Who’s afraid of Bella Ciao? Resistance Songs as Neo-Conflict Music

Bella Ciao, a song known throughout the world as a leftist partisan folk song linked to the Italian Resistance during the Second World War, is an interesting case of a text built over time, which is fixed, and then migrates, with ever changing meanings. It is a song with a tendency to sink below the surface and to then re-emerge with different values. A case that is especially suited to an analysis of cultural changes because of its potential for survival, beyond time and specific situations, with a reputation that is growing, if that is possible, rather than declining. On the one hand, it constitutes an interesting example, because it is a case of collective and progressive textual construction, going through continuous additions and shifts - something that is typical of folk songs and oral traditions. On the other hand, its semiotic, symbolic and political value is meaningful through a specific connotation of "resistance song" (resistance to injustice, oppression, to general returning fascisms), beyond those specific ideological and historical connotations which define it as a song tied to the tradition of anti-fascist resistance. Such use of music demonstrates that a song like Bella Ciao is clearly not a simple mirror of the social practices in which it is utilised, but becomes an active agent of transformation.