Songs of Resistance
Marc Ribot coming to Riverside Festival
On Sunday, September 8th, renowned guitarist Marc Ribot will be appearing at the Riverside Revival in a duo performance featuring multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and with special guest Buddy Miller. His appearance is part of a tour performing tracks from his 2018 release Songs of Resistance that have been “radically rearranged” plus “new material, improvisation, and whatever else reaps urgency.” Many of these tracks are blatantly and purposefully against Candidate Trump and the ideals of the Republican party. Importantly, Ribot’s work is politically and markedly informed by history.
For example, in 2018, famously reclusive Tom Waits leant his voice to Ribot’s version of “Bello Ciao” with an accompanying video featuring scenes of modern resistance. This song likely found its origins as a folk song in the rice fields of northern Italy where women of the lowest social class would carry out the extremely tiring work of caring for the young spring rice plants, spending the entire day in water two feet deep, barefoot, and bent over weeding the soil. The song, like the work, is purposefully slow, monotonous, gloomy and moving.
In the second half of the 20th century the song took on its modern shape and lyrics, embraced as a partisan hymn and dedicated to the partisans of the Italian resistance in World War Two. Since, the song has been recorded in nearly 50 different languages from Creole to Chinese, to Hungarian. Most recently, Mitski released a version on her youtube channel. As Mitski relates, the power of the song is in its direct, simple expression:
This is the flower of the partisanBella, ciao, bella, ciao, bella, ciaoThis is the flower of the partisanWho died for freedom.
This is just one of the selections from Songs of Resistance that Ribot will be performing on the 8th. Other tracks may include civil rights tunes, and other songs relevant the current political landscape but derived from history and tradition. Hopefully they’ll include, “Knock that Statue Down” (referring to recent events in Charlottesville) and “Rata de Dos Patas,” a Spanish denunciation of a certain politician and whose original singer’s name is withheld to avoid reprisals. If you agree with Ribot’s ideals, this concert promises to be politically inspiring, historically informative and emotionally stirring. Personally, I can’t wait. Tickets are still available here: https://www.riversiderevivalnashville.com/calendar/marc-ribot-songs-of-resistance-feat-shazad-ismaily-and-buddy-miller
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Joseph E. Morgan is a father of two, husband, teacher and recovering guitarist in Middle Tennessee.
