Available Formats
Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano's Bella Ciao
By (Author) Dr. Jacopo Tomatis
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic USA
9th March 2023
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Musicians, singers, bands and groups
Popular music
782.4216251
Paperback
152
Width 127mm, Height 197mm
Bella Ciao is the album that kick-started the Italian folk revival in the mid-1960s, made by Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano, a group of researchers, musicians, and radical intellectuals. Based on a contested music show that debuted in 1964, Bella Ciao also featured a double version of the popular song of the same title, an anti-Fascist anthem from World War II, which was destined to become one of the most sung political songs in the world and translated into more than 40 languages. The book reconstructs the history and the reception of the Bella Ciao project in 1960s Italy and, more broadly, explores the origins and the distinctive development of the Italian folk revival movement through the lens of this pivotal album.
Jacopo Tomatis is a musicologist, music journalist, and musician. He is a Research Fellow at the University of Torino, Italy, where he teaches Popular Music and Ethnomusicology. His first book Storia culturale della canzone italiana (2019) won the IASPM book prize in 2021.