by Davide Tidoni
A radio podcast that brings together stories, personal reflections, and direct experiences from the No TAV movement.
The No TAV is an Italian grassroots movement that has opposed since the 1990s the construction of the second high-speed train line between Turin and Lyon, mostly based in the Alpine Valsusa valley of Northwestern Italy.
The No TAV struggle is today one of the longest-lived ecological struggles in Europe. In Italy, it is still one the most prominent oppositions to useless, harmful and imposed megaprojects. Over the course of more than three decades, several generations of activists have come together to fight against the new train line, and the No TAV struggle has become – for better or worse – one of the defining features of the Valsusa today.
This radio broadcast came out of a series of interviews gathered during my research on political songs in the No TAV movement, an audio-based research project that is now complete and that is in the process of publication.
Soon after my first visit in Valsusa in 2018, I came to realise that in order to fully grasp the movement, I couldn’t restrict my focus just on the social practices around songs and singing but that I had to explore certain issues in more detail, which, over the course of my research, became increasingly central.
Through the voices of various participants in the movement, this work brings together some of the central themes of the No TAV struggle, including: the technical flaws and deficiencies of the high-speed infrastructure; the relationship between struggle, community and personal growth; and the military plans put in place by the Italian state to protect the TAV construction sites.
The work is interspersed by several No TAV songs, which I gathered during my research, reworked as pop tunes and which form part of a broader archive of No TAV songs published in 2024 as “The Best of NO-Tav“.
The aim of my research on No TAV songs was to treat the act of singing not just as a form of communication or a way of bringing people together, but also as a tool that could lead to actions and interventions, depending on the context. Put differently, songs could become a “force” and a resource to be used in the struggle.
The songs selected for these radio broadcasts speak of facts, related to specific events. Most of the ones collected here do not speak of desires, hopes and expectations; rather, they relate the direct experiences of movement’s participants, capturing them in the heat of the moment.
The songs have mostly been conceived within small groups that have played an active role at various moments of the movement’s history; as such they refer to the situations and needs that arose in those specific contexts, and they continue to retain a close connection to the historical moment in which they originated.
The first three episodes of the work were broadcast in May 2023 by RAI, the Italian National Radio. The broadcast of the fourth episode was cancelled shortly before airing. For this reason, the four episodes are now published in their entirety, restoring the integrity and scope of the work, and with the addition of English subtitles.
The broadcast is available here:
Episode#1 “Infrastructure Projects” [00:00]
This episodes provides an overview of the critical issues related to the project for the new Turin-Lyon high-speed rail line. Environmental impacts, impacts on public health, the wasting of state funds and the fact that a high-speed train line already exists, are some of the reasons that have driven the No TAV movement since the early 2000s.
Episode#2 “Community and Change pt.1” [14:19]
Episode#3 “Community and Change pt.2” [28:38]
These two episodes portray the social composition of the movement, and how the movement has opened new horizons of transformation within the lives of those who have taken part in it. Since joining the movement, many people have learned to develop a critical consciousness about the world, asking questions to themselves and to those around them. In this way, the political struggle became increasingly connected to the participants’ own life trajectories.
Episode#4 “Militarisation” [44:51]
This episode collects stories and reflections on the military occupation that the Italian state has been carrying out in Valsusa since 2005. It does not claim to be an exhaustive documentation of the many past and current incidents involving No TAV and police. Instead, it tries to offer a picture, as candid and heartfelt as possible, of how the police and the army are perceived and opposed in Valsusa. This leaves room for broader reflections on the repressive nature of the state and the instrumental use of the police.
Credits
Work by Davide Tidoni Voices: Claudio Cancelli, Luca Giunti, Mario Cavargna (all from the No-TAV technical committee), and various anonymous contributors
Field Research: Davide Tidoni
Audio Recording, Editing and Mixing: Davide Tidoni
Music: selections from The Best of No-TAV – https://www.davidetidoni.name/the-best-of-no-tav/English
Translation: Gabriel Popham, Elena Taylor Mu
Cover image: Anonymous
