A song, as we have seen in the previous post about Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit", is a powerful medium: it can instill strength, empower and inspire a revolution. Today it is Liberation Day in Italy, a public holiday in which the country celebrates the end of Nazi-fascism during the Second World War.
In previous years we looked at this day from different points of views, analysing the informal uniforms of partisans and remembering an artist who had joined the partisans.
For this post let's move onto music with a new release dedicated to Liberation Day in Italy - the album "Resistenza Ieri e Oggi - Canzoni e Poesie sulla Resistenza nel Mondo" (Resistance Yesterday and Today - Songs and Poems about the Resistance from the World).
Released today by Kutmusic, restored and remastered by Riccardo Ricci / Velvet Room Mastering, UK, the album was originally published by ENAL in 1975 (a year marking the 30th annivesary of the Italian Resistance).
This album, with arrangements and conducting by maestro Gerardo Iacoucci and his orchestra, includes a wide range of tracks to remember and get inspired even nowadays. After all there are many causes we should be fighting for: we are collectively facing the challenges of the health emergency caused by Coronavirus, but we still have to fight against racism, inequalities and injustices, so the Italian resistance should be an inspiration.
Some of the tracks included in the album are instrumental, but there are also spoken word tracks, prayers and dedications to partisans who fought for freedom (it is worth remembering that among them there were quite a few women who haven't been often acknowledged by history) by Riccardo Cucciolla, Franca Salerno, Massimo Dapporto and many more with texts by Alexandros Panagulis, Pablo Neruda and Teresio Olivelli.
Among the other tracks there are the Italian version of "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido" (originally composed by Sergio Ortega with a text by Quilapayún, but popularised by the Chilean band Inti-Illimani who took up residence in Italy after the 1973 coup d'etat by Augusto Pinochet), "La Libertà" by Giorgio Gaber (performed by Amanda and I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni) and resistance anthem "Bella Ciao" sung by Miranda Martino and the Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni.
A moving hymn about fighting and dying for freedom readapted in different countries, including Turkey and Brazil, by a wide variety of performers (Manu Chao and Goran Bregovic among the others), popularised in recent years by the Netflix series "La casa de Papel" (Money Heist) in its readaptation by Manu Pilas, "Bella Ciao" has unclear origins.
Some say that before the war the song was usually sung by the mondine, the female rice paddy field workers of the Po Valley, lamenting their working conditions and that an unknown author then readapted the song during the Second World War and the lyrics were changed to tell the story of a young man leaving to join the partisans. Others claim that the mondine's version came after the war and that the partisans' "Bella Ciao" derived its structure and melody from different folk and traditional songs. Whatever the origin, it remains a powerful ballad.
The album is available from the main digital download and streaming stores - Apple iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and Deezer. Enjoy your Resistance Sunday!
Comments