Jazz found its way into Europe during WW1 through the presence of American musicians in military bands playing "syncopated" music.
The first Italian jazz orchestras were formed during 1920s by musicians such as Arturo Agazzi with his Syncopated Orchestra and enjoyed immediate success.
In spite of the anti-American cultural policies of the Fascist regime during the 1930s, American jazz remained popular. (Even Benito Mussolini's son, Romano, was a great jazz fan and then prominent jazz pianist.)
In the immediate post-war years jazz took off in Italy. All American post-war jazz styles, from be-bop to Free Jazz and Fusion have their equivalents in Italy.
The universality of Italian culture ensured that jazz clubs would spring up throughout the peninsula, that all radio and then television studios would have jazz-based "house-bands," that Italian musicians would then start nurturing a "home grown" kind of jazz, based on European song forms, classical composition techniques and folk music (for example, in Sicily, where Enzo Rao and his group Shamal have added native Sicilian and Arab influences to American jazz).
Currently, all Italian music conservatories have jazz departments; there are jazz festivals each year in Italy, the best-known of which is the Umbria Jazz Festival; and there are prominent publications such as the journal, Musica Jazz.
PAOLO CONTE
Paolo Conte is a completely original talent, and his leathery, life-weary face on the cover is the first clue to the evocative music of this poet, painter, musician, and lawyer from Asti in northern Italy.
Conte's unfiltered raspy voice is the perfect vehicle for his poignant view of the foibles of adult life mused from the corner barstool, admiring women whose "pungent smells [beckon] him like an old-fashioned grocery, its doors flung open to the spring outside."
Observations on the tide of human existence deftly rendered in vividly poetic lines that startle with their originality are highlighted in smoky vignettes of '40s jazz- and tango-inflected tunes, teetering between Cabaret, The Circus, and 42nd Street.
The music is a treat in itself, but the real gold is to be found
in his lyrics, and luckily translations are in the liner notes. --Derek Rath
