Italian rock

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Music of Italy
Genres:	Classical: Opera Pop: Rock (Hardcore) - Hip hop - Folk - jazz
History and Timeline
Awards	Italian Music Awards
Charts	Federation of the Italian Music Industry
Festivals	Umbria Jazz Festival - Sanremo Festival - Ravello Festival - Festival dei Due Mondi
Media	Music media in Italy
National anthem	Il Canto degli Italiani
Regional scenes
Aosta Valley - Abruzzo - Basilicata - Calabria - Campania - Emilia-Romagna - Florence - Friuli-Venezia Giulia - Genoa - Latium - Liguria - Lombardy - Marche - Milan - Molise - Naples - Piedmont - Puglia - Rome - Sardinia - Sicily - Trentino-South Tyrol - Tuscany - Umbria - Veneto - Venice
Related topics
Opera houses - Music conservatories - Terminology

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Italy is a European country, and has had a long relationship with rock and roll, a style of music which spread to the country by the early 1960s from the United States. The earliest Italian rock bands appeared during this period, playing mostly strict covers. The first distinctively Italian singer-songwriter was Piero Ciampi, whose style was reminiscent of the French chansonniers. The United States and United Kingdom during the 1960s were in the midst of the psychedelic rock boom, and the field produced Italian psychedelic bands like Mario Schifano and Le Orme. After the 1968 student riots, many young, educated Italians began to identify with the counterculture which was flourishing in the US and UK; in contrast to those countries, however, Italy had little in the way of a rock tradition, though students remained very familiar with classical composers like Bach. The result was an influx of classically-influenced rock bands which fit right into the international move towards progressive rock. Italian progressive bands include Premiata Forneria Marconi, Celeste, Goblin, Reale Accademia di Musica, St Just, Jacula, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Latte e Miele and The New Trolls. Some bands, like Osanna (band), Area, Perigeo and Arti & Mestieri, fused progressive rock with jazz. Il Balletto Di Bronzo's YS is one of the most discussed Italian prog albums, with some calling it trash and others extolling it as one of the greatest progressive albums ever made.

The same period, the early 1970s, also saw the rise of Italian singers and songwriters like Lucio Battisti, Fabrizio De André and Francesco Guccini.

By the end of the 1970s, Italian punk rock pioneers Skiantos had released 1978's Monotono, which kickstarted the Italian punk scene. Later bands like The Confusional Quartet and Gaznevada fused New wave and Italian varieta with punk and other influences. In the 1980s, Italy boasted one of the most vibrant hardcore and thrash metal scenes, spawning bands like Negazione, CCCP, Affinita, Franti and Raw Power, as well as electronic-punk bands like Pankow. In the late 1980, more extreme bands heavy metal bands appeared, such as Opera IX and Necrodeath.

Popular 1980s rock singers and songwriters included Zucchero, Gianna Nannini and Vasco Rossi.

In the 1990s, Italian avant-garde and alternative rock bands gained international notoriety, at least among critics. These included Starfuckers, Uzeda, Afterhours, Three Second Kiss, Marlene Kuntz, Canadians and Massimo Volume. To reprezent new-punk wave are bands like Punkreas, Derozer and Pornoriviste.

Gianna Nannini in 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s the first Italian rocker who achieve real popular success outside of Italy. Especially in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux and later in Mexico. While Francesco De Gregori (the Dylan of Italy) was well appreciated by a critics and well informed fans outside of Italy it was Nannini who was first Italian pop icon to stick and to shift between pop and rock with ease and to stay the course through trends and upcoming generations. Zucchero, Eros Ramazzotti and Jovanotti (later: Nek and Laura Pausini) all went on to become huge international pop names in the late 1980s and 1990s owe a total debt to Gianna. It is very relevant that first Italian to break the Anglo-Saxon stranglehold was a woman from a country with a tradition of harsh male chauvinism. Women's liberation movement in the modern manifestation was late in comparison to many other countries. Gianna Nannini is very much The GodMother of an entire era of young rock singer-songwriters of the highest calibre that have emerged in Italy during the 1990s and into the 2000s. Artists such as Paola Turci, Carmen Consoli, Elisa and Edoardo Di Paola have taken her lead into a higher sophistication of song writing. The difference between Gianna and her generation is one of showmanship. Nannini never performed in a German TV studio without climbing on top of one of those big old-fashioned analogue studio cameras. The quality of songwriting today is better but the rip-it-all-up rock hurricane of Gianna Nannini is sadly not the same in today's generation of Italian female rockers. Yes the newer artists write better songs and they do sometimes rip it up on stage. But they could do with some more punk-fire in their bellies. Paola Turci is an age and generation inbetween Nannini and Consoli. In many ways she strikes the perfect balance between the two.

Only Lorenzo Jovanotti and Irene Grandi performs as much with their body as Gianna Nannini did in her prime.

Another Tuscana (like Nannini) Irene Grandi has had a similar journey and has a similar persona only up-to-date and even more versatile. Sadly for Irene Grandi her success has remained mostly confined to Italy. The corporate structure and overt policies of the music business has in fact intensified the Anglo-American duopoply-monopoly over the past twenty years along with a culture of regime-playlists and radio deejays in most countries void of a mind or taste of their own. It is thus even harder for artists from countries such as Italy to get airplay in other countries in 2006 than it was in 1986.

Italian music in the 1990s and 2000s has produced and continues to produce some of the most brilliant music in the world. This includes Almamegretta, Raiz, Tiromancino, Ustmamo, Subsonica, Negrita, Gabin, Planet Funk, Negramaro, Meganoidi and a woman in her own category Giorgia one of the world's finest pop/soul/blues/jazz singers. Even on the pop front Milanese duo Paola & Chiara have proven how interesting packaged pop can be when it has a rich Latin tapestry over what is pumped out in the UK or USA.