Jazz and Folk Music

THE history of jazz in Italy dates back only to the 1930’s, hut it has become an important element in popular culture. The Fascists attacked jazz as “Negroid music" and tried, unsuccessfully, to keep it out of the country; it had the appeal of forbidden fruit to young people mho heard it over foreign radio stations or on imported records.Despite official censure, a generation of brave jazz players matured under Fascism, among whom the pianists Bertolazzi, Trovajoli, and. Piero Morgan mere outstanding.

With the liberating armies in 1944 came jitterbugs, V-discs, and disc jockeys of the various “expeditionary stations.” Jazz, too, conquered the country, and today packed audiences listen to Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Mulligan, and Shank and Cooper. And, if after the performance the American guests consent to continue in a jam session at a private home in Rome or Milan, Italian fans arid professionals mill gather around them to participate and to learn.

New Orleans style jazz is a favorite in Italy, but “progressive” and “cool” jazz have their followers, too, and they include, generally speaking, the most prominent, performers today. Besides the pioneer pianists, postwar Italy has produced superior trombonists such as Potondo, Valdambrini, and Libano, and saxophonists like Basso, who often compose their own music. They are first-rate, measured even by the American standards which hold the world’s respect.

“Legitimate” jazz constitutes about 20 per cent, of the non-classical music that is being played in Italy, but even traditional Italian dance music has made contact with jazz and shows strong symptoms of contagion.

Italy has a wealth of folk music whose origins arc very ancient; its characteristics vary from region to region, reflecting many different historical and ethnic backgrounds. Slavic (Albanian) influences can he detected in the folk music of Calabria. Some of the ballad singers of Sicily seem straight from Homer, while Creek and Moorish elements blend with traces of Gregorian chant in the songs of Sardinia. Many regions have an old and strong choral tradition: there are the Alpini in Venezia and Piedmont, the cantarini choirs of the Romagna, the stornellatc of the Arno valley, and the splendidly costumed Sardinian mixed choruses, varying from village to village. The spontaneity and intensity of their performance, the wealth of their repertoires — partly primitive and based on oral tradition, partly re-worked by “literate" individual composers — bring to mind the Don Cossacks or the best Negro choruses.

The National Center for the Study of Folk Music at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Pome has undertaken a program for collecting and recording this ancient get ageless material before it disappears under the impact of modern life. More than anything else, perhaps, these folk songs, the dances that go with them, anil the costumes of their performers reveal the extent of Italy’s cultural diversity and the richness of her ancient regional traditions.

E.M.B.