Latest posts of series A song a day
Today is Liberation Day, and Bella Ciao will be sung a lot, remembering the Partisan movement.
Modena City Ramblers made a popular version.
The song originated before the second world war, as a song sung by mondine, women seasonally hired, or rather exploited, to work in flooded rice fields.
Here's a performance of the original version sung by Milva.
It is said that they were forbidden to talk during their work, so they sang instead, developing a peculiar singing style that could carry across the fields.
Here's Coro delle Mondine di Bentivoglio performing Son la Mondina, son la sfruttata in the original style.
Giorgio Gaber's Io non mi sento italiano, singing about Italian national identity.
From organized crime in Italy to controlling politial consensus via mass murders with Fratelli di Soledad' Brescia Bologna Ustica, dedicated in particular to the mass murders of Piazza della Loggia bombing in Brescia, Bologna massacre, and Ustica massacre, were investigations have been and still are particularly hard, with state agencies actively obstructing them.
From Puglia's Sacra Corona Unita to organized crime in Italy in general, Frankie hi-nrg mc's Fight da faida.
Talking about Taranto and poisons, Caparezza's Vieni a ballare in Puglia covers contemporary serious issues with Puglia, from the serious environmental issues in Taranto to slave work in tomato farms.
Vinicio Capossela Il ballo di San Vito, a tarantella.
According to tradition, tarantella was a dance used to cure the bites of lycosa tarantula spiders.
Lycosa tarantula spiders take their name from the city of Taranto, where they are usually found.
The spider usually known as tarantula in turn takes its name from lycosa tarantula. I guess Italian immigrants in the Americas would call any big scary spider "Tarantola", and it stuck.
In turn, lycosa tarantula isn't really that poisonous, but it's big. It shares the habitat with the smaller, but more dangerous Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, and ends up taking the blame for its bites.
Bandabardó Beppeanna, also inspired from a child game, that I sometimes played as a kid.
Italian reggae: Africa Unite's Sotto pressione.
Elio e le Storie Tese again, with Giorgia, singing Ignudi fra i nudisti, which becomes Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds when played backwards.