Jazz Italian Style

Jazz Italian Style explores a complex era in music history, when politics and popular culture collided with national identity and technology. When jazz arrived in Italy at the conclusion of World War I, it quickly became part of the local music culture. In Italy, thanks to the gramophone and radio, many Italian listeners paid little attention to a performer's national and ethnic identity. Nick LaRocca (Italian-American), Gorni Kramer (Italian), the Trio Lescano (Jewish-Dutch), and Louis Armstrong (African-American), to name a few, all found equal footing in the Italian soundscape. The book reveals how Italians made jazz their own, and how, by the mid-1930s, a genre of jazz distinguishable from American varieties and supported by Mussolini began to flourish in northern Italy and in its turn influenced Italian-American musicians. Most importantly, the book recovers a lost repertoire and an array of musicians whose stories and performances are compelling and well worth remembering.

• Offers the first Anglo-American study of Italian jazz, introducing readers to a repertoire of the history of jazz that has largely been unknown outside Italy
• Discusses jazz in a transnational context, allowing readers to see the influence of technology, economics, culture and immigration practices
• Provides the first in-depth examination of Italian influences on the development of American popular music, appealing to a wider range of readers with an interest in popular music