homesick for
proper music ?

I can answer that problem in just seven keystrokes:

101.3 FM

When in Rome, that'll plug you in to the kicking sounds of Radio Centro Suono. More about that later. But first, an explanation of why you'll soon get terribly homesick in Rome for real music...

Italian pop music is awful! Just AWFUL! That's my opinion, anyway. They're twenty years out of date, and all their chart stuff sounds like royalty-free library music. Judging only from what I've heard, apart from just a very few artists working the avant garde fringes, Italian rockers and groovers seem incapable of making original music, and they do not understand the rock medium. However, this could simply be attributable to the fact that their language and culture is a totally different rhythm and cadence to American/English speech, dance and work rhythms. Jazz and Rock and Roll is founded on black African rhythms, which are completely different from Mediterranean forms.

In England in the early 1970's, we used to have a guy always in the British pop charts called Gilbert O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan's stock in trade was writing and performing songs of nauseating poetical cleverness - Complicated verses of extreme wordiness and clever rhymes, woven carefully into fragmented musical phrases tailored to fit the lyrics, O'Sullivan's work was commendable in that no-one had ever written songs like this before - Clearly a streak of musical genius flowed very strongly in him, but unfortunately, after the novelty had worn off in the first few months of his fame, his songs, however clever, began to sound gimmicky and irritating.

To my ears, Italian pop music sounds the same as Gilbert O'Sullivan. Italian language structure has the same polysyllabic, multi-word sentences as O'Sulivan's work. It's too clever, too wordy and too poetic for my liking to succeed as body music. And rock and dance music is supposed to be body music. But I can't dance to Italian music. I can't even listen to it.

Furthermore, Italian language, culture and narrative style tends towards the poetic and romantic European style. And when this verbal style attempts to interface with modern Black or industrial American or English rock music rhythms, the result is an interference pattern of incompatibility - Similar to the visual effect you observe when you lay a fine-toothed comb across a wide-toothed comb, or try to wrap a two centimeter pitch drive chain around a one centimeter pitch sprocket. The two rhythms don't mesh. Italian language and poetry seems incompatible with American rock, jazz or dance rhythms. In fact, I think it goes even deeper than that, but there is not space or time here to go deeper into this discussion. Suffice to say, that the first time you hear Italians playing rock or black dance music, you will know what I mean. It's not their fault - It's just in the blood - Italians should perhaps stick to writing Italian music, and not try to fuse it with Anglo/Afro/American rhythms. Italians need to redefine rock to fit their own cultural and linguistic rhythm, not simply try to copy the British or American version.

However, some Italian musicians have successfully acomplished this, though for reasons we shall give below, they are not heard so often on Italian radio or TV as the mainstream crud is. If you wanna hear this good Italian stuff, you need to get out and see it live.

For it is not true that Italians cannot write good songs - They can, but perhaps only if they retain an Italian rhythm pattern for the musical accompaniment to the Italian lyrics. Interestingly, Italian songs, 'translate' better into English/American performance style than English American songs into Italian performance style. The world famous 1960's Dusty Springfield hit 'You Don't have To Say You Love Me' is an Italian song. One can see hints of imperfect translation into English in Dusty's version, such as the laughably Victorian-sounding phrase "...just be close at hand" inserted into this swinging sixties number. There was no English language equivalent of the Italian words in this instance.

In 1976, Mick Ronson, (David Bowie's innovative onetime lead guitarist, now sadly deceased and much missed among the rock cognoscenti) recorded a very passable and highly-charged rock operatic English version of 'Io Ne Mi Andre', Significantly, some of the wordplay in Mick's translated version sounds awkward, but the rhythm and chilling beauty of the song successfully come across in a British rock idiom. And in the mid 1980's British popster Paul Young successfully took a half-translated version of Zucchero's 'Senza Una Donna' into the British pop charts.

More inventive and pedigreed Italian musicians such as Giovanotti, Cristina Donà, and again, Zucchero, have collaborated with respected avant garde British rockers such as Robert Wyatt, yet there seem few other artistes in Italian mainstream pop who appear able or willing to experiment with transitional trans-european or transatlantic projects such as this. And indeed, why should they bother? With the current state of international pop music being so abysmal in general (manufactured boy bands and Destiny's Child or Eminem clones), and the pervasiveness of shallow, dumbed down and tamed rap and techno rhythms sung by pretty girls and boys who look, sound and dress the same whether they're from California, Calabria or Katmandu, the incentive to trade original songwriting ability for their fifteen minutes of fame grows less each day. The days of true Rap culture or Punk sensibility are long gone, and big, homogenous business has taken over Rock and Pop culture.

