The download took 20 minutes. During that time, his phone line was busy, and his mother couldn't make calls. When it finished, Marco double-clicked the file. Instead of the booming choir, he heard 15 seconds of "Divano" followed by a man’s voice saying: "You've downloaded a corrupted file. Please visit our website." Worse, his computer began acting sluggish. The file was a Trojan virus disguised as the MP3—a common hazard of early P2P networks.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a mysterious, Gregorian chant-infused track began echoing through CD players and MTV. It was by the project Era , fronted by French composer Eric Lévi. With its pseudo-Latin lyrics (“Divano, divano me, divano mesia…”), pounding drums, and hooded monks in the music video, the song became an anthem of the "enigmatic" and "new-age Gregorian" genre.
Undaunted, Marco switched to Napster and then IRC (Internet Relay Chat) , joining channels like #mp3-request . A bot there offered verified files. He typed: /msg xdcc bot send #42 and received a clean, 128kbps MP3. Finally, the real “Divano” played: the dramatic organ, the choir’s epic swell, and that hypnotic rhythm. He burned it onto a CD-R using Nero Burning ROM .
For a teenager named Marco in 2003, this song was the perfect soundtrack for late-night web surfing. He had heard it on a compilation CD at a friend’s house but didn’t own the album. His mission:
Back then, streaming didn't exist. Marco opened LimeWire (or Kazaa, or eMule). He typed: "Era - Divano.mp3" and clicked search. A list of files appeared, with promising filenames like Era_Divano_(full_version).mp3 and filesizes around 3-5 MB—perfect for his 56k dial-up modem.
