The course provides an interdisciplinary approach to Italian music, including sociology, economics, semiotics, cultural and gender studies. Music is both a mirror of society and a meaningful activity which participates in its construction. Therefore, crisscrossing the historical, the course introduces students to the most salient cultural, social and political configurations of modern and contemporary Italy as seen through the lenses of music. Students will be introduced to a variety of texts and popular music expressions and their mediation through media technologies and the resultant discursive construction of Italian identities. The course will be articulated through film and video screenings, listening sessions, reading assignments, lectures and discussions.  

By the end of the course students will be:

1        Familiar with the analytic and theoretical perspectives of popular music studies.

2        Asked to analyze, assess, and evaluate songs, poems and other musical forms that belong to a specific national culture. Once they are given the necessary basic information to place these works into national and international context, they will be able to understand what makes them relevant to national identity and at the same time what has made them appreciated and influential outside the national boundaries. An improvement in critical thinking will result from the appreciation of the historical distance and cultural proximity intertwined in cultural artifacts that are at the same time historically determined and timeless.

3        Able to demonstrate knowledge of Italian music cultural history as it relates to the development of the media, tastes, and markets.

4        Able to recognize various trends in the music production of Italy, be familiar with quite a few artists and performers that have characterized specific historical moments.

5        Able to confront expressions of Italian popular music with others coming from the USA and elsewhere.  

6        Able to increase their social responsibility: by being exposed to a significant segment of transnational culture, students will learn how to appreciate styles of storytelling and system of values they may not be familiar with. Approaching a different culture increases the awareness of how varied and interdependent our world is. Looking at how people from different cultures and background have coped with universal issues is critical to advancement in social responsibility.

 The course contributes to the following learning outcomes of the Major in Italian Studies:

• LOS 2:  Identify, interpret, and explain the major developments and forces shaping Italian social, political and cultural history.
• LOS 4:  Demonstrate extensive knowledge of contemporary Italian culture and society and the ability to function effectively within it.
• LOS 6: Apply appropriate methodological strategies and information literacy skills to identify, use and document primary and secondary materials in full respect of academic integrity and ethical standards.
•  LOS 7: Communicate information and analytical interpretations clearly and effectively in written and spoken English.

Premise:

“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing!”, wrote Jacques Attali, who specified: “Music is more than an object of study: it is a way of perceiving the world”.

This course moves from this theoretical and methodological premise – shared by a long list of social thinkers, sociologists, economists and, more recently, media and popular culture scholars – to offer a different look on Italy.

WEEK 1:   2 – 4 September

Music, Culture and Society: some introductory concepts

How music means and relates to national character. Basic functions of the musical language. Music in history: three major stages, from folk to art to mass society. Production, consumption, the music business and its changing features: world and domestic markets, technological developments, global and local genres. Music as a source to understand Italian culture, history, and society. What is Italian music, its place within the international context, past and present. A look from the outside: accounts from foreign visitors and observers.                                                                                                                                                              

WEEK 2:    9 – 13 September

Music and national character I: Opera

The making of a nation: Risorgimento and the role of opera in shaping an Italian identity. The system of opera between art and industry: spreading Italian music in the world. Milano, the capital city of art music. Caruso and the fortunes of ‘operatic’ pop, from Luciano Pavarotti to Andrea Bocelli: from the stage to the recording studio. Puccini’s Nessun dorma: a groundbreaking song able to arouse positive feelings a hundred years after its release.

Music and national character II: Neapolitan song

Naples, the capital city of Italian popular music. The diffusion of the Tarantella dance since the late 18^th century, all over the world. Neapolitan song, an urban, middle class product working as a second home for Italians abroad. Neapolitan as a lingua franca for Italians. Migrant music: diaspora and the spread of stereotypes. Impact on Italian American culture: record labels, artists, venues.

WEEK 3:   16 – 18 September

Folk songs and regional music cultures

Dialects and local songbooks, a geography of traditional song from North to South. From national anthems to protest songs. World War I and the making of a national songbook. From Resistenza to students’ movements: partisan songs to new political chants. Bella ciao, song of rebellion from Italy to the world. La Notte della Taranta and the pizzica revival.

 “Radio days” and the birth of Italian song

The rise of an entertainment industry: records, radio, cinema and the birth of Italian canzone. Musical and lyrical features. The Fascist era: music between escapism and propaganda. The colonial campaigns and racism as portrayed in songs. The reception of jazz related dances and the growth of Italian swing music.

WEEK 4:  23 - 25 September

 The Sanremo Song Festival, celebrating Italian pop

The antecedent of all talent shows, going back to the 19^th century, with the Piedigrotta Festival in Naples, followed by the Festival of the Roman Song. Origins of the most important tv program in the history of Italian media, from the beginnings as a radio show, to its boom in the Sixties. Sanremo as a national craze, a major boost for the recording industry and an international showcase for domestic song.  

