For their upcoming album Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore, cellist Deborah Walker and violinist Silvia Tarozzi reinterpret the rebel worksongs of female Italian rice planters; the Mondine. “To sing while working is something that is anchored in tradition everywhere in the world before the machines came in,” says Tarozzi, speaking to Peter Margasak in The Wire 460, “and also this was partially shared with the other workers. Sometimes the words change a bit because they are adapted to a different situation, but you have the same songs for all the workers or some political songs like “La Lega”.”

The duo – who both grew up in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, though first met later in life at an improv workshop in 2003 – spent several years researching the Mondine's repertoire before presenting and recording experimental versions of some of their songs. The track premiered here, titled “La campéna ed San Simòn - Ignoranti senza scuole”, fuses a nursery rhyme from Bologna and Modena with a song written by the Vercelli trade unionist Pietro Besate in 1951, performed through the duo's contemporary classical lens.

Read Peter Margasak's full interview with Deborah Walker and Silvia Tarozzi inside The Wire 460. Wire subscribers can also find the article via the digital archive. Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore is released by Unseen Worlds 10 June.