Bella Ciao is the album that kick-started the Italian folk revival in the mid-1960s, made by Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano, a group of researchers, musicians, and radical intellectuals. Based on a contested music show that debuted in 1964, Bella Ciao also featured a double version of the popular song of the same title, an anti-Fascist anthem from World War II, which was destined to become one of the most sung political songs in the world and translated into more than 40 languages. The book reconstructs the history and the reception of the Bella Ciao project in 1960s’ Italy and, more broadly, explores the origins and the distinctive development of the Italian folk revival movement through the lens of this pivotal album.
List of abbreviations of the archive funds Acknowledgements Prologue (in the form of a picture) INTRODUCTION 1. A song, a show, a record 2. Popular music and politics in the “boom” years 3. Communism, ethnomusicology and folk revival PART 1. The myth of Bella Ciao 4. Meet the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano 5. One week in Spoleto 6. Constructing the myth: the countess, the colonel, the rice picker 7. Bella Ciao in the theater: protest and distinction 8. After Spoleto 9. Bella Ciao on disc: antagonism and the market PART 2. The performance of “real” folk 10. Organizing folk: the structure 11. Curating folk: the repertoire 12. “Bella Ciao” of the partisans 13. “Bella Ciao” of the rice pickers 14. Performing philology: Giovanna Marini’s “fakes” 15. Staging folk: direction, sets and costumes 16. Strumming folk: the arrangements 17. Singing and learning to sing folk: the voices 18. Sounding folk: the studio recording CODA: Us and them Notes Index
Jacopo Tomatis is a musicologist, music journalist, and musician. He is a Research Fellow at the University of Torino, Italy, where he teaches Popular Music and Ethnomusicology. His first book Storia culturale della canzone italiana (2019) won the IASPM book prize in 2021.