WEEK 5:    30 September – 2 October

Jazz in Italy and Italian jazz

The contribution of Italians to the birth of jazz in America. Its import and impact on Italian society. From a mimicry phase to an original contribution. Italian musicians and the international jazz community. Umbria Jazz and other festivals. Jazz, rock and canzone: the multifaceted scene of nowadays.

Avant-garde and experimental music  

Italian instrumental music in the European context. Avantgardes in the early 20^th century. Futurism and the ‘art of noise’. Electronic and experimental music from the Post World War II to date: major figures and works. Politically committed music and radical criticism. A comeback to tonality: post-minimalism, crossover and its relationship with popular music.

WEEK 6:     7 - 9 October

National icons: Mina and Celentano    

A portrait of the two most significant singers in the history of Italian song, whose careers begun in the late Fifties and still goes on nowadays, with increasing success. Through their recordings, TV and film participations we will shed a closer light on the media system, the music business and the taste evolution of three generations.

WEEK 7:    14 - 16   October

7.2. Course review

7.2. Mid-term exam

WEEK 8:  21 – 23 October

Cantautori and the renewal of Italian pop song

The rise of singer-songwriters: popular song as poetry and as social message. Renovating Italian song, focusing on a more artistic claim and a more informal singing style: Lucio Dalla, Luigi Tenco,

Franco Battiato, Paolo Conte, Francesco Guccini and Francesco De Gregori.

Case study: Fabrizio De Andrè

The “Italian Bob Dylan”: aesthetics and ethics musing around the most loved of Italian singer-songwriters. From his early days as exponent of the Genoese School to his rise to fame as a major contributor to a Mediterranean world music. Setting to music Edgars Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology.

WEEK 9:   28 - 30 October

America in Italian popular music: rock, disco, rap, trap

The impact of American music, between reception, assimilation, and rejection: jazz and Latin American dances, rock & roll. Hippy counterculture and the international opposition to Vietnam War exported rock music to Italy. Rise and fall of pop festivals: the denied utopia. Punk and New Wave: Italian underground speaks English. In the Eighties it was disco fever. Eventually, the hip hop subculture took over while Italian pop tended to sound global.

    WEEK 10: 4 - 6  November

In class presentations

A five-minute-long multimedia work where you are asked to present the topic you will explore in the final research paper, making use of slides, pictures, short videos and/or anything else that could help to better understand your idea.

    WEEK 11:   11 - 13  November

Film music

From silent to sound movies. Cinema under the Fascist regime: tenor stars and the pre-eminence of canzone (song). Musicarelli and the vogue of hit songs, romance and teen-stars. Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota and their reception from Hollywood to the world. Other major composers: Ortolani, Umiliani, Piccioni, Piovani. The new generation: Pivio & Aldo De Scalzi, Theo Teardo.

 Dance music

Ballo liscio at the origins of Italian popular music. Disco music in Italy: the wind that swept away all previous dance forms. Italo-Disco, a successful trend in all Europe. Euro-disco: an Italian invention (Giorgio Moroder). Techno cultures, rave parties and the Riviera romagnola as the European pleasure drome. Latest trends in a globalized instrumental music.

WEEK 12: 18 - 20 November

Geopolitics: relationships with European and Latin American music

The influence of other countries on domestic music: England, France, Spain and Latin America (Brazil especially) played a major role each in different decades. Music appreciation of cover versions of international hits recorded by Italian artists, compared to the originals.

Gender, identity, and subcultures  

Articulating images of masculinity and femininity from musical practices. Mondine (riceweeders): an early female subculture. From divas to starlets: women in Italian music (classical to rock). A female look at record industry: Caterina Caselli, entrepreneur and talent scout. Queer pop: untold stories of forgotten talents. Urban subcultures: negotiating group and local identity from Beats to neo-Melodics.

    WEEK 13:    25 - 27  November  

National-popular stars: icons of Italy abroad

Laura Pausini and her following in the Hispanic world. Al Bano & Romina and Toto Cutugno, a cult in Eastern European countries. Claudio Villa, big in Japan. Domenico Modugno: the first Grammy winner. Maneskin: from the Eurovision Song Contest to supporting the Rolling Stones. Andrea Bocelli, hosted by President Obama and King Charles III.

    WEEK 14:  2 - 4  December

Today’s soundscape

What Italian music sounds like today: current hits and popular artists in major genres.

Final course review

THIS IS A PROVISIONAL LIST OF READINGS TO BE ASSIGNED DURING THE COURSE

Roberto Agostini, “Sanremo Effects: the Festival and the Italian Canzone (1950s-1960s)”, in Fabbri-Plastino 2014

Gianmarco Borio, “Music as Plea for Political Action; the presence of musicians in Italian protest movement”, in B. Kutschke and B. Norton (eds), Music and Protest in 1968, Cambridge Un. Press, Cambridge 2013.

Guendalina Carbonelli, “Fabrizio De André’s La buona novella: A Social Revolution in Disguise!” In La memoria delle canzoni. Popular Music e identità italiana, ed.by Alessandro Carrera, Pasturana: Puntoacapo, 2017                        

 Alessandro Carrera, “Italy’s Blues. Folk music and popular song from the Nineteenth century to the 1990’s”, in THE ITALIANIST 21-22, 2001-2002.

Anna Harwell Celenza, Jazz Italian Style. From Its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra, Cambridge Un. Press, Cambridge 2017.

Iain Chambers, “Some Notes on Neapolitan Song: From Local Tradition to Worldly Transit”, in THE WORLD OF MUSIC, Vol. 45, No. 3, Cross-Cultural Aesthetics, 2003.

Clarissa Clò, “Dagli Appennini alle risaie: Italian Glocal Soundscapes, Memory, History, Performance in the Voice of Women”, in Graziella Parati and Anthony Julian Tamburri (ed.by), The Culture of Italian Migration. Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspective, Farleigh Dickinson Un. Press 2011.

Clarissa Clò, “Disco Fever: Italian and American Diasporic Journeys”, in ITALIAN AMERICAN REVIEW vol. 8 (no. 2), 2019.

EPMOW 2017: Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Genres: Europe vol. XI, Bloosmbury: London-New York, 2017 – eds. Paolo Prato & David Horn

Franco Fabbri & Goffredo Plastino, Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music, Routledge: London-New York, 2014.

Franco Fabbri, “Five Easy Pieces: Forty Years of Music and Politics from Bella Ciao to Berlusconi”, in FORUM ITALICUM Vol. 49 (no. 2), 2015.

Simona Frasca, excerpts from Italian Birds of Passage. The Diaspora of Italian Musicians in New York, Palgrave MacMillan 2014.

Rachel Haworth, “Mina as a Transnational Popular Music Star”, in MODERN LANGUAGES OPEN 2018 (no. 1), 25

Rachel Haworth, “Mina Celentano: Le Migliori. Popular Cultural Icons in Contemporary Italy”, in The Last Forty years of Popular Culture in Italy, ed. by Enrico Minardi & Paolo Desogu, Cambridge Un. Press, 2020.

Paolo Magaudda, “Disco, House and Techno: rethinking the local and the global in Italian Electronic Music”, in Practising Popular Music, 12^th Biennial IASPM International Conference, Montreal 2003 Proceedings.

Tony Mitchell, “Paolo Conte: Italian ‘Arthouse Exotic’”, in POPULAR MUSIC vol. 26 (3), 2007

Goffredo Plastino, “Inventing Ethnic Music: Fabrizio De Andre’s Creuza de Ma and the Creation of Musica Mediterranea in Italy”, in Goffredo Plastino (ed.) Mediterranean Mosaic: Popular Music and Global Sounds, Routledge 2003.

Goffredo Plastino and Joseph Sciorra (eds), Neapolitan Postcards: the Canzone napoletana as transnational subject, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham-Boulder-NY 2016.

Paolo Prato, Exporting Naples: Geopolitics and Transculturality from ‘Io te voglio bene assaje’ to Caruso, in CHIGIANA JOURNAL III, 4, 2022.

Paolo Prato, “Pop goes the Pope: religion and popular music in Italy”, in CHURCH, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE vol. 6 no.2, 2021

Paolo Prato, “Santa Claus is Coming to Italy: Updating the Debate on Americanization”, in The Last Forty years of Popular Culture in Italy, ed by Enrico Minardi & Paolo Desogu, Cambridge Un. Press 2020.

Paolo Prato, “Selling Italy by the Sound: Cross-Cultural Interchanges through Cover Records (1920s-to date)”, in POPULAR MUSIC 26: 3, 2007.

Jason Pyne, The Art of Making Do in Naples, Un. of Minnesota Press 2012.

Marco Santoro, “The Tenco Effect: Sanremo, Suicide and the Social Construction of Canzone d’autore”, in JOURNAL OF MODERN ITALIAN STUDIES, vol. 11 (no. 3), 2006.

Marco Santoro, “What Is a “cantautore”? Distinction and Authorship in Italian (popular) Music”, in POETICS 30, 2002.

Jacopo Tomatis, “Rediscovered Sisters: Women (and) Singer-Songwriters in Italy”, in The Singer-Songwriter in Europe, ed. by Isabelle Marc and Stuart Green, Ashgate 2016.