Young Italian pop fans are victims of sinisterly uncaring commercial television and radio programming by media moguls with one foot in the arts and the other in big business and government. Government? Yes - Outrageously, the Italy's largest privately owned television network ('Mediaset') is owned and operated by the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, who not only uses his multi channel TV network for direct political propaganda and personal appearances, but also keeps the nation's proletariat happy with a constant diet of dumbed-down ancient Imperial Roman-style 'bread and circuses' light entertainment, and this of course includes pop music programming which plays to the lowest common denominator of popular taste.

The Mr Berlusconi's Mediaset network's pop music showpiece programme, 'Festival Bar', an annual televised summer extravaganza of all-star open air travelling roadshow concerts held in sublimely beautiful settings of ancient piazzas and Roman auditoriums in the middle of some of Italy's most photogenic towns, is a masterpiece of hype. Doubtless, the show's production team makes sure all the prettiest girls and boys in the audience are placed in the front five rows, while pre-show warm-up teams whip up the teeming teenage audience into a cheering frenzy to provide plenty of exciting cutaway filler footage and wildtrack sound when the 'live' show is eventually edited for broadcast.

And significantly, almost half the performers in the shows are American or English. In 2003, Mick Hucknall and Simply Red appears to have been contracted as The Main Event for this summer's Festival Bar series (doubtless to the disgust of many new or innovative Italian bands who could have made good use of this kind of TV exposure). But Mr Berlusconi knows that the kids will not flock to see Italian acts like Eros Ramazzotti or Irene Grandi, or lesser-known acts such as Almamegretta or 99 Posse, but they will crush the barriers to get into the TV camera-shot with other more internationally famous performers such as Robbie Williams or Beyoncé Knowles.

Admittedly, it has to be said that the Italian teenyboppers watched in stunned near silence while Sophie Ellis Bextor did her cool and laid-back little ankle-twitching thing for them last year. They don't understand Sophie's smooth swaggering Fenchurch Street office slag sound at all over here. I think I was the only one that cheered. So not all Brit/American music is candy to Italian ears.

The popular music scene here is dominated by second-rate old gits in their forties, fifties or even sixties. My theory is that this is because Italian pop music, like everything else in Italy, is not talent-driven, but probably 'family'-driven... ('family' as in 'five-families').

A talented young artist here will get nowhere if he or she does not know, or is not related to the right people. Okay, we all know how Mariah got started, but in Italy it's much more blatant than that. (incidentally when Mariah Carey was guesting here on a national song festival televised annually in Italy a few years ago, it was a live show and they treated her like dirt in front of the cameras - Her performance was so classy it just blew away all the Italian so-called professionals, Italians get jealous very easily, so perhaps shoving Mariah around on stage like a grade-school summer concert performer was probably their pathetic way of getting their own back. I hope she sued, they deserve it.

On the same show a year or two later, (The San Remo Song Festival, Italy's national precursor to the Eurovision Sing Contest) the guest band was Placebo! This band on this show was about as inappropriate combination as you can imagine. Anyway, the lads did 'Special K', during which Brian gave the finger to the Italian roving cameraman for getting in his way. At the end of the number, Brian proceeded to smash up his guitar and amp in the time-honoured rock fashion, while the audience of middle-aged local Italian dignitaries sat open-mouthed and aghast. WELL WHAT DID THEY EXPECT ??! - You don't hire a cutting-edge rock band for a family show. In a more savage repeat of the Mariah Carey incident, Brian and the boys were then thrown off the set and out the back door of the studio and into the street by hired heavies, and all in front of the TV cameras... More evidence of nationalistic middle class Italian jealousy in the face of raw young talent from overseas. Or raw young talent from anywhere in fact.

As you can see then, it's the popular entertainment establishment that keeps new independent groundbreaking musical talent (Italian or otherwise) kicked and tied up in a dark corner while the schmaltz merchants of yesteryear take centre-stage.

