Alessandro Bencistà was born in Greve in Chianti on 15 November 1941; he graduated from the Faculty of Education at the University of Florence and taught in public schools from 1964 to 2009. A contributor to a number of local news and culture periodicals, he was particularly interested in art, popular Tuscan traditions, theatre and poetry in the Florentine vernacular. In 1996, together with other scholars and interpreters of Tuscan folklore, he founded the Centro Studi Tradizioni Popolari Toscane (Tuscan Folk Traditions Study Centre) and the periodical Toscana Folk, of which he is editor-in-chief. Since the early 1990s, he has organised and conducted meetings and seminars on popular traditions and collaborated with singer Alessandro Scavetta, with whom he curated the folk song and poetry show S'ha ire a veglia. His main publications include Vocabolario della Valdigreve, Polistampa, Florence 1992; I bernescanti, Polistampa, Florence 1994; Fiorentinacci, Polistampa, Florence 1999; Vocabolario del vernacolo fiorentino (first edition: Florence 2001); Il maiale dall'Arista allo Zampone, Polistampa, Florence 2007; La commedia fiorentina in vernacolo, Sarnus, Florence 2008, the Vocabolario del vernacolo fiorentino e toscano, Sarnus, 2012, merged into the definitive Vocabolario del vernacolo fiorentino-toscano (with examples of voices from Dante to the modern day), with over 6 thousand voices (378 pp., Sarnus, 2021), Case Sparse 25. Al lume della 'cetilene (Sarnus, 2022), La memoria di Dante nell'arte dei cantastorie (Sarnus, 2022), Cantare di vino (Sarnus, 2022).