"Faccetta Nera" - Kingdom of Italy Marching Song

"'Faccetta Nera'" ('Pretty black face' or 'Little black face') is a popular marching song of Fascist Italy about the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. It was written by Renato Micheli with music by Mario Ruccione in 1935. The lyrics are written from the perspective of a fascist Italian Blackshirt soldier during the invasion of Ethiopia. In the song, the Italian narrator tells a beautiful young enslaved Abysinnian (Ethiopian) girl that she will be liberated from slavery and ruled by a new regime. She is invited to parade with the fascist Blackshirts in Rome, where she is promised a new and better life. During the invasion, the song was hugely popular in Italy and caused national fervor. During the fascist occupation of Ethiopia, Ethiopian women cohabited with Italian men in a system of concubinage known as madamismo. The implicitly erotic song was, however, somewhat of an embarrassment for the Fascist government, which had, starting in May 1936, introduced several laws prohibiting cohabitation and marriage between Italians and native people of the Italian colonial empire. These efforts culminated in the Italian Racial Laws of 1938. The Fascist authorities considered banning the song, and removed all picture postcards depicting Abyssinian women from Roman shop windows. This channel dose not condone or support fascism, and this video was made for educational purposes. #ww2 #history #historyedit #italy #worldwar2