The Italian Cultural Institute in Haifa and in Tel Aviv
are pleased to invite you to the second lecture in the series:
Let’s listen to some “musica leggera”
BETWEEN COMMERCIALIZATION AND POSTMODERNISM: THE 80’s AND 90’s
Presents Lev Kats, translator from Italian to Russian and interpreter
Tuesday, 28 November 2023, @ 18.30
ONLINE | Zoom & Facebook
Free event, in Italian.
To book and receive the link for the Zoom meeting, please fill in the REGISTRATION FORM
In the 80s, while the world was going crazy for Italo disco, new global trends landed in Italy: Vasco Rossi’s rock, Jovanotti’s rap and Ligabue’s pop exploded, all the three of them to leave a mark in the decades to come, becoming cult phenomena of Italian music. Sanremo was reborn, becoming the showcase of authentic Italian pop (among others, Al Bano and Romina Power, i Ricchi e Poveri, Eros Ramazzotti or Massimo Ranieri). The voice of female singer-songwriters was making itself heard more and more powerfully: from Nada to Gianna Nannini, from Alice to Carmen Consoli. Throughout Italy, more and more musicians were choosing dialect as their language: De André’s concept album Creuza de mä, one of the most important records in the history of ethnic music, is in Genoese; the reggae of Pitura Freska is in Venetian; the rap of 99 Posse is in Neapolitan. The De Sfroos made extensive use of the Lombard dialect spoken in the Como area, but jazz pianist Stefano Bollani went even further by setting to music Fosco Maraini’s poems, written in an imagined language and collected in the book Gnòsi delle fànfole. Francesco Guccini brought to Club Tenco the young Vinicio Capossela, who will later become one of the most original and sophisticated interpreters of Italian music. In those years began the artistic experience of Caparezza, the first to bring the songwriting into the territory of rap, offering the public problematic lyrics that were regularly misunderstood: a song with a clear social denunciation aim, such as “Come to dance in Puglia” became a kind of regional anthem, a source of great pride. At the same time, trends of pop rock (Subsonica, Negramaro), indie rock (Baustelle), alternative rock (Virginiana Miller) and folk rock (Modena City Ramblers, Bandabardò) were growing in Italy. Furthermore, since the 1990s, new music festivals have been held across the paninsula: the May Day Concert in Rome, the Notte della Taranta in Salento or the Sounds of the Dolomites in Trentino.
- FREE admission. Online event, in ITALIAN.
- To book and receive the link for the Zoom meeting, please fill in the REGISTRATION FORM.
As an alternative, you may follow this lecture online via:
- Facebook IIC Haifa: https://www.facebook.com/iichaifa
- Facebook IIC Tel Aviv: https://www.facebook.com/IstitutoItalianoDiCulturaTelAviv/
The series | How does the Italian concept of “musica leggera” translate into other languages? If they really are “just songs”, how come we find De André in school books, among the most important Italian poets of all time? Where can we draw a line between artestic songwriting and pop? Do streaming platforms help local talent find their audience or do they homogenize the entire music scene? How is the tradition of Italian popular music reworked? And where does rap fit into today’s musical landscape? Let’s try to frame the path of Italian pop music in a short cycle of free lectures in Italian by Lev Kats, translator, interpreter and enthusiast of good Italian music.
Free event, in Italian.
Tuesday, 28 November 2023, @ 18.30
ONLINE | Zoom & Facebook
