ABSTRACT
On February 6, 1994, at the Fiera di Roma, Silvio Berlusconi at last officiated at his own "entry in the field," as he likes to put it in his own special vocabulary. In the audience there was a crowd of small business people, advertising sales people, and mid-range professionals: the Italy of Forza Italia to be precise. This chapter explores in which karaoke is hardly mentioned, there is a reflection by Norberto Bobbio that merits repeating in its entirety. Before the political rediscovery of the piazzas, karaoke was the only instrument that made collective public presence possible. The principal factor of the end to political paralysis, the referendum campaign, entailed a certain amount of public involvement, but that involvement has been projected in large measure to the electoral-institutional apparatus: that is to say, onto a "cold" element of politics. Trying to understand the spectacle of karaoke means grasping the chance to observe Italian society: its tastes, its behaviors, its aspirations.
