The Fascist Period: Affirmation of A National Italian Culture
Music and the artistic production of this period reflected the need of the political class to affirm its ideological statement of a united and strong Italian identity on both the political as well as cultural basis.
Regional languages and independent cultural inheritances began to be slowly eradicated through the school system and the advent of the mass media which, at the time, were entirely controlled by the Italian government. Slow process of the industrialization which begun during the fascist period had strong effects on the lower classes; it helped in forming the contemporary Italian society, in particular in the economical separation between the north and the south, which is reflected in the different references to the traditional background in the contemporary popular music. Emigration contributed to the exportation of the Italian musical background to other countries such as Argentina, Australia and the United States.
Read more about this topic: Italian Popular Music
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“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)