Mondine are the women who worked in the rice fields of northern Italy for a little more than a century (roughly from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth). Standing with their feet in water for twelve hours a day, exposed to malaria and the abuse of overseers, these women were forbidden to speak while working. Their sharp, resonant voices, often compared to the croaking of frogs, sang of everyday life far from home, of hardship, love, and struggle.

The songs of this repertoire constitute an extraordinary example of social singing, as well as an effective pedagogical tool for approaching traditional folk singing more broadly.

Mondine polyphonic singing emerged collectively as a means of communication, a way to break the monotony of labour, to encourage one another, and to affirm a shared sense of belonging within a community.

It is interesting to observe how the conventions of this singing style adapted to the realities of work and daily life.

Solidarity, Class Consciousness, and Emancipation

The seasonal migration of large numbers of women from diverse cultural backgrounds enabled them to develop forms of solidarity and collective awareness that would have been impossible within the closed world of the peasant household.

This was the first generation of women to experience life outside direct family control. Discovering a shared condition of subordination fostered a new awareness of exploitation. This awareness often found expression in sarcastic mockery of landowners and foremen, but also in criticism of the rigid patriarchal order that had long defined the moral horizon of rural life.

As a result, songs increasingly voiced—often with irony and insolence—claims to a certain degree of sexual freedom, aspirations toward emancipation, and a readiness to engage in collective struggle.

The mondine themselves, who helped ignite many of the social uprisings that swept across the Po Valley at the end of the nineteenth century, also played a leading role in creating highly advanced forms of peasant solidarity through the resistance leagues (leghe), celebrated in the best-known song of the mondina tradition, La Lega.

Repertoire

The repertoire drew from the oral traditions of many different regions and cultures, but not exclusively. It includes folk ballads, satirical and risqué verses, dance songs, love songs, protest songs and songs of social denunciation, opera melodies, and—following the arrival of radio—popular commercial songs, often with rewritten lyrics.

Because performance was never intended for an audience, tempos were frequently stretched out (after all, time had to pass somehow), and sections of one song could easily merge into another with little concern for narrative coherence. The language employed was often a mixture of Italian and dialects, a kind of lingua franca drawing primarily on the local speech varieties of the Po Valley.

Vocal Style

The vocal aesthetic followed principles very different from those of the bel canto tradition taught in music schools and associated with more privileged social classes. The voices are tense, bright, and penetrating, capable of carrying across open fields and extraordinarily rich in overtones thanks to a highly resonant vocal production.

These were voices considered “disturbing” according to both the aesthetic standards of the time and, in many ways, those of today—above all because they were women’s voices refusing to remain in their assigned place, voices unafraid of being judged excessive, vulgar, or unruly, and which instead transformed their very distinctiveness into a declaration of identity and belonging.

Harmonisation Practices

A characteristic feature of mondine singing is its preference for thirds and fifths. The recurring harmonic framework is so accessible and effective that almost anyone can join a song without knowing it beforehand and without disrupting its structure.

A lead singer—often the oldest or most charismatic member of the group—introduces the opening phrase, establishing rhythm and key. One or more voices answer at the interval of a third, while the rest of the group joins with a drone. Melismas, suspensions, and melodic variations further enrich the texture.

This constitutes a genuine training ground for understanding the fundamental principles of harmony without necessarily knowing any music theory.