Decline Of Italian Folk Music

4 Pages 1064 Words

Music is a form of art that captures the feelings and emotions of its people. In
order to do so, it must interact with the listeners and change with the times.
Italy’s musical landscape is a perfect example of this. This is seen in the
transition from peasant folk songs to commercial pop music during the early
nineteenth century to the Nineteen-Nineties. The decline of traditional folk
music, not its total disappearance however, and the rise of commercial pop can
be culturally linked to the changes in Italian society. This movement can be
contributed with the help of technology, musical influence from America and the
ascent of the combined singer and songwriter.
The beginnings of Italian folk music echo the sounds of the Balkans,
Eastern Europe, North Africa and so forth. All these cultural influences have
gathered and meet in Italy, “the cultural crossroads of the Mediterranean”(Stone
1). Folk music was the raw, and natural music of Italy. It captured “work chants
of fishermen and peasants, love songs, courting and wedding tunes, tarantellas
(dances of possession), religious and pastoral songs, and lullabies”(3). Italian
folk instruments include the accordion, zampogna, which is similar to a bagpipe,
flutes, acoustic guitars, violins and fiddles.
In 1954, Alan Lomax, an ethnomusicologist, journeyed to Italy to study
and record folk music. It was then when he came to the realization that the
tradition of folk music began to decline. The following expresses Lomax’s
opinion of the scarcity of appreciation for the Italian traditional folk song:

So far as the Italian amusement industry is
concerned, the only worth while native traditions of
those of Naples and the Alps. The combined battery
of radio, television and the jukebox pours out a steady
barrage of Neapolitan song, American jazz, and
opera, day in and day out, as if some unseen musical
administrators had resolved to wipe o...