CANZONE ITALIANA 1950-2000>

In the second half of the twentieth century the Italian song reached maturity. The transition from a pure entertainment product, in continuity with the years between the wars, into an individual expression that aspired to something more profound than mere escapism or solace, took place at the turn of the 1950s and ‘60s. Spurred by new genres from abroad – the chanson, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz - and by 45rpm and 33rpm records, a new generation of authors and performers distanced themselves from the melodic tradition and initiated a deep process of renewal. The 1960s was a decade of songwriters, beat music and progressive pop that produced covers and original creations, attracting the best from the international music scene to the Sanremo festival. In parallel, the folk revival movement also emerged on a global level, managing to exhume the civil passion that the Fascist years had silenced. The 1970s witnessed the politicization of music (rock and song writing in particular) which produced a detachment from the national-popular trend. In the 1980s, with the advent of the compact disc, the national discography experienced its most flourishing period coinciding with a fragmentation into genres and sub genres, some of which (e.g. dance music) met with success in foreign markets. The last two decades saw the affirmation of global styles such as rap and reggae, which the independent music scene assimilated in original ways (e.g. by re-discovering dialect). But it is mainly the acquisition of a “pop” mentality without borders that characterizes much of the production, where elements of the “Italian style” survive in niches perceived sometimes as conservative, sometimes as “resistant” to the dominant trend.