Le avventure della canzone italiana tra lingua che si consuma e lingua che si rinnova

Abstract

This article analyses the Italian popular song between the 30s and the 90s of the past century, with special attention to its most significant developments, very insightful in this case, in order to understand the country’s social and cultural changes and to see how the language of popular songs played an educational role in Italy. The study focuses on three main stages of development: The 30s, where lyrics followed a formal scholastic pattern of the Italian language and after World War II when the language begins to change, also due to migrations from the South and to the North as well as to the diffusion of the radio. Further change began with Domenico Modugno’s repertoire and continued intensively with the “School of Genoa” and songwriters such as Bruno Lauzi, Gino Paoli, Fabrizio De André, and – from Milan - Giorgio Gaber and Enzo Iannacci, later followed by Mogol-Battisti. This change may be defined as a mutation “from the artificial to the natural”. It is a relevant innovation, which shows how the Italian music scenario had
anticipated a future development of the current language to take place ten years later. It worked as a sort of “cultural translator”, as a filter for cultural and social experiences. Finally, the third phase which occurred in the 90s and saw the replacement of ordinary colloquial style with experimental new linguistic trends such as Franco Battiato’s metaphysical language which transcends the hypochondriacal ordinary clichès and brings forward “radical choices”.