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title="Contrafacta"
has_items=["item3.md", "item4.md"]
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# Who do they think they are? 

Between 1960 and 1970, the workers of the textile factory Lebole (in arezzo, Italy) met in the toilets of their plant to share problems, organize assemblies and strikes, and to compose political pop songs to be sung at the assembly line and at demonstrations. This conspiracy space and time was nicknamed Radio Gabinetto (*Radio Toilet*).

The practice of contrafacta, widespread in the European poetic tradition, is at the origin of many popular songs and struggles still known today. The technique consists in changing the lyrics of old songs while leaving the melodies unchanged. Friedrich Gennrich writes that "In the history of the song, counterfeiting is a phenomenon almost as old as the song itself" (1965). In the toilets of the Lebole, the workers use and experiment for the first time this technique on a repertoire of pop hits of the moment: the songs that circulate in the Italian song festivals such as Sanremo and Canzonissima. In this particular use of the cotrafacta technique, the workers found a way to break the silences that traversed them and make their struggles known and strengthened.


