The course intends to provide students with the necessary methodological and critical knowledge to understand forms and contents of the modern popular song in Italy and abroad. The aim of the lessons is also to delve into songs’ practical use along history, the evolution of customs and the mutations in Contemporary culture both in relation to poetry and to mass culture and folklore. A further objective is to prepare students to utilize the resources of songs creatively, in artistic activities or while teaching music and other subjects, including foreign languages.
teacher profile teaching materials
The course will investigate form and content of Italian song all along its history, first of all clarifying what we mean today when we speak of “songs” within the context of mass media and popular music studies, as the word “song” can refer to countless forms of artistic expression. The aim is mainly to show how big the teaching potential songs have, starting with their controversial relationship with poetry, to probe how they mirror and stimulate social change, to analyse the discursive network they generate and to verify their value as historical documents. We will not neglect, of course, neither the interaction of songs with other forms of art, especially with graphics and images, nor the role of music industry with its commercial strategies. Great attention will be given to the relationship of Italian song with the repertoires of Italian vernacular songs, which run parallel to it, and with rock and folk music, exploring the different performance practices, vocal styles and the ways arrangements and orchestrations are thought out.
As Italian song has always lived within a dense texture of interaction with the repertoires of other countries, notably France and the United States, we will meet those performers, those songwriters and those contexts that influenced it, soliciting its renewal especially with the “cantautori” of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The “canzone d’autore”, so, is going to be the core of the course, being aware that never as in that period Italian songs succeeded in conquering a space in the public sphere, a political relevance and a musical originality not to be achieved later, when the mass success of some “cantautori” reduced its liberating force and extinguished its innovative drive. It was in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, in fact, that youth culture burst out in Italy and adopted rock and “canzone d’autore” as tools to build a collective subjectivity, meant to affect the fate of a nation in a moment of deep mutation and strong social tension.
2) Roberto Caselli, Storia della canzone italiana, Hoepli 2018, or Gianni Borgna, Storia della canzone italiana, Mondadori 1992. In addition, Treccani on line "La canzone d'autore in Italia" by Roberto Vecchioni (Treccani, on line) and "Canzone, nazione, regione", by Marco Santoro (Treccani on line)
Programme
Songs have a central role in contemporary culture. Italy, in particular, owns a tradition ranging from Neapolitan Song (one of the first accomplished repertoires of Popular Music) to “canzone d’autore”, which from the ‘60s onwards, when the first “cantautori” (“singer-songwriters”) appeared, has transformed the language of a genre basically forged in the first decades of the 20th century and “re-invented” after World War II with the Sanremo Festival.The course will investigate form and content of Italian song all along its history, first of all clarifying what we mean today when we speak of “songs” within the context of mass media and popular music studies, as the word “song” can refer to countless forms of artistic expression. The aim is mainly to show how big the teaching potential songs have, starting with their controversial relationship with poetry, to probe how they mirror and stimulate social change, to analyse the discursive network they generate and to verify their value as historical documents. We will not neglect, of course, neither the interaction of songs with other forms of art, especially with graphics and images, nor the role of music industry with its commercial strategies. Great attention will be given to the relationship of Italian song with the repertoires of Italian vernacular songs, which run parallel to it, and with rock and folk music, exploring the different performance practices, vocal styles and the ways arrangements and orchestrations are thought out.
As Italian song has always lived within a dense texture of interaction with the repertoires of other countries, notably France and the United States, we will meet those performers, those songwriters and those contexts that influenced it, soliciting its renewal especially with the “cantautori” of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The “canzone d’autore”, so, is going to be the core of the course, being aware that never as in that period Italian songs succeeded in conquering a space in the public sphere, a political relevance and a musical originality not to be achieved later, when the mass success of some “cantautori” reduced its liberating force and extinguished its innovative drive. It was in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, in fact, that youth culture burst out in Italy and adopted rock and “canzone d’autore” as tools to build a collective subjectivity, meant to affect the fate of a nation in a moment of deep mutation and strong social tension.
Core Documentation
1) Marco Santoro, Effetto Tenco, Il Mulino 2010.2) Roberto Caselli, Storia della canzone italiana, Hoepli 2018, or Gianni Borgna, Storia della canzone italiana, Mondadori 1992. In addition, Treccani on line "La canzone d'autore in Italia" by Roberto Vecchioni (Treccani, on line) and "Canzone, nazione, regione", by Marco Santoro (Treccani on line)
Reference Bibliography
- Ambrogi Sabina, Mamma, Donzelli 2007. - Benaglia Isabella, Trap Ebbasta, Laudonia 2020. - Bernieri Claudio, Non sparate sul cantautore, Mazzotta 1978 (Vololibero 2011). - Bonanno Mario, E' vero che il giorno sapeva di sporco, Stampa Alternativa, Viterbo 2017. - Carrera Alessandro, Musica e pubblico giovanile, Feltrinelli, Milano 1980. - Crainz Guido, Storia del miracolo italiano, Donzelli 2005. - Facci Serena - Soddu Paolo, Il festival di Sanremo, Carocci 2011. - Gargano Claudio - Iannetti Antonio, La patria della luce, Odoya 2011. - Ginsborg Paul, Storia d'Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi (2 volumi) Einaudi 1989 e 1996. - Jachia paolo, La canzone d’autore italiana 1958-1987, Feltrinelli 1998. - Mattioli Valerio, Superonda, Baldini & Castoldi, Milano 2016. - Mignogna Dino, "Canzonette" a regola d'arte, Arcana, 2020. - Rennis Fernando, Patriots, Arcana 2019. - Salvatore Gianfranco, Mogol-Battisti. L'alchimia del verso cantato, Mimesis 2023. - Siciliani Pierluigi "Piji", La canzone jazzata, Zona 2007. - Straniero Michele-Jona Emilio-Liberovici Sergio-De Maria Giorgio, Le canzoni della cattiva coscienza, Bompiani 1963. - Talanca Paolo, Cantautori novissimi, Bastogi 2008. - Tomatis Jacopo, Storia culturale della canzone italiana, Feltrinelli, Milano 2019. - Zukar Paola, Rap. Una storia italiana, Baldini & Castoldi, Milano 2021 - UFPT, Trap, Agenzia X 2020. - Vacca Giovanni, Gli spazi della canzone. Luoghi e forme della canzone napoletana, Lim, Lucca 2013. - Vacca Giovanni, Memorie della canzone francese, Lim, Lucca 2022.Attendance
Twice a week