Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Bella ciao
Summary
"Bella ciao" (ˈbɛlla ˈtʃaːo; "Goodbye beautiful") is an Italian protest folk song from the late 19th century, originally sung by the mondina workers in protest against the harsh working conditions in the paddy fields of Northern Italy.
It is widely assumed that the mondina song was modified and adopted as an anthem of the Italian resistance movement by the partisans who opposed Nazism and fascism, and fought against the occupying forces of Nazi Germany, who were allied with the fascist and collaborationist Italian Social Republic between 1943 and 1945 during the Italian Civil War.
Versions of "Bella ciao" continue to be sung worldwide as a hymn of freedom and resistance.
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 their 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 were even harder, with plenty of clandestine workers ready to compromise even further the already low wages just to get work.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.