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Podcast: New Books in Italian Studies
Episode: Anna Harwell Celenza, “Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
Description: In her new book, Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Anna Harwell Celenza examines the arrival of jazz in Italy after World War I and the role of Mussolini in promoting jazz throughout Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. With the technology of the radio and gramophone, jazz became part of the local music culture and ethnic and national identities were not viewed across the new mediums. In Jazz Italian Style Celenza explores how Italians made jazz their own, creating a genre distinguishable from American varieties and influencing...