Tom Waits Releases a Timely Cover of the Italian Anti-Fascist Anthem “Bella Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

“La Com­plaine du Par­ti­san,” a song about the French Resis­tance writ­ten in 1943 by Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie with music by Anna Marly, was adapt­ed into Eng­lish as “The Par­ti­san” by Hy Zaret, author of the Right­eous Brother’s “Unchained Melody.” Cov­ered by artists like Joan Baez and, most famous­ly, Leonard Cohen, the song’s folk melody and melan­choly lyri­cism have become so close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Cohen that it has often been cred­it­ed to him. Even Cohen him­self remarked “I kind of re-intro­duced [“The Par­ti­san”] into the world of pop­u­lar music. I feel I wrote it, but I actu­al­ly didn’t.”

Now anoth­er artist of Cohen’s stature, Tom Waits, may do the same for those who have nev­er heard the World War II Ital­ian anti-fas­cist song, “Bel­la Ciao,” which has been cov­ered for decades in many lan­guages and now appears as the first release on gui­tarist and com­pos­er Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resis­tance: 1942–2018, an album of protest music that comes out today and fea­tures guest vocals by Waits, Steve Ear­le, Meshell Nde­geo­cel­lo, Justin Vivian Bond, and more. You can stream and buy the album here at Ribot’s Band­camp page. Waits’ track is the first song he has released in two years, and it’s a hel­lu­va return.

The song comes from an old Ital­ian folk bal­lad that was “revised and re-writ­ten dur­ing World War II for the Ital­ian anti-fas­cist resis­tance fight­ers,” notes Sam Barsan­ti at The Onion’s A.V. Club. It has “since become an anthem of sorts for any­one look­ing to stick it to fas­cists.” Ribot and his col­lab­o­ra­tors fit the descrip­tion. Waits’ “Bel­la Ciao” was released with a video, direct­ed by Jem Cohen, “that makes its par­al­lels with mod­ern life very explic­it,” Barsan­ti writes, “pair­ing Waits’ vocals with footage of police and sol­diers guard­ing bar­ri­cades at anti-Trump protests. It may sound heavy-hand­ed, but fuck it, nobody said fight­ing fas­cists had to be sub­tle.”

Sub­tle it isn’t, but nei­ther is the ban­ning of Mus­lim refugees, the kid­nap­ping and deten­tion in camps of hun­dreds of migrant chil­dren, the trans­fer of $169 mil­lion dol­lars from oth­er pro­grams—includ­ing FEMA and the Coast Guard dur­ing yet anoth­er fatal hur­ri­cane season—for even more camps and ICE raids, the lying denial that thou­sands were left to die in Puer­to Rico last year, and so on and so on.

Oth­er songs on the album draw from the U.S. civ­il rights move­ment and Mex­i­can protest bal­lads. At his site, Ribot acknowl­edges the peren­ni­al prob­lem of the protest song. “There’s a lot of con­tra­dic­tion in doing any kind of polit­i­cal music, how to act against some­thing with­out becom­ing it, with­out resem­bling what you detest… I imag­ine we’ll make mis­takes,” he avows, but says the stakes are too high not to speak out. “From the moment Don­ald Trump was elect­ed,” he decid­ed “I’m not going to play down­town scene Furt­wan­gler to any orange-comb-over dic­ta­tor wannabe.” (The ref­er­ence is to Wil­helm Furtwän­gler, lead­ing clas­si­cal con­duc­tor in Ger­many under the Nazi regime.)

Like so many folk songs, “Bel­la Ciao” has a com­plex and murky his­to­ry: the orig­i­nal ver­sion, a peas­ant work song, may have a Yid­dish ori­gin, or in any case—explains the blog Poe­mas del rio wang—emerged from a region “where Jews, Roma­ni­ans, Rusyns, Gyp­sies, Ukra­ni­ans, Hun­gar­i­ans, Ital­ians, Rus­sians, Slo­va­kians, Pol­ish, Czech, Arme­ni­ans, [and] Taters lived togeth­er” and where “melodies did not remain the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of only one eth­nic group.” This sub­merged back­ground gives the re-writ­ten “Bel­la Ciao” an even deep­er res­o­nance with the anti-fas­cism of the 1940s and that of today.

See the video and hear Waits and Ribot’s hag­gard yet deter­mined “Bel­la Ciao (Good­bye Beau­ti­ful)” at the top; hear Ital­ian singer Gio­van­na Daffini’s record­ing above (hear her ver­sion of the orig­i­nal folk song here); read more about the song’s long his­to­ry here; and read Waits’ lyrics, slight­ly revised from ear­li­er ver­sions to be even more explic­it­ly anti-fas­cist, below. All pro­ceeds from Ribot’s album will be donat­ed to the Indi­vis­i­ble Project.

One fine morn­ing
I woke up ear­ly
o bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
bel­la ciao, ciao, ciao
One fine morn­ing
I woke up ear­ly
to find the fas­cists at my door

Oh par­ti­giano
take me with you
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
oh par­ti­giano
please take me with you
I’m not afraid any­more

And if I die
a par­ti­giano
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
Bury me
up on that moun­tain
beneath the shad­ow of the flower

So all the peo­ple
the peo­ple pass­ing
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
So all the peo­ple
the peo­ple pass­ing
will say: “What a beau­ti­ful flower”

This is the flower
of the par­ti­san
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
bel­la ciao
this is the flower
of the par­ti­san
who died for free­dom

this is the flower
of the par­ti­san
who died for free­dom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness