Italian Music
The earliest Italian popular music was the opera of the 19th century. Italian Opera has had a lasting effect on Italy's classical and popular music after it became immensely popular in the 19th century and was known across even the most rural sections of the country. Most villages had occasional opera productions, and the techniques used in opera influenced rural folk musics. Opera spread through itinerant ensembles and brass bands, focused in a local village. These civic bands (banda communale) used instruments to perform operatic arias, with trombones or fluegelhorns for male vocal parts and cornets for female parts. Canzone Napoletana, or Neapolitan song, is a distinct tradition that became a part of popular music in the 19th century, and was an iconic image of Italian music abroad by the end of the 20th century. Recorded popular music began in the late 19th century, with international styles influencing Italian music by the late 1910s; however, the rise of autarchia, the Fascist policy of cultural isolationism in 1922 led to a retreat from international popular music. During this period, popular Italian musicians traveled abroad and learned elements of jazz, Latin American music and other styles and then brought them back to Italy. These musics influenced the Italian tradition, which spread around the world and further diversified following liberalization after World War II.
There was a lot of new talent that originated in the mid-1980s and grew out to national, and sometimes international, stars in the 1990s. Performers like Mietta, Gerardina Trovato, Nek, Ron, Zuchero Fornaciari, Laura Pausini became very popular in the 1990s and Italian pop/rock got a boost from young acts like Bluvertigo and Subsonica. In the 1990s, the musical genre of Italo Disco was reformed by Italo House, a genre whose main musical characteristic is its use of predominantly electronic piano chords in a more lyrical (yet still "clunky") form than classic Chicago House records. Italian hip hop started in the early 1990s, in which one of the first hip hop crews to catch the attention of the Italian mainstream was Milan's Articolo 31, who is then and still today produced by Franco Godi. The first hip hop star, however, was Jovanotti, who used rapping in an otherwise traditional Italian pop and made some tracks that were pure hip hop, for example Il rap which sampled Public Enemy's Chuck D. Hip hop is especially a characteristic of southern Italy, a fact which some observers have contributed to the southern concept of rispettu (respect, honor), a form of verbal jousting; both facts have helped identify southern Italian music with the African American hip hop style. In the mid-1990s the Italian underground started mixing Italo and other popular international electronic music influences with rock and sometimes jazz, in which groups like Blu Vertigo,Baustelle, Le Vibrazioni and Delta V where exponents of this scene. More grunge-like alternative rock came from trio Verdena; and Subsonica (formed in 1996) gained real success in 2000 by playing the San Remo Music Festival which gave a push for the other bands to break through to the Italian mainstream.
The Festival of Italian Song (also known as the Sanremo Music Festival) is an important venue for popular music in Italy. It has been held annually since 1951 and is currently staged at the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo. It runs for one week in February, and gives veteran and new performers a chance to present new songs. Winning the contest has often been a springboard to industry success. The festival is televised nationally for three hours a night, is hosted by the best-known Italian TV personalities, and has been a vehicle for such performers as Domenico Modugno, perhaps the best-known Italian pop singer of the last 50 years. Television variety shows are also the widest venue for popular music. They change often, but Buona Domenica, Domenica In, and I raccomandati are popular. The longest running musical broadcast in Italy is La Corrida, a three-hour weekly program of amateurs and would-be musicians that started on the radio in 1968 and moved to TV in 1988.
The influence of U.S. pop forms has been strong since the end of World War II. Lavish Broadway-show numbers, big bands, rock and roll, and hip hop continue to be popular. Latin music, especially Brazilian bossa nova, is also popular, and the Puerto Rican genre of reggaeton is rapidly becoming a mainstream form of dance music. It is now not uncommon for modern Italian pop artists such as Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti, Zucchero Andrea Bocelli and Romina Arena to release new songs in English or Spanish in addition to, or instead of, Italian. Thus, musical revues, which are standard fare on current Italian television, can easily go, in a single evening, from a big-band number with dancers to an Elvis impersonator to a current pop singer doing a rendition of a Puccini aria.
Sample of Opera songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8wQzTGKNoY
Sample of Hip hop song: (In Italian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlfNL5cTfoE
There was a lot of new talent that originated in the mid-1980s and grew out to national, and sometimes international, stars in the 1990s. Performers like Mietta, Gerardina Trovato, Nek, Ron, Zuchero Fornaciari, Laura Pausini became very popular in the 1990s and Italian pop/rock got a boost from young acts like Bluvertigo and Subsonica. In the 1990s, the musical genre of Italo Disco was reformed by Italo House, a genre whose main musical characteristic is its use of predominantly electronic piano chords in a more lyrical (yet still "clunky") form than classic Chicago House records. Italian hip hop started in the early 1990s, in which one of the first hip hop crews to catch the attention of the Italian mainstream was Milan's Articolo 31, who is then and still today produced by Franco Godi. The first hip hop star, however, was Jovanotti, who used rapping in an otherwise traditional Italian pop and made some tracks that were pure hip hop, for example Il rap which sampled Public Enemy's Chuck D. Hip hop is especially a characteristic of southern Italy, a fact which some observers have contributed to the southern concept of rispettu (respect, honor), a form of verbal jousting; both facts have helped identify southern Italian music with the African American hip hop style. In the mid-1990s the Italian underground started mixing Italo and other popular international electronic music influences with rock and sometimes jazz, in which groups like Blu Vertigo,Baustelle, Le Vibrazioni and Delta V where exponents of this scene. More grunge-like alternative rock came from trio Verdena; and Subsonica (formed in 1996) gained real success in 2000 by playing the San Remo Music Festival which gave a push for the other bands to break through to the Italian mainstream.
The Festival of Italian Song (also known as the Sanremo Music Festival) is an important venue for popular music in Italy. It has been held annually since 1951 and is currently staged at the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo. It runs for one week in February, and gives veteran and new performers a chance to present new songs. Winning the contest has often been a springboard to industry success. The festival is televised nationally for three hours a night, is hosted by the best-known Italian TV personalities, and has been a vehicle for such performers as Domenico Modugno, perhaps the best-known Italian pop singer of the last 50 years. Television variety shows are also the widest venue for popular music. They change often, but Buona Domenica, Domenica In, and I raccomandati are popular. The longest running musical broadcast in Italy is La Corrida, a three-hour weekly program of amateurs and would-be musicians that started on the radio in 1968 and moved to TV in 1988.
The influence of U.S. pop forms has been strong since the end of World War II. Lavish Broadway-show numbers, big bands, rock and roll, and hip hop continue to be popular. Latin music, especially Brazilian bossa nova, is also popular, and the Puerto Rican genre of reggaeton is rapidly becoming a mainstream form of dance music. It is now not uncommon for modern Italian pop artists such as Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti, Zucchero Andrea Bocelli and Romina Arena to release new songs in English or Spanish in addition to, or instead of, Italian. Thus, musical revues, which are standard fare on current Italian television, can easily go, in a single evening, from a big-band number with dancers to an Elvis impersonator to a current pop singer doing a rendition of a Puccini aria.
Sample of Opera songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8wQzTGKNoY
Sample of Hip hop song: (In Italian)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlfNL5cTfoE