In Italy, rather than encourage and expose new talent, it is chiefly the same old group of 70's and 80's rockers and balladeers who consistently retain the monopoly and control of airplay and TV exposure, while young acts are hardly given a look in. Those young acts who do make a splash are usually far from revolutionary in musical style, but conform to a conservative sound that pleases their 'godfathers'. I'm not saying the music industry here is mafia-controlled, but it seems to be such a stagnant industry that favours an unnaturally and suspiciously high ratio of old, established stars in the business rather than allow innovative new, young people to independently break through into the top ranks, that one can only surmise that some sort of totalitarian monopoly is in operation. When the prime minister controls half the TV networks, what other conclusion can an external observer come to, regarding the state of light entertainment in Italy?

The end result is that whilst Italians lead the world in other areas of commercial art and design such as architecture, furniture and clothing, at heart, from what we see and hear on mainstream broadcasting networks, their current musical abilities are dull as ditchwater if you only go by what you can hear on mainstream radio and TV. It seems as if they have not written a good piece of innovative new music since 1580. Not, I hasten to add because they are incapable of it, but more because of the thumbscrews and monopolising of the existing conservative musical establishment, and the fact that they seem to prefer their popular songs to conform to the standard of being able to be whistled by any window cleaner, flower seller, mountain goat-herd, olive-gatherer or gypsy girl while she beats out her laundry by hand on the sparkling banks of the river Tiber. It's all terribly beautiful and mediaeval, but you can't groove on it.

They would be better off sticking to their historical ethnic Mediterranean genres of folk music instead of trying to fuse it with modern American rock and dance beats. It just doesn't work. However, even if they did stick to what they were good at. I still wouldn't listen to it. I just don't like Italian music, period. How can I? I'm not Italian.

Just to redress the balance, and in defence of Italian music, as we do sometimes, I've included here a pro-Italian view of the music scene, from d.j.HAS of Manchester, England. He writes:

"Having seen your website I am utterly appalled by your narrow minded and utterly ignorant lack of empathy for the brilliant Italian music scene that has come up since 1992. Italian artists are precisely the ones with their own distinct sound... Don't you ever attend or watch Rome's May Day concert? Have you never heard of the Italian Wave? Your site is propaganda for Anglo-American cultural imperialism.

HAS recommends you give these Italian acts a listen. They're good:

Tiromancino
Almamegretta
Planet Funk
Subsonica
Paola Turci
Velvet
Pino Daniele
Carmen Consoli
Giorgia
Elisa
Negrita
Le Vibrazione
99 Posse
and many more..."

So, there you go. It's not all bad here. Try those musicians out - You might like them. Thanks for the input, HAS. Must admit, Pino Daniele ain't bad, as it goes - He's just not my cup of tea.

Chemotore from Italy also writes and recommends Afterhours, Cristina Donà and Marco Parente as interesting new acts worth catching live wherever you can, and suggests Radio Rock on 106.6 FM in Rome as a source of airplay for innovative new or little-known unsigned or commercially unappreciated Italian acts.

Young, aspiring, original Italian musicians often cannot get airplay, record deals or TV exposure in Italy because of the conservative arts climate. Young Italians themselves are forced to buy a large percentage of English and American music because there is such a scarcity of good, new material by Italians being recorded and promoted on the domestic Italian market. It is strict and simple economics – Italian musicians cannot meet the numerical production demands of the Italian youth music market - Or rather, they could, if more new Italian bands had access to record contracts and TV promotion. But they have not. Older acts such as Anna Oxa, Ligabue and Mina stand in the way of new musicians because they soak up their record companys' and distributors' budgets and 'favourbanks' with the Italian TV and Radio companies. It is the same situation as America in the 1950's and early 60's, when the only national television showcase for progressive new pop and rockbands was ironically on family-oriented variety television shows hosted by inappropriately 'safe' middle-aged compere's such as Andy Williams and Ed Sullivan. It seems to be a closed shop. The existing stars are established and powerful, and the surplus market is topped up by the TV and radio companies with imported popular music from England and America. The Italian entertainment industry is not market-driven by Italian music fans themselves - It is media-driven, and that is the problem.

