Bella ciao — Tradicional italiana

Why it's in this book

Bella ciao comes in March, together with Billie Eilish's Bad Guy, and there is a reason they go together. In class we play both with the same three chords: A minor, D minor and E7, the i–iv–V7 family. A song from over a century ago and a song from 2019 live in the same place. That is the lesson: a chord progression is a place, not a song. In the room with no instruments we sing it with an ostinato, the "oh bella ciao" repeated under the melody. In the ukulele room we play the three chords. And in the music room the ukulele bass and the keyboard hold it up. That month we record it.

Why this song

If you have watched Money Heist (La casa de papel), it is already in your head. The robbers sing it in the series, and since 2017 it has been heard everywhere.

But the song does not belong to the series. It is more than a hundred years old. The question on this page is: how does a song by Italian rice workers end up in a Netflix series?

Historical context

At the start of the 20th century, thousands of women worked in the rice fields of northern Italy. They were called mondine. They spent the day in water up to their knees, bent double, and they sang to keep going.

Foto: Touring Club Italiano, CC BY-SA 4.0, vía Wikimedia Commons

Mondine in a rice field near Novara, in 1955. This is how they worked: hours bent over, with water up to their knees.

One of their work songs sounds a lot like Bella ciao. The oldest written version is from 1906, from near Vercelli. It was about hard work in the rice fields.

Later, the same tune got new words: a partisan saying goodbye to his love before going off to fight. The partisans were the people who fought fascism in Italy during the Second World War. The odd thing is that several historians think the partisans hardly sang it at all. It became famous later, in the 1960s, when a group of musicians presented it at a festival in Spoleto in 1964.

In 2017, the Spanish series Money Heist made it popular again all over the world.

Musical characteristics

Three chords that sound serious. Play A minor on the ukulele and listen. It sounds darker than C major. It is a minor chord. The song moves between A minor, D minor and E7, and always comes back to A minor, which is its home.

The chord that pushes. E7 is the one that creates tension. When it sounds, your ear wants to go back to A minor. Listen for it just before the end of each phrase.

The same chords as Bad Guy. In class we play Bad Guy with A minor, D minor and E7. Bella ciao too. The two songs sound nothing alike: one is whispered pop from 2019, the other a fighting song from a century ago. They share the same chord progression. That is why we say a progression is a place where very different songs can live.

A chorus that repeats. "O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao". When a short phrase repeats again and again under other music, it is called an ostinato. In class, half the group sings the melody and the other half repeats "bella ciao". Now you have two parts.

Facts: there is no original record. In class we sing it in A minor, in 4/4. Chords: Am–Dm–E7.

Guided listening

Play the Coro delle Mondine di Novi performance. In the first verse, listen to how the group sings: unhurried, like people singing while they work.

When the repeated "bella ciao" arrives, mark every "ciao" with your hand. That is the ostinato.

Then play the Modena City Ramblers version. It is the same song, but with a folk-rock band. Compare the speed: which one is faster?

At the end, think about Money Heist. It is the same tune in three different worlds: the rice field, the concert and the series.

Trivia and curiosities

• The mondine version and the partisan version have the same tune and different words. A song can change its meaning without changing a single note.

• The journalist Giorgio Bocca, who fought as a partisan, said he never heard it during the war. He called it "an invention of the Spoleto Festival". The history of a song can be invented afterwards too.

• One researcher thinks the tune might come from a Yiddish song recorded in New York in 1919 by an accordion player, Mishka Ziganoff. It is not proven, but it shows how far tunes travel.

• In 2020, during lockdown, people sang it from their balconies in Italy and in other European countries.

Classroom activities

• Ostinato. Half the class repeats "bella ciao, bella ciao" in a loop. The other half sings the melody on top. Then swap.

• Three chords. On ukulele: A minor, D minor and E7. One chord per bar, downstrokes. Listen for which chord wants to go home.

• Two centuries, same chords. Play the Am–Dm–E7 loop and sing Bella ciao over it, then the verse of Bad Guy. Do both fit?

• Band. In the music room, the ukulele bass plays the lowest note of each chord (A, D, E) and the keyboard plays the chords. Record the whole thing.

Key vocabulary

• Minor chord — acorde menor
• Chord progression — progresión de acordes
• Ostinato — ostinato: una frase corta que se repite sin parar
• Cover version — versión

Resources

Performance — Coro delle Mondine di Novi (Modena), a choir named after the mondine.

Another version, to compare — Modena City Ramblers, Italian folk-rock.

Ukulele tutorial — SpicyUke. Step by step, at two skill levels.

Guitar tutorial — Easy 2 Play Music. An easy version, with chords and lyrics.

Keyboard tutorial — PlutaX. An easy version.