“Comrade Teresa” The Theater of Horrors (2007)
I like to open this review with Comagna Teresa of the Teatro degli Orrori because it is the first piece that pays explicit homage to the women of the Resistance and to the role they played in the Liberation. Teresa, protagonist of the song that dreams of changing the world but is killed, could be Irma Bandiera, Anna Cherchi or any other partisan victim of Nazi fascism, long removed from the memory of those days, before being rediscovered 50, maybe 60 years later . For the rest, the guitars of Giulio Ragno Favero, the usual burnt and violent spoken by Pierpaolo Capovilla and, in general, the whole wall of sound built by the band, well, are a guarantee.
Key phrase: “Comrade Teresa / bring us life every day”.
“Gothic Line” C.S.I. (1996)
One of the great classics of April 25 is CSI’s Gothic Line, which also gives the title to an immense album that is pure partisan re-enactment, as well as being the pivot around which the suggestive concert The earth, the war, a private matter revolves made by the band in memory of Beppe Fenoglio. And in fact this piece too – with its dark guitars, the martial gait and the very warm voice of Ferretti – looks like a Fenoglio novel: beyond the quotes, he tells an armored RSI in his daily bruise through small images, like military marches and relay races, ideological divisions, neighborhood anxieties, suspicions. And not to watch, ever.
Key phrase: “My little homeland behind the Gothic Line / can choose the part”.
“The only survivor” Modena City Ramblers (1996)
Impossible not to mention the Modena City Ramblers and their combat folk in a list of songs on the Resistance, given the enormous contribution given by the cover of Bella hello to the collective album of Appunti partigiani. The only survivor tells the story of Liliana Del Monte, second cousin of the band’s accordionist, Alberto Cottica. We are in 1944, and the woman, at the time of the events little more than an adolescent, was the only survivor of the Bettola massacre, when the Nazi Fascists killed 31 unarmed civilians in retaliation in an inn in the province of Reggio Emilia. She was injured but managed to escape death, becoming a witness – as well as the song – of that night.
Key phrase: “It is very difficult to escape 11 years with a wounded throat”.
“That April day” Francesco Guccini (2012)
Evidently Francesco Guccini was also keen to write a song on Liberation, before taking his leave. That April day is a sweet author ballad contained in his latest album, The Last Thule, set as a sort of historical picture, obviously author’s, which tells of April 25 with melancholy. On the one hand, landscape descriptions; on the other, the stories of some lovers who expect and are ready to embrace each other. It was a spring day, a day of rebirth.
Key phrase: “And everyone returns to life like the flowers of the meadows / like the April wind”.
“They crucified John” Marlene Kuntz (1995)
The resistant material compilation, published in 1995 by the Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti for the 50th anniversary of the Liberation, collected the best of the alternative scene of the time, among those who reinterpreted partisan songs (the same CSI with Look them in the eyes, or the Modena City Ramblers with Bella hello) and those who preferred to try their hand at original pieces. In this sense, the alt rock Hanno crucified Giovanni by Marlene Kuntz is one of the most exciting episodes: inspired by the homonymous poem by Lea Ferranti, it tells the story of the killing of a fighter and how, at that moment, the border between whom stay alive to kill and whoever dies dies becomes labile.
Key phrase: “They crucified John at the door / like a bastard dog / Upright / it is life, the tree / the haystack, the house”.
“Play Rosamunda” Vinicio Capossela (2000)
Inspired by If this is a man by Primo Levi, the scaled Suona Rosamunda by Vinicio Capossela tells (also) another resistance: that of the partisans who, like the writer himself, were prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The original Rosamunda, from which the title takes its cue, was in fact a song that was played in Auschwitz to mark the lives of prisoners, and whose macabre performance here paradoxically becomes a breath of heat, a sweet drunkenness in hell. A musical form of resistance, above all, for those of the boys who were first in the mountains and then caught.
Key phrase: “Play the prisoner band / play for me and for you / Yet it is sweet in the evening / the sharp sound on our heart”.
“Letter from Comrade Lazlo to Colonel Valerio” Giorgio Canali (2010)
Fifteen years later, resistant material, in the anniversary celebratory compilation there should also have been a letter from Comrade Lazlo to Colonel Valerio di Giorgio Canali, only to remain excluded at the last. Foaming with partisan anger, the song is a dedication to Colonel Valerio, aka Walter Audisio, material performer of the killing of Benito Mussolini, and is a dirty outburst, with harmonica, in full Canali style. It is believed that the reason why it remained out of the collection is the presence of two blasphemies in the text, but it is not yet clear. What is certain is that, in addition to a series of reflections on the ‘after’, precisely that violent language offers another, often underestimated, key to understanding the Resistance: that of anger. That certainly did not end on April 25th.
Key phrase: “Then came May, the order to disarm us / Dear Valerio, we shouldn’t stop.”
“The fields in April” Ligabue (2015)
It is nice that, in the midst of this very long tour in the alternative of the 90s, which evidently really had the theme at heart, on April 25 it can also return to the mainstream. And it is also nice how, in all this, you find space right in the pop-rock of Ligabue, one who is from Correggio, near Reggio Emilia, and has never hidden these roots in his songs. The fields in which he grew up, and which return to the ballad of I Campi in April, are the same where, in the spring of 75 years ago, the history of Italy was made. And also this story, this dedication, has a name and a surname: that of Luciano Tondelli, an Emilian fighter killed when he was very young, just ten days before the Liberation. And in this folk waltz he tells us his story.
Key phrase: “If I were there, I would be ninety years old / I would have grandchildren to fight with / But I made a choice.”
“Sequoia” Offlaga Disco Pax (2008)
Again Emilia, this time with Offlaga Disco Pax. On Enrico Fontanelli’s plush electronics, Max Collini’s voice seems to take us far away, in the 70s, when he played around a century-old oak tree near Puianello, Reggio Emilia, and had a small accident. We are in one of the symbolic places of the Resistance, but in his eyes as a boy there is no room for awareness of all this. This, if anything, reaches the bottom of the song, in adulthood, when the piano strikes the first peals and the listener discovers that the partisans were tortured in 1944 right next to that sequoia. And then Sequoia becomes a dip in memories never lived , in the giant legacy of the grandparents, until the final revelation: “I think it is a beautiful thing, a happy wonder, which has not yet touched us, neither war, nor misery”.
Key phrase: “The sequoia is there, in Via Chiesa, just a few steps from the old Villa Rossi where in ’44 there was the command of those who tortured the rebels who came down from the mountains”.
“Liberation Day” Appino (2013)
The last piece of the list is the most – let’s say – atypical. Appino’s liberation festival tells the story of April 25 today: it is a post-modern and grotesque reinterpretation of partisan songs, set halfway between one’s torments and the reality of the province, with its rituals from a day of celebration. There is no room for historical re-enactment: there, among the houses where the partisans once fought, now all that remains is the desire to leave, or people without memory, obsessed in a ridiculous way by the country manias, prejudices and rumors of small businesses, victim of the most obtuse clichés. And, says Appino, happy April 25th to all of us.
Key phrase: “Liberation Day / there are many that I would get rid of.”
