There is this song “Bella ciao” from one of the most famous Netflix shows called “Money Heist” (aka – La Casa de Papel) stuck in my mind. I haven’t seen the series yet, neither have I watched it’s trailer while I am writing this peice of observation.
I am not an expert of music, but words have always fascinated me since my childhood. I only understand Hindi and English as a language. However, this Italian/spanish song had something about it that I listend to almost all the versions of this song available on YouTube multiple times.
When I further enquired, I found this is a generations old song.
This song was initially sung by farmers in Italy who used to sing this song as a symbol of protest while they were working in the paddy field in adverse weather conditions during 1940s.
No one knows who has written this song.
Later this song got evolved with time and was used by protesters against fight with Nazi Germany.
With time this song kept evolving and was sung by many different popular singers across the globe. It was used by many football clubs as their anthem.
And now, this song is dancing on the lips of millenials through Netflix and team.
While I was listening to this song on loop, it lead me to think who ever first sung this song was certainly a farmer who must have been just working in the paddy field as part of his/her daily routine and these words just popped out of his/her mouth out of pain. Other farmers joined in and it was a song then and there. Everyone connected to it.
This person was certainly not a great writer like Shakespeare or a musician like Beethoven for that matter.
He was just a poor farmer crying his heart out of helplessness while working in chilled weather of Italy.
This further led me into a loop of thoughts for few good hours and these are a few things I found as the conclusion to my introspection. –
•Language is not a barrier as long as you are sure of what you want to say.
• If your feelings are true and honest, it might go to generations.
• In most scenarios, Art is an outcome of pain.
• Music and protest have immense power in it which may impact generations to come.
• History has many black chapters which is filled with stories of poors getting crushed in the game of power played by big people of that time. We don’t know and will never know of these stories.
With these observations, lets play the Bella Ciao once again and let our eyelids drip with few drops of salt while we remember all the people in the history who have been crushed in the game, around the globe in every phase of time.
And one more thing – raise your voice, write, sing, compose, paint, cry, It doesn’t matter.
Whenever, wherever you see something happening which is not right from humanity standpoint, even if you couldn’t do anything about it then and there, just raise your voice.
It will go a long way because who knew, millennials would be singing something on guitar which was just a cry of a farmer 100s of years ago.
Bella ciao!
– Rahul sudha Singh
Chill Bro's Corner 