Young Italian's artistic tastes are being controlled and dictated to by advertising people and politicians with shares in television companies. The Italian franchise of MTV provides some relief, but they are too compromised by lucrative domestic advertising deals to deviate far from their menu of mainstream international pop. I love Kris and Kris though, MTV Italia's presenting duo. With thinly diguised North American accents, they deliver their spiel in Italian with tongue in cheek verve, knowing, as we do, that pop music is just a manufactured product and we are all being manipulated into buying whatever is surplus on the market and cheapest and quickest to produce.

Italians should not let this happen though, because it could spoil their country, and piece by piece their ethnic art and culture will be sold off too cheaply, and, worse, sold to their own countrymen who are pocketing the profit for themselves and monopolising the industry with older stars who stand in the way of new talent trying to come up. This is why the Italian music industry is slow-moving to the point of stagnancy. It has lost momentum and is in danger of never getting it back.
Italians should empower themselves as consumers to take control of their own democracy, take control of the radio and television stations and the music industry in your own country, (not physically, but through market forces).
This is what the punk revolution in England did in 1976 – It was more than just a change in musical styles - Kids didn't just start buying punk music – They deliberately stopped buying any other kind of music. They stopped watching national television, they stopped listening to national radio, and stopped going to rock concerts by boring old American so-called ‘supergroups’. It changed the tradition of radio broadcasting and record company management in England forever, and spawned the true indie scene that we know of today - Club-based music, not radio-based. Italians must do the same if they want to see truly ethnic Italian music gain the recognition it deserves, not just internationally, but in their own country too. Italians are capable of producing fine music, but until they stop watching Mediaset, and stop buying and copying Anglo-American music that they are shown on television by their prime minister, they cannot truly start the revolution. I wish them well in this endeavour, and hope that it will be a truly Italian expression of art.

I will almost certainly still not like it, but at least I will know it is a credible expression of musical ethnicity, which will be better than the transatlantic fusion music that currently predominates on Italian radio, being neither good American music nor good Italian music.

So what does Romebuddy do here for music?
Well, I tune in to Radio Centro Suono on
101.3 FM. It's a local Rome station that plays non-stop American and British, soul, funk, jazz, disco, dance, soul, house, lounge and rare groove, from the 60's 70's, 80's, 90's right up to the now, but they play almost no Italian music at all! Fantastic!

I almost never move the dial from this station, but I often wonder who else is listening apart from me. There can't be many of us. But it makes life here bearable. In fact, it's the best radio station I've ever heard anywhere in the world. Probably the best thing in Italy... You'll feel right at home.

Non-stop funky dance is not everyone's cup of tea though, so an alternative station for homesick expats is Radio Antenna 1 (or 'Radio Antenna Uno', as the Italians say it. You can find it on
107.1 FM and they play an almost continuous diet of classic gold FM American and British rock and pop standards from the 70's 80's and early 90's, and here again, the important factor is that they play almost NO Italian music, unless you count the commercial jingles. With such a playlist, this station has a nice nostalgic feel and if you turn it on and shut your eyes you can almost imagine the good old days when you were back home in a civilised country with careful drivers, attentive staff in the stores, and decent pizza (because lets face it, there ain't no pizza like New York pizza - If you can bake it there, you'll bake it anywhere..!) So try 107.1 FM.

For classical fans, there's 100.30 FM, a classical station run by the Italian national broadcasting company, and its comparable to BBC Radio 3 in Britain. Not bad at all, I have my radio alarm clock set to this.

The only other station I can stand here is
Radio Mambo, on 106.85 FM. There's a huge Latin-American dance scene in Italy. Italians, and Romans in particular, look to South America for their inspiration in dress, dance, Saturday night style and sexuality, and they regard Brazilians as their natural cousins and soul-mates. (whenever Italy gets knocked out of World Cup football, Italians immediately switch their allegiance to Brazil, to win 'on their behalf').

Romans adore Salsa and there is an abundance of dance clubs in the city catering specifically to this and the many other subtle and passionate genres of sensual South American dance music. I have to admit, I can't really keep up. Sixty minutes of Radio Mambo a week is all I can manage, but it's fun trying...

For live music, there's the Big Mama club in Trastevere near Piazza Trilussa. They frequently have American and British bands providing live music that can sometimes get as un-Italian as Country and Western. Check it out.

...what do Italians think about Romebuddy? 

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