ABSTRACT
The political and social climate of 1970s Italy sanctioned the success of its own folk music revival and the development of a politically engaged song-writing movement. As in Britain and the United States the two were often intertwined but in Italy the political situation was quite different. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the country experienced a fast and radical mutation from an agricultural to an industrial society, with inner mass immigration from the south to the north and the building of infrastructure works set to a rhythm reminiscent of that in England a century before. Great turmoil and a strong progression of the working class accompanied this historical moment but the social cadre was completely stuck: access to power of the Communist Party (PCI), the largest in Europe, was blocked by a series of alliances among centre and left-centre parties. At the two extremes, instead, were fascist groups, often threatening a putsch, and the growth of a vast radical extra-parliamentary left wing dissatisfied with the reformist policy of the PCI. This climate of high social tension sanctioned the display of every kind of intellectual dissent and alternative culture. The politically engaged songwriters (cantautori) and the folk music revival were two expressions of a vast movement of ideas and both aimed to achieve not only political change but also the establishment of a real alternative culture within Italian society. The cantautori seemed to sweep away the traditional Italian sentimental song, bringing into their music the tensions of the historical moment (as Dylan and Baez had done in America and as the chanteurs-compositeurs-interprètes had done in France). The revival of traditional folk music seemed to show, in the rhythms of the peasants’ drums and in the rituals that had survived industrialization, a rediscovered sense of community set against what was considered the alienation of the new urban society. Both the cantautori and the folk revival therefore presented new directions for Italian popular music: songs could provide a narrative of the country, instead of indulging the heritage of the romance, and folk music appeared a possible alternative to commercialism, bringing back to light sounds and local rhythms that had appeared on the verge of extinction.
