Vocal production is always high, loud, and often forced. The simplest structure involves two voices in thirds. When the second voice enters, it may take over part of the first vioce, which then goes to the third above. Three voices are common - the third voice taking a part one third below the first, and sometimes octaving with the second. The third voice is often used as a drone on the dominant.
Subsequent voices shadow the first three or the drone - often an octave up or down.
The repertoire was fairly heterogeneous - there were songs explicitly about life in the ricefields and working conditions, but also songs of love, 'pop' favourites, and recent versions of old ballads. The comment about vocal production reflects what is most immediately apparent to a first-time listener with little Italian. On the farms, the singing was mainly done during periods of rest or ease, or else during collective work such as husking maize. Here the sailor in the title becomes, as might be expected, a handsome 'mountain dweller' - and later, during the resistance against the Fascists and the Nazis, a 'handsome partizan'. The recording dates from 1964 and it was made at the very start of the modern fieldwork investigations of the Po valley singing traditions.