#HeritageOfProtest I have been informed that the song Bella Ciao has increased in global popularity, due to #CasaDePapel, Tiktok challenges and remixes. I was sent a video http://shorturl.at/adgD2on  on the history of this song of the Italian resistance and well just...

The history of Bella Ciao is actually a history of the "erasure" of communist networks as a significant part of the Italian resistance movement during WWII, because with Italy's new American ally, celebrating communists was...ehm, uncomfortable.

There is actually NO documentation of the song before 1953. Resistance fighters exchanged sheets with songs during the war, Bella Ciao was not among these greatest commie hits, like Fischia il vento http://shorturl.at/qrtGU , and neither does BC appear in partizan's autobiographies

It does not appear in editions of collections of partizan songs in the immediate post war. Not in Canta Partigiano (1945); not in the magazine Folklore (1946); not even in Pasolini's Canzoniere Italiano or in the work of Roberto Battaglia, just...

Thanks to singer Giovanna Daffini, during the '60s, it was common knowledge that Bella Ciao originated as a song elaborated from a pre-war rice workers' song http://shorturl.at/bfrPT , but again: LIES. The song of the mondine was also written after WWII, by Vasco Scansani.

The first appearance of BC is in the magazine "La Lapa" in 1953, then it slowly creeped into the canon via the publication in "Canzoni partigiane e democratiche" of the youth section of the socialist party in 1955. And shortly after, in 1957, in a publication of the Unità.

It became the most popular "partizan" song simply because it didn't constantly refer to red springs, red flags, or workers' revolutions. It implied the entirety of the Italian nation was "invaded", comfortably forgetting that Italy was also fighting against its fascist self.

Bella Ciao took a Dalmatian folk melody, the intro and structure of 15C "Fior di Tomba", a refrain from the lullaby "La me nòna l'è vecchierella" and invented a tradition, a memory, still live and well, of a song which is still sung at every Italian left-to-center protest. Ciao!

Apparantly I can be bothered to spend half a morning researching the history of Bella Ciao but not to check my spelling of 'partisan' lol

Big Twist Everyone! The song has been traced to resistance groups at Abruzzo 1944! It flew under the radar of publications because it was not sung in the North (every damn italian problem is caused by the North-South divide, I should have known )

Cesare Bermani's new book also confirms that the version of the mondine was a cover written after the war by Scansani (who was a rice field worker and had been a partisan in the war!)

So the song is not an invented tradition as had been ascerted previously, but I'll keep part of my previous position: the reason Bella Ciao became the most popular even though it was rare under resistance groups, is because it is the *least* communist of the bunch.

The negligence towards central/southern resistance groups perhaps speaks to another kind of erasure...

For whoever is interested: https://ilmanifesto.it/bella-ciao-cantata-sui-monti-dabruzzo/