"Bella ciao" ("Goodbye beautiful") is an Italian song dedicated to the partisans of the Italian resistance, which fought against the occupying troops of Nazi Germany and the collaborationist Fascist forces during the liberation of Italy. It was based on a folk song of the late 19th century, sung by female workers of the paddy fields in Northern Italy (mondine) in protest against harsh working conditions. Versions of "Bella ciao" continue to be sung worldwide as a hymn of resistance.

History

The origins of the song are unclear, although one hypothesis is that "Bella Ciao" was originally sung as "Alla mattina appena alzata" ("In the morning as soon as I woke up") by seasonal workers of paddy fields of rice, especially in Italy's Po Valley from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, with different lyrics. They worked at mondare (weeding) the rice fields in northern Italy, to help the healthy growth of young rice plants. This work was performed during the flooding of the fields, from the end of April to the beginning of June every year. During this time, the first stages of the rice plants' development, the delicate shoots needed to be protected from the difference in temperature between the day and the night. It consisted of two phases: transplanting the plants and pruning the weeds. Mondare was an extremely tiring task, carried out primarily by women known as mondine (plural; singular mondina), from the poorest social classes. They would spend their workdays with bare feet in water up to their knees, and their backs bent continuously. The atrocious working conditions, long hours and very low pay led to constant dissatisfaction and, at times, to rebellious movements and riots in the early years of the 20th century. The struggles against the supervising padroni (an employer who completely controls his or her workers, especially one who exploits Italian immigrants) were even harder, with plenty of clandestine workers ready to compromise even further the already low wages just to get work. Besides "Bella ciao", similar songs of the mondina women included "Sciur padrun da li beli braghi bianchi" and "Se otto ore vi sembran poche". Other versions of the antecedents of "Bella ciao" appeared over the years, indicating that "Alla mattina appena alzata" must have been composed in the latter half of the 19th century. The earliest written version is dated back to 1906 and comes from near Vercelli, Piedmont.

As a partisan song

There are no indications of the relevance of "Bella ciao" among the partisan brigades, nor of the very existence of the 'partisan version' prior to the first publication of the text in 1953. There are no traces in the documents of the immediate postwar period nor its presence in important songbooks. It is not, for example, in Pasolini's 1955 Canzoniere Italiano nor in the Canti Politici of Editori Riuniti of 1962. The 1963 version of Yves Montand shot to fame after the group Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano presented it at the 1964 Festival dei Due Mondi at Spoleto both as a song of the mondine and as a partisan hymn, and the latter so "inclusive" that it could hold together the various political souls of the national liberation struggle (Catholics, Communists, Socialists, Liberals...) and even be sung at the end of the Christian Democracy (Democrazia Cristiana) 1975 congress which elected the former partisan Zaccagnini as national secretary". As reported in the text by Roberto Battaglia History of the Italian Resistance popular songs of the era were Fischia il vento and the aria of the famous Soviet folk song Katjuša, which became the official anthem of the Garibaldi Partisan Brigades. Even the well-known journalist, former partisan and historian of the partisan struggle, Giorgio Bocca publicly stated: "'Bella ciao'... song of the Resistance, and 'Giovinezza'... song of the Fascist period... Neither one nor the other born from partisans or fascists, one borrowed from a Dalmatian song, the other from the Tuscan student spirit and over the years it has become the official or de facto anthems of anti-fascist Italy and that of the Mussolini regime... In the twenty months of the partisan war I have never heard people sing 'Bella ciao', an invention of the Spoleto Festival." These statements were later certified by Carlo Pestelli in his book ''Bella ciao. The song of freedom'', in which he reconstructs the origins and spread of the song. Even the historians of the Italian song Antonio Virgilio Savona and Michele Straniero have affirmed that "Bella ciao" was not sung or was rarely sung during the partisan war, but was widespread immediately after the Second World War. Only a few voices, such as that of the historians Cesare Bermani and Ruggero Giacomini, claim that some version of "Bella ciao" was sung by some brigades during the Resistance, although not necessarily in the now popular 'partisan version', of whose existence, as specified above, there is no documentary evidence until the 1950s. The text as sung today was first published in 1953 in the magazine La Lapa, and then in L'Unità in 1957.

Melody

A possible origin of the melody was identified by researcher Fausto Giovannardi, following the discovery of a Yiddish melody (Koilen song) recorded by a Russian Klezmer accordionist, Mishka Ziganoff, in 1919 in New York. According to the scholar Rod Hamilton of The British Library in London, "Koilen" is a version of "Dus Zekele Koilen" (The bag of coal), of which there are various versions dating back to the 1920s. Italian folksinger Giovanna Daffini recorded the song in 1962. The music is in quadruple meter.

Lyrics

Mondine version

Partisan version

Covers

One of the most famous recordings is that of the Italian folk singer Giovanna Daffini who recorded both the mondina and the partisan versions. It appears in her 1975 album Amore mio non piangere. Many artists have recorded the song, including Herbert Pagani, Mary Hopkin, Sandie Shaw, Goran Bregovic and Manu Chao.

International versions

In addition to the original Italian, the song has been recorded by various artists in many different languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Belarusian, Bosnian, Breton, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Hebrew, Japanese, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Persian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Occitan, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Spanish, Syriac, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian and Yiddish.

In popular culture

As an internationally known hymn of freedom, it was intoned at many historic and revolutionary events. The song originally aligned itself with Italian partisans fighting against Nazi German occupation troops, but has since become to merely stand for the inherent rights of all people to be liberated from tyranny.

Renewed popularity

In 2017 and 2018, the song received renewed popularity due to the singing of "Bella ciao" multiple times in the Spanish television series Money Heist. The character Tokyo recounts in one of her narrations, "The life of the Professor revolved around a single idea: Resistance. His grandfather, who had fought against the fascists in Italy, taught him the song and he taught us." The song is played in emblematic moments in the series as a metaphor for freedom.

Miscellaneous

In April 2018, supporters from the Portuguese football club F.C. Porto adapted the song with the lyrics "Penta Xau" ("Bye bye fifth"), as a taunt referring to the lost opportunity by rival club S.L. Benfica to win a fifth consecutive national championship, a feat realized in Portugal by F.C. Porto. The song was the basis of a taunt by Brazilian fans used during World Cup 2018 exemplifying the Argentina–Brazil football rivalry, and the unrealized elimination during the first round in another attempt by Argentina at a 5th Cup title cut short if they were eliminated. The lyrics made references to Argentine players Di María, Mascherano, and Messi. The song was the inspiration for the #EleNão movement against right wing Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. During nationwide protests in Colombia in 2019, the anti-fascist song was adapted by demonstrators to oppose the government of Iván Duque of the Centro Democrático party, who have been for years questioned or investigated for systematic violations of the Constitution, the environment, Human Rights and Crimes against humanity. As the presidential period of Duque ends in 2022, since 2019 the song, dubbed as 'Duque Chao', is sung and interpreted in protests in Colombia and by the diáspora, also during the national strike demonstrations of April and May 2021, in which citizens have been killed, injured and disappeared by state police forces. In March 2020, the song once again gained international attention after Europeans and Italians in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Europe sang "Bella ciao" from the balconies of their housing complexes. In 2023, unionists from the Italian General Confederation of Labour, Italian Confederation of Trade Unions, and Italian Labour Union sang "Bella Ciao" to protest Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has been criticized for her party's neo-fascist origins. Similarly, in 2024, left-wing MEPs sang "Bella Ciao" in the European Parliament on the occasion of a visit by Hungary's authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.

Filmography

"Bella Ciao" has been used many times in soundtracks of films. Examples include: