Volume ! La revue des musiques populaires 14 : 1 | 2017 Varia Franco FABBRI & Goffredo PLASTINO (eds.), Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music Rachel Haworth Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/volume/5467 DOI: 10.4000/volume.5467 ISSN: 1950-568X Publisher Association Mélanie Seteun Printed version Date of publication: 13 December 2017 Number of pages: 238-241 ISBN: 978-2-913169-43-2 ISSN: 1634-5495 Electronic reference Rachel Haworth, “Franco FABBRI & Goffredo PLASTINO (eds.), Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music”, Volume ! [Online], 14 : 1 | 2017, Online since 13 December 2017, connection on 29 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/volume/5467 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/volume.5467 L'auteur & les Éd. Mélanie Seteun Fuarros and Ana Castell. López Cano but also offers the international reader a stresses that throughout the 20th century vision of Spanish music as told by indigenous and to the present day, Latin mass phenom- researchers, which allows for the dismissal ena have involved Spanish artists, singers of unfounded stereotypes and a reflection and actors, which has served to introduce on the notions of centre and periphery in Spanish songs to the circuit of Cuban shows academia. This is an extraordinary step or Argentine and Mexican cinema and rein- towards the consolidation of popular music force stereotypes associated with the rural, studies in Spain. naive and noble Spanish character. Thus, musical processes of transnationalisation seeking to forge shared imaginaries take place. Sometimes these are not fully achieved, Franco Fabbri & as in the case of transatlantic rock scenes, yet in some cases they are very successful, Goffredo Plastino as with singer-songwriters and performers of romantic ballads. (eds.), Made in Italy. The book ends with a selected bibli- ography of Spanish popular music, which is Studies in Popular very useful for researchers and enthusiasts. As a bonus track, it includes an interview Music, New York & with the legendary Joan Manuel Serrat, in which he is invited to look back on his London, Routledge, contribution to Spanish popular music in a way that will undoubtedly touch on the 2014 controversy surrounding his Eurovision participation. By Rachel Haworth Academically speaking, we sense, except in a few chapters, a continuation of the perspective imposed by Anglo-Saxon This collection of seventeen essays cultural studies, which provide a somewhat constitutes a fundamental contribution to simplistic view and recreate the stereotypical Italian popular music studies outside of the narrative of the cultural products heavily Italian-speaking community. It is edited by influenced by the ideology of the Franco Franco Fabbri and Goffredo Plastino, two regime. However, there are several exam- leading voices in popular music studies and ples in this book of products which escaped important figures forIASPM . The volume is this influence, perhaps because they were part of Routledge’s Global Popular Music not as important in the eyes of the regime, Series, also edited by Fabbri and Plastino, and in which, therefore, many “modern” which aims to provide specialist and non-spe- features are present. In short, Made in Spain cialist audiences alike with a well-informed not only provides us with the first compre- and up-to-date introduction to different 238 hensive overview of Spanish popular music, world popular music scenes. The series thus However, the aim of the volume moves beyond offering a mere introduction. As Fabbri and Plastino explain, “the goal of this book is […] more ambitious than simply to provide a perspective on the popular music of a more or less ‘remote’ country: it offers examples of different ways to approach popular music, which can be applied to other genres and scenes” (xiv). What is also important here is the variety of discipli- nary approaches that permeate all chapters of the volume, which demonstrates that Made in Italy. Studies in Popular Music Italian popular music studies have always “been strictly related to an international context” (Ibid.). The narratives that the volume constructs about what constitutes Italian popular music, how Italians refer to it, its place within academia in Italy, and the types of genres that make up music “made in Italy” thus interact with the wider crit- 14 ical frameworks of musicology, sociology, 1 discourse analysis, star studies and cultural history. begins to re-dress the balance in the field, The volume itself is divided into three which has tended to privilege British and sections, which focus on significant themes, North American music as an object of study. figures, and genres. The chapters on themes As a result of these aims, the volumes in this “deal with conventions and stereotypes series have been written by those living that have contributed to the creation of and working in the countries in which they an identity for Italian popular music and write. All chapters in Made in Italy, then, popular music studies” (13) and thus ques- are by leading scholars and journalists of tion Italian specificity as far as popular Italian music in Italy. The contributions music is concerned. Marcello Sorce Keller cover major figures, styles, and social con- traces the existence of a “musical Italy” texts of popular music in XXth century Italy. with particular reference to the process of Together, they provide a comprehensive unification during theXIX th century and to introduction to this field that is particularly the musics that were popular and were con- useful to non-Italian speakers, and allows sumed during this period. Roberto Agostini the reader to access and understand the gen- examines the Sanremo Festival and its role res and figures that have had and continue in establishing a particular way of “doing lecture de Notes to have lasting significance for the Italian song” in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s. popular music soundscape. Franco Fabbri analyses the Italian bitt (beat) 239 movement and the extent of its relationship The third section of the volume with and independence from 1960s Anglo- focuses on stories which “all share a peculi- American music. Goffredo Plastino focuses arity that has made and makes them instantly on 1970s Neapolitan music, demonstrating recognizable in Italian popular music” (149). the exchanges, influences and collaborations The case studies here are diverse yet they that were taking place as part of the Naples again pick up on some of the geographi- power music scene. And Francesco D’Amato cal and cultural specificities about Italian highlights the specificities of the music popular music that the previous chapters markets in Italy, tracing the changes that highlight. For example, Carlo Pestelli’s have taken place in recent years from the chapter outlines the impact in 1960s Italy point of view of consumption of recorded of the Cantacronache, a group of musicians, music, live performance, new businesses, singers, novelists, and poets who sought to funding, and practice. revolutionise the Italian popular music scene In the section on singer-songwriters, by writing “serious” songs. Here, aspects the writers focus on the canzone d’autore of the previous analyses of the Sanremo genre and on its key proponents. The genre Festival and of the political potential of itself plays “a special role in the history of the cantautori are contextualised further. both Italian music and popular music stud- Questions about what it means to be popu- ies” and can “be identified with the renewal lar, which emerge in the analyses of specific of Italian culture that took place during singer-songwriters and of the Italian music and after WWII in literature, cinema, industry, are the focus of Paolo Prato’s theatre, visual arts, and modern classical chapter. He examines the careers of two music” (83). Jacopo Tomatis sets the scene of the most successful and popular Italian with his chapter on the conceptualisation of pop singers, Mina and Adriano Celentano. the singer-songwriter as an artist, and the Alessandro Brutus expands on the ideas significance of ideology, authenticity and about Italian progressive rock presented in style within the genre rules of the canzone part I in his chapter on the presence of this d’autore. Luca Marconi then focuses on music in the UK during the 1970s. Elena Luigi Tenco, and offers a semiotic analysis Boschi adds to our understanding of sing- of a selection of his songs that illustrates er-songwriters in Italy by analysing the the singer-songwriter’s new and individual film Radiofreccia to examine how the rock approach to songwriting. Individuality is singer-director Luciano Ligabue uses music also key in Jacopo Conti’s reading of Lucio in this film to discuss issues of cultural iden- Battisti as an (un)orthodox singer-song- tity. Vincenzo Perna’s chapter then revis- writer. Errico Pavese then analyses the its the Naples music scene, but moves the stylistic features of the late collaborative analysis to the present-day by considering work of Fabrizio De André and Ivano the depiction of contemporary Neapolitan Fossati, “two of the most representative neo-melodic music as “problem music”. Italian cantautori” (123). Finally, Alessandro The volume then features a coda, Carrera examines the works and career of which examines how “Italian” Italian music 240 Franco Battiato. actually is. Here, Dario Martinelli analyses the way in which “Italian music is portrayed and marketed abroad” (209) and considers Basile Zimmermann, China the extent to which cultural stereotypes from within and outside of Italy influence Waves and conceptualisations of what constitutes Italian popular music. His chapter picks Forms : Electronic up on the relationship between music and identity that Sorce Keller introduces in the Music Devices volume’s opening chapter. The conclud- ing chapter is then an interview with the and Computer renowned Italian musician and composer, Ennio Morricone, and further opens up Encodings in China, the debate about what constitutes Italian popular music.