‘Cara al sol’ is one of the singles from the upcoming album โLo olvidadoโ by Puerto Rican rapcore duo Yuca Brava. I hit up the band’s DM to get some more info about the release. Fรฉlix Castro, one half of YB, told me about the inspiration behind the song.
The song is based on a piece from a Jose Martiโs poem โVersos Sencillos XXlll”: “No me pongan en lo oscuro a morir como un traidor, yo soy bueno y como bueno morirรฉ de cara al sol” which roughly translates to “Don’t put me in the dark to die like a traitor, I’m good and as such I’ll die with my face towards the sun”.
With the new single, the band intends to pay tribute to all people fighting injustice around the world. Fรฉlix tells me that more often than not there is a collective noise drowning the actions of hardworking activists or their efforts are completely overlooked by mainstream media. But they shall not go unnoticed or forgotten.
“We want to send a message to the people who are day by day in the streets fighting without expecting anything in return or aware that they will not see the fruits of their struggle but still keep going forward. We may die, but we will die facing the sun, knowing that what had to be done was done.”
‘Cara al sol’ drops today, Friday Jan. 27, and is available on all streaming platforms. Check out more of Yuca Brava’s music via their webpage and social media: Facebook | Twitter | SoundCloud | YouTube | Instagram
Oaxaca native, Mare Advertencia Lirika, who’s been rapping for nearly two decades, along with fellow musician and activist Vivir Quintana, wrote the song ‘รrboles bajo del mar’ (Trees beneath the sea) about defending territories and the rights of native people.
The song is now part of the soundtrack for the new Marvel feature, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, sharing the spotlight with artists such as Rihanna, Burna Boy, Stormzy and more.
Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya explains why the revolutionary protest song, โBella Ciaoโ continues to play a role in global struggles today, and how it has served anti-government Gota Go Gama protests in Sri Lanka which forced the president to resign.
Earlier this summer, a video from the Sri Lankan โGota Go Gamaโ protests circulated online: the president Gotabaya Rajapaksa had finally resigned, and protestors were singing a Singhala version of โBella Ciaoโ, the popular Italian song which was used in the Partisan anti-fascist resistance movement of the 1930s and 1940s. While the military violence and attacks on protestors in Sri Lanka continue, this was a clear moment of victorious celebration in the ongoing movement against the authoritarian regime.
The song – which details the singerโs awareness of their imminent death at the hands of the โinvaderโ and desire to die as a โpartisanโ or freedom fighter – has been adapted by various anti-fascist movements globally prior to its use in the Gota Go Gama protests. In fact, the protests are part of a wider trend of anti-authoritarian resistance movements across South Asia in recent years, several of which have been characterised by new versions of โBella Ciaoโ in different languages.
”This cyclical, continual reproduction of โBella Ciaoโ across starkly contrasting yet uncannily similar contexts of protest is ultimately testament to the unifying power of protest music, as reproduced across time and space, in illuminating connections between struggles across decades, centuries and continents against a backdrop of evolving forms of capitalism.”
Certain features of the song have held throughout its reproduction across different contexts: its undeniable catchiness, and its clear theme of political resistance, despite drastic shifts in its lyrics. The song has even found its way beyond the realm of resistance movements into mainstream television, famously featuring in the hit Spanish crime drama Money Heist.
A Hindi adaptation of the song was released around the time of the mass protests against the fascistic Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, introduced in India in 2019. Broadly, the CAA aims to deny Indian citizenship to (Indian) Muslims; it is widely perceived as a step towards ethnic cleansing, indicating the current escalation of Modiโs Hindu supremacist regime into full-blown fascism.
Following the popularity of โWapas Jaoโ, the songwriter, Poojan Sahil, subsequently penned a Punjabi version retaining the same melody with new lyrics, also entitled โWapas Jaoโ (โGo Backโ), for the large-scale Indian farmersโ movement protesting new anti-farmer legislation introduced by Modiโs government in 2020. These farm laws, which received global coverage and were largely retracted in Autumn 2021 following the year-long mass protests, were set to adversely affect poor farmers, and are widely seen to represent the ongoing corporate takeover of agriculture in India.
Both versions of โWapas Jaoโ have a similar theme lyrically to โBella Ciaoโ โ although, as Sahil clarified, the songs are not translations. The Hindi version alludes to the fascism of the Indian government through the repeated line โgo away, o you tyrantโ, explicitly locating the singer within the resistance movement, and the song as an unmistakably anti-fascist anthem.
โWapas Jaoโ (across both versions) also moves away from the somewhat personal lyrics of โBella Ciaoโ, which uses the singular pronoun โIโ throughout (in contrast to โweโ in โWapas Jaoโ) and captures the fear invoked by the rise of fascism through the line โI feel death approachingโ. By contrast, the lyrics of the Punjabi โWapas Jaoโ discuss the movement against the Indian government and the major companies which are profiting from the farm laws. Both versions of โWapas Jaoโ are thus references to the context of the original song which take its anti-fascist commentary a step further, situating themselves within a specific anti-fascist protest movement.
By pairing the original melody with a sparse acoustic guitar, these versions both highlight the timeless catchiness of โBella Ciaoโ as well as showing its versatility in lending itself to diverse musical styles โ and languages – of different eras and locations. The case of โBella Ciaoโ/ โWapas Jaoโ illustrates Walter Benjaminโs suggestion that reproduction allows the work of art โto come closer to whatever situation the person apprehending it is inโ, and thereby โactualises what is reproducedโ.
Interestingly, the anti-fascist or partisan โBella Ciaoโ is not, in fact, the original version -despite being the best-known – but is adapted from the โmondineโ version, which originated as a folk song sung by mainly women paddy workers (mondine) in Northern Italy in the late 19th century in protest against harsh working conditions. This agrarian context is evoked โ intentionally on Sahilโs part – by the Punjabi version of โWapas Jaoโ centred on the farmersโ movement, which includes the lyrics โeach grain of soil sings in chorusโ.
Taking on the tyrant
Whilst the anti-fascist version of โBella Ciaoโ focused on resistance against โthe invaderโ as opposed to โthe bossโ of the original version, the Punjabi โWapas Jaoโ evokes a new kind of invader โ or โtyrantโ โ the Indian government and the companies taking over Indian agriculture, which are being urged to โgo backโ by agricultural workers. This version recalls the voice and perspective of the original song, in a new political, geographical, and temporal context.
Indeed, this evoking of the original version also underlines the concentration of agricultural workers in the Global South and their relative decline in the Global North during the 20th century.
Having originally been centred on workersโ experiences, and subsequently been reproduced and adapted in various contexts of anti-fascism, โBella Ciaoโ is once again being used to shed light on (agricultural) workersโ struggles through the Punjabi โWapas Jaoโ.
Through both versions, meanwhile, Sahil arguably utilises the fame of โBella Ciaoโ as an anthem of resistance against the widely-known rise of fascism in 1930s Europe, referencing the song through reproduction as a way to emphasise the gravity of the current situation in India through implicit comparison.
This cyclical, continual reproduction of โBella Ciaoโ across starkly contrasting yet uncannily similar contexts of protest is ultimately testament to the unifying power of protest music, as reproduced across time and space, in illuminating connections between struggles across decades, centuries and continents against a backdrop of evolving forms of capitalism.
The Gota Go Gama protestors singing โBella Ciaoโ sends an affirmingly hopeful message โ that the movement recognises itself as situated within a history of peopleโs struggles all sharing the same determination for change, from the anti-fascists in Italy to the farmers in India and everything in between and beyond.
Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya is a writer, activist and co-editor of Red Pepper magazine, interested in arts and culture and social movements.
