There are some songs that lie dormant in the back of the mind, but spring to life when a few bars of the melody or a few words of a lyric are heard. In the West, ‘Yankee Doodle’ in the United States, England’s ‘Jerusalem’, and France’s ‘L’Internationale’ are good examples; in the East we have Japan’s ‘Sakura Sakura’, India’s ‘Vande Mataram’, and China’s ‘Jasmine Flower’ — all popular folk songs. For the Italians it is ‘Bella Ciao’, a song that is taught in schools and sung every year on 25 April during Festa della Liberazione, a festival commemorating the liberation of Italy from Nazi occupation. More recently, during the 2020 Covid pandemic, many Italians sang the song from their windows and balconies during lockdown.The song is thought to have originated in Northern Italy’s Po Valley in the 19th century, from a work song sung by female paddy field workers known as the Mondine (from Italian mondare, ‘to clean’ or ‘to sort’). Many of them were seasonal workers from rural areas of Italy, whose work was characterised by long and arduous hours amidst poor living conditions; they became a symbol of female labour and resistance. The song in question ‘Una Mattina Appena Alzata’ (As I Arose One Morning) has the same musical structure, rhythm, and repetitive metre as Bella Ciao. Another potential origin of the song is a children’s clapping song in the Trentino dialect known as ‘La me nona l’è vecchierella’ (My grandmother is an old lady).1 In a further twist, the earliest recording of the Bella Ciao melody dates back to a 1919 78-rpm record titled ‘Klezmer-Yiddish Swing Music’. Klezmer music is a multi-ethnic style which borrows extensively from the music of the Slavic countries, providing yet another genesis hypothesis, namely that Bella Ciao originated from Slavic folk music.In the 1940s, in the midst of WW2 or soon after, an unknown author adapted the melody for a song about the Italian Resistance. Italy’s National Fascist Party, which emerged in 1922 under Benito Mussolini and later formed an alliance with Nazi Germany, had lost its grip on power in July 1943 after a series of military defeats in North Africa and the Balkans. Facing the prospect of a power vacuum and political chaos, the Italian government, under the leadership of King Victor Emmanuel III, signed an armistice with the Allies on 3 September 1943. When news of the armistice came to light, German forces moved swiftly to occupy Northern Italy. The first organised resistance groups, known as ‘partigiani’ (partisans), emerged around this time, drawing their numbers from diverse factions, including communists, socialists, anarchists, and Catholics. Initially their activities focused on sabotage, intelligence gathering, and support for Allied troops, but escalated to armed resistance against German and Italian Fascist forces as the war progressed.There is no direct evidence that the partigiani actually sang Bella Ciao during the Resistance, however, the song was widespread after the war.2 The lyrics tell the story of a young man who leaves his girlfriend to join the partisans. ‘Una mattina mi son svegliato e ho trovato l’invasor’ (One morning I woke up and found the invader). It envisions victory, but also death and burial: ‘Se io muioio da partigiano tu mi devi seppelire’ (If I die as a partisan, you must bury me). The song has a clear narrative arc: there is a disruption of the natural order, a subsequent struggle, and a heroic sacrifice for the sake of freedom. The song uses typical themes found in the oral folk tradition — love, death, freedom, and heroism. The themes are universal rather than being tied to a specific historical event. We find similarities with folk songs from other cultures such as ‘L’Internationale’ (which to this day continues to be associated with the international workers’ movement and the fight for justice around the world).The power of a folk song lies not only in its intrinsic content but also in ‘the changes that take place in its form, in its words and music’3. Bella Ciao may have started off as a song of hardship by the Mondine, before being adapted under different historical circumstances to become an anthem to freedom. Since the emergence of the nation-state, folk music has been used to reinforce national identity. In Italy Bella Ciao creates unity and engenders a sense of belonging through pride in a shared history.In 2017, Bella Ciao gained worldwide popularity after being featured in ‘Money Heist’ (2017–2021), a drama series on the Netflix streaming service. Since then, the song has appeared in demonstrations in Tripoli, been chanted by Scottish football fans, and climate activists; and has been used to demand abortion rights in Argentina and Poland. References