Bella Ciao, the partisan song symbol of the Resistance (even more popular after La Casa di Carta)

Bella Ciao, the partisan song symbol of the Resistance (even more popular after La Casa di Carta)
by Stefania Piras
5 Minutes of Reading
Monday 25 April 2022, 14:27 - Last updated: 21:30

There is even a disco version of " Bella ciao ". The Italian anthem of April 25 is actually a song with very deep roots that has a double meaning (it was also a working song) and a melody that remains in the head. A motif that has become a symbol of Resistance and protest all over the world (think of the use made by the ethical bandits of the Paper House or the anti Trump version of Tom Waits) and which, like all popular refrains, replicate themselves indefinitely and become standard and recognizable.

"This morning I woke up and found the invader." We all know where these words come from. They are the first of Bella ciao ». Thus the Head of State, Sergio Mattarella , celebrating April 25 in Acerra quoted Bella ciao saying that one cannot fail to know her.

«It has a beautiful melody», explains Giovanna Marini , singer-songwriter and ethnomusicologist, when she has to explain why the song "Bella ciao" has become so popular. It has a motif that is easily remembered and remains impressed. Or rather, it has remained imprinted, it has been handed down. This is why it has come down to us and envelops our listening with the quality that can only be found in family or popular waltzes. "Bella ciao" has practically become an international standard. For us Italians it has a very precise historical value: it refers to the Resistance, to the partisans, to the war against Nazi-fascism. And this is exactly what Mattarella means when he says that "we all know where these words come from". He's saying it's a song that's common heritage.

But where does "Bella ciao" come from? The philological history of this song, of its instrumental intertwining, extends and goes beyond the Italian borders. And here we compare the first mysterious paradox; the melody precedes the Resistance, however it is a song that almost never appears in the testimonies of the partisans. And yet "Bella ciao" engraved in the memory remains before and after the Italian Resistance. What does it mean? It means that it has become a standard, an easily recognizable musical style, at multiple latitudes.

Why did Mattarella go to Acerra? The 1943 massacre: the Nazis murdered at least 88 people

Try listening to the incipit of "Koilen", a 1919 recording by Mishka Ziganoff, a Jew and Ukrainian from Odessa (and this would be enough to make certain linguistic fences fall before political ones). There is Slavic and Yiddish folk in it.

«It has a somewhat Slavic formation», Giovanna Marini said in an interview years ago identifying and confirming the contiguity with the melody of "Koilen" . With us "Bella ciao" to make the leap in quality and become the refrain of April 25 needs to wait for the Sixties and two elements: Spoleto and Giovanna Daffini. Giovanna Daffini, mondina and singer, deserves the credit for having made known "Bella ciao delle mondine", a popular song that talks about work and life in the paddy fields around Vercelli and Novara. Daffini says he learned it there. The words are sung on the tune of the "Bella ciao" we know today but there is no reference to invaders or partisans in the text. There is only that deep reason, which imprinted.

In 1964 at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto "Bella ciao" is the title of an entire and successful show organized by the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano which was a musical group and a magazine in Milan. The lineup of the show was made up entirely of Italian popular songs including the "Bella ciao" that we all know, the one that has a political value, with a text that refers directly to the partisans. Marini says he received a phone call from the author of that text: another gualtierese and worldly like Daffini, is Alfio Scansani.

The rest is the story of the enormous international success that goes from the soundtrack of the Spanish TV series "La casa di carta" on Netflix where it is the symbol of the rebellion against the system, up to the version of Goran Bregovic .

The screenwriter of "La casa di carta" Javier Gomez Santander says he discovered it at university: it was the workhorse of an Italian Erasmus student who played it at all parties. But there are versions of Milva, Giorgio Gaber, Modena City Ramblers , Chumbawamba. And then Tom Waits did it again with Marc Ribot and Marlene Kuntz with Skin. There is of course that of Giovanna Marini (in the album with Francesco De Gregori ).

And finally there is also a disco version, danceable, made in 2018 by Steve Aoki. But it's no wonder that a musical tune lands on a dance floor. The strength of a standard, of phrases or refrains that are particularly powerful from a musical point of view, therefore also and above all melodic, is also this. Something similar also happened to "Gam Gam" , a song that went to the top in the disco in 994 thanks to an intuition of Max Monti deejay and record producer Mauro Pilato. "Gam Gam" is a song that takes up the fourth verse of the Hebrew text of Psalm 23. It has become the hymn of memory to remember the Shoah. And thirty years ago we danced in the disco, to the notes and voice of the protagonist of the film "Jona who lived in the whale".

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