Cantacronache

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Cantacronache [ ˌkantakrɔnake ] was an Italian artist group of musicians and writers who from 1958 to 1962 in Turin was active. She was influenced by the Berlin ensemble , French chansonniers and traditional Italian storytellers . With the aim of renewing Italian popular music and critically processing current events in songs, the group was particularly successful with left-wing intellectuals and the labor movement . She had a decisive influence on the later scene of the Italian Cantautori (song poets).

Conceived as an open group, the band consisted of four core members Sergio Liberovici , Michele L. Straniero , Fausto Amodei and Margot .

history

prehistory

The group formed against the backdrop of the economic miracle in Italy in the 1950s. It was a time of great social inequality and political stalemate. Institutions and media were characterized by personal continuity with the era of fascism and the music industry was consistently in the hands of conservative circles. In the Sanremo Festival , initiated in 1951 , the central stage of Italian popular music , easily consumable, uncritical songs, far from musical innovation, predominated, the texts of which also had to be examined by a separate state censorship authority. It was not until Domenico Modugno's victory with Nel blu dipinto di blu at the Sanremo Festival in 1958 that a musical renewal began.

Origin of the Cantacronache

Around the time of Modugno's Sanremo victory, the musician and communist Sergio Liberovici saw a performance of the Threepenny Opera by the Berliner Ensemble while visiting the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin . Back in Italy, under this impression, he suggested to his friend Michele L. Straniero (journalist and member of the Azione Cattolica ) to work on a new type of song for Italy, which should stand out from the banality of the prevailing popular music. Another influence were respected French poets and chansonniers such as Aragon , Prévert , Queneau and Brassens . Liberovici and Straniero chose the name cantacronache for their project , in analogy to cantastorie , a traditional Italian storyteller , and with a focus on cronaca , (journalistic) reporting.

activities

The architect Fausto Amodei and Margot (who later married Liberovici) soon joined Liberovici and Straniero . Other important people around the group were Giorgio De Maria , the journalist Mario Pogliotti and the lawyer Emilio Jona . The first public presentation of the Cantacronache songs took place on May 1, 1958 during a workers' parade of the CGIL union in Turin and a little later as part of the Tredici Canzoni Tredici event in front of left-wing intellectuals. At the label Italia Canta , which is closely related to the Communist Party , the group released their first EP in 1958 with four songs sung by the actor Pietro Buttarelli .

While the four core members of the group initially only saw themselves as authors, the songs on the second EP (still in 1958) were sung by Amodei and Straniero themselves. Amodei also played the guitar. For the fifth EP (1960) the actress Edmonda Aldini was won as singer, for the seventh (1961) Mario Pogliotti . When performing, however, the group always consisted of Liberovici, Straniero, Amodei and Margot. On the author's side, the group received support from two well-known writers from the left-wing Einaudi publishing house, Italo Calvino and Franco Fortini ; and Umberto Eco and Gianni Rodari were in contact with the group. Cantacronache also quickly received numerous unsolicited submissions of texts from both well-known authors such as Giovanni Arpino and unknown amateur poets, some of whom made it into the group's repertoire.

resolution

The group released various records and gave numerous concerts in various Italian cities, for example as part of the Feste de L'Unità , at trade union or party events and in people's houses . At times, a separate magazine was also published and distributed at concerts. However, in 1962 the group disbanded again. The quick end of the project was due to discrepancies with the record label, but also to the changes in the Italian music scene, in which Enzo Jannacci and Giorgio Gaber , for example , were able to establish themselves and Ivan Della Mea , Giovanna Marini and Gualtiero Bertelli continued the tradition of political songs. Straniero and Amodei then joined the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano collective , which pursued objectives similar to those of the Cantacronache. In 1971 the Albatros label released four LPs with the group's collected songs.

subjects

Cantacronache sought to overcome the extremely sentimental and covertly frivolous themes that dominated popular music in Italy at the time. The motto was evadere dall'evasione , " Breaking out of the diversion". It was particularly important to the group to deal with current events, not only reporting (in the sense of their name) about them , but also taking an active position, in a direct affront to the conservative forces in the country. The song Canzone del popolo algerino thematized the Algerian war and condemned the actions of the French state; In La zolzara , the group dealt with a fatal explosion in a Sicilian copper mine and criticized the poor work safety in the country.

Historical events were also not left out. Tredici milioni dealt with the Holocaust , Partigiani fratelli maggiori with the Resistance , Raffaele dealt with the Mexican Revolution in a humorous way . In doing so, the group consciously resorted to older protest songs , which were often only passed on orally and threatened to be forgotten. In such songs, events such as the execution of the anarchist Sante Geronimo Caserio (1894) or the murder of the socialist parliamentarian Giacomo Matteotti by the fascists (1924) appeared.

The group's best- known song was Per i morti di Reggio Emilia . In it, Fausto Amodei placed a memorial to five communist demonstrators who were killed by the police in Reggio Emilia in 1960 during protests against the Tambroni cabinet (formed by DC with the support of the MSI ) . The song was later used within the 1968 movement in Italy.

meaning

Cantacronache was not only the first attempt within Italian popular music to give song lyrics deeper meaning and thus to convey socially critical content, but also the first frontal attack on the monolithic, conservative Italian music industry of the time. Despite its short-lived nature and its niche existence, the group's pioneering work paved the way for the important Italian cantautori of the following decades, including Francesco Guccini , Fabrizio De André and Francesco De Gregori .

Discography

EPs

  • Cantacronache 1 (1958; Italia Canta, EP 45 / C / 0001) - vocals: Pietro Buttarelli
  • Cantacronache 2 (1958; Italia Canta, EP 45 / C / 0002) - vocals: Fausto Amodei and Michele L. Straniero
  • Cantacronache 3 (1959; Italia Canta, EP 45 / C / 0006) - vocals: Pietro Buttarelli and Michele L. Straniero
  • Cantacronache 4 (1959; Italia Canta, EP 45 / C / 0008) - vocals: Fausto Amodei
  • Cantacronache 5 (1960; Italia Canta, EP 45 / C / 0009) - vocals: Edmonda Aldini
  • Cantacronache 6 (1960; Italia Canta, EP 45 / C / 0016) - vocals: Fausto Amodei
  • Il Cantacronache ben temperato (1961; Italia Canta, SP 33 / C / 0027) - vocals: Mario Pogliotti

LPs

  • Cantacronache 1 (1971; Albatros, VPA 8123)
  • Cantacronache 2 (1971; Albatros, VPA 8124)
  • Cantacronache 3 (1971; Albatros, VPA 8125)
  • Cantacronache 4. Canti di protesta del popolo italiano - Canti della resistenza (1971; Albatros, VPA 8133)

documentary

  • Cantacronache 1958-1962: politica e protesta in musica. 49 min. Università di Bologna / Istituto Storico Parri Emilia Romagna, 2011.

literature

  • Carlo Rovello, Giovanni Straniero: Cantacronache. I cinquant'anni della canzone ribelle. L'eredità di Michele L. Straniero . Zona, 2008, ISBN 978-88-95514-26-0 .
  • Salvatore Coccoluto: Il tempo della musica ribelle: da Cantacronache ai grandi cantautori italiani . Stampa alternativa, Viterbo 2012, ISBN 978-88-6222-305-8 .
  • Chiara Ferrari: Cantacronache 1958-1962. Politica e protesta in musica . In: Storicamente . tape 9 , no. 42 , September 30, 2013, ISSN  1825-411X , doi : 10.12977 / stor495 .
  • Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism. The Short History of Cantacronache . In: Franco Fabbri, Goffredo Plastino (ed.): Made in Italy. Studies in Popular Music . Routledge, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-138-21342-5 , pp. 153-161 .

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 154-156 .
  2. ^ Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 156-157 .
  3. ^ Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 157-158 .
  4. ^ A b Chiara Ferrari: Cantacronache 1958-1962 . In: Storicamente . September 30th, 2013.
  5. ^ Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 158-159 .
  6. ^ A b Salvatore Esposito: Cantacronache: 1958-1962 Canzone Politica e Protesta nell'Italia del Boom Economico. In: Blogfoolk. August 12, 2012, accessed June 5, 2020 .
  7. ^ Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 153, 156-157 159 .
  8. ^ A b Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 159-160 .
  9. ^ Carlo Pestelli: An Escape from Escapism . In: Made in Italy . 2016, p. 153, 160 .