Bella ciao
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"Bella ciao" ("Goodbye beautiful!") |
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Music by | Traditional |
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Lyrics by | Unknown |
Language | Italian |
Music of Italy | |
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Genres: | Classical: Opera Pop: Rock (Hardcore) - Hip hop - Folk - jazz - Progressive rock |
History and Timeline | |
Awards | Italian Music Awards |
Charts | Federation of the Italian Music Industry |
Festivals | Sanremo Festival - Umbria Jazz Festival - Ravello Festival - Festival dei Due Mondi - Festivalbar |
Media | Music media in Italy |
National anthem | Il Canto degli Italiani |
Regional scenes | |
Aosta Valley - Abruzzo - Basilicata - Calabria - Campania - Emilia-Romagna - Florence - Friuli-Venezia Giulia - Genoa - Latium - Liguria - Lombardy - Marche - Milan - Molise - Naples - Piedmont - Puglia - Rome - Sardinia - Sicily - Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol - Tuscany - Umbria - Veneto - Venice | |
Related topics | |
Opera houses - Music conservatories - Terminology |
"Bella ciao" is an Italian partisan song of World War II.
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[edit] History
Bella Ciao is a song that was sung by the left anti-facist resistance movement in Italy comprised of anarchists, communists, socialists and other anti-facist partisans. The author of the lyrics is unknown, and the music seems to come from an earlier folk song sung by riceweeders in the Po Valley. Another interpretation has been given following the discovery in 2006 by Fausto Giovannardi of the CD "Klezmer - Yiddish swing music" including the melody "Koilen" played in 1919 by Mishka Ziganoff. [1]
[edit] International versions
The song has been recorded by various artists in many different languages including Italian, Russian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Finnish, Kabyle, German, Turkish, Japanese, Tagalog, Chinese, and Kurdish.
The song is sung in a slightly different manner by Norwegian socialists. This Norwegian version describes the oppression of workers on the rice fields, and speaks of the freedom to come.
Bella Ciao is the end theme song for the Yugoslav WWII movie Most (The Bridge, The Savage Bridge).
A rewritten version of the song can be heard on Chumbawamba's acoustic album "A Singsong and a Scrap".
Another version of the song was recorded by the punk rock band Dog Faced Hermans [1] on the album "Every Day Time Bomb."
[edit] Lyrics
Note: rhymes could not be rendered in English, and several short Italian words (bella, ciao) translate into long English words (beautiful, goodbye), so that the result is rather "heavier" than the original version. Also, there are several verses which differ in the Italian version, i.e. different ways to sing those verses. Those are written in brackets.
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[edit] Alternate translation
Alternate, less literal and more "singable" translation - which also makes explicit some aspects that are left implicit in the Italian text:
- SWEETHEART GOODBYE
- One morning when I awakened
- Sweetheart goodbye, oh goodbye, oh goodbye-bye-bye!
- One morning when I awakened
- I found invaders all around
- Oh partisan, come take me with you
- Sweetheart goodbye, oh goodbye, oh goodbye-bye-bye!
- Oh partisan, come take me with you
- Because I feel ready to die
- If I die fighting as a partisan
- Sweetheart goodbye, oh goodbye, oh goodbye-bye-bye!
- If I die fighting as a partisan
- You must come and bury me
- Bury me there, up in the mountains
- Sweetheart goodbye, oh goodbye, oh goodbye-bye-bye!
- Bury me there, up in the mountains
- Shade my grave with a lovely flower
- So all the people who pass that way
- Sweetheart goodbye, oh goodbye, oh goodbye-bye-bye!
- So all the people who pass that way
- Will say "Oh see that lovely flower! - "
- "Ah that's the flower of the partisan fighter - "
- Sweetheart goodbye, oh goodbye, oh goodbye-bye-bye!
- "Ah that's the flower of the partisan fighter
- who died for freedom's sake!"
[edit] See also
- Fischia il vento - the other song associated with the Italian partisans
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- A slightly different Italian version from the website of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia
- www.anpi.rimini.it Bella Ciao and other partisans songs from the website of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia section of Rimini