yourself first… start with the man in the mirror. Start with yourself. Don’t look at all the other things. That is the truth. That’s what Martin Luther King and Gandhi meant. That is what I believe.”
More recently, in 2016, the famous Italian band Litfiba composed the song “Eutopia” (yes, just like the title of our project!). They describe Eutopia as the island for those who seek it and never give up/From the North Pole to the South Pole you can create it wherever you want/Human beings among humans made of joy and fantasy/Welcome and low inequality/The sun is born in Eutopia.” The song is a hymn to a utopian society, a dream where human beings are equal, where those who deserve it get ahead, where work is not blackmail. Cities are clean, with bicycle lanes and zero waste. Piero Pelù, the singer of the band, said “It is not the place that does not exist, it is the island that is there for those who believe in it and never give up”.
Hence… Let the songs inspire us to get excited about imagining and building our utopia!