by Francesco Ciabattoni (Georgetown University).
“lui che scende e che sale e si sente l’America
fammi l’Amore” (Gianna Nannini, “America,” 1979)
(“he who goes down and up and feels America
make love to me.” Gianna Nannini, “America,” 1979)
It is a passion, that for America, that for many can be limiting and uncomfortable. And certainly, in the long history of Italian song, the American myth is declined in different ways by each singer, from the erotic metaphors of Gianna Nannini, in which “he reaches out his hand and touches America,” to the merciless irony of Renato Carosone, who in 1956 was already satirizing in Neapolitan dialect the rampant fashion for stars and stripes in the brilliant “Tu vuo’ fa’ l’americano,” which creates an analogue of the famous scene in An American in Rome (directed by Steno, 1954) in which Alberto Sordi, after having tried in vain to swallow yogurt, mustard, milk (in short, the “stuff that Americans eat”), surrenders to the enormous plate of spaghetti that has “provoked me and I’ll eat you.”
There are those who look at America from the “nuclear-free province” as an unattainable dream and make fun of the fake news about “crocodiles [that] come out of the shower,” and besides, “America is far away, on the other side of the moon,” and so we might as well dance here, in a dance hall lost somewhere in the Po Valley. But if Samuele Bersani and Lucio Dalla actually sing—by difference—about the province of deep Padania, where existence drags slowly “six kilometers of curves from life,” America can really be experienced from within, and then it is also the prairie, the frontier, the freedom and adventure of the buffalo that “can dodge sideways and fall,” it is the fascination for what represents possibility, the ability to discover and venture out at twenty, and then to adapt at fifty, it is the boundless landscape, the mythology of a continent, its wild vitality.
In fact, De Gregori really visited America, a few years later, together with De André, who preferred to tell it from the side of the Cheyenne and Arapaho exterminated at Sand Creek in 1864, also dedicating the image of his 1981 album to a Native American (a painting by Frederic Remington), perhaps welcoming the words of Vasco Rossi who a few years earlier seemed to warn his slightly too enthusiastic colleagues that “we are not Americans”. For Guccini, between family experience and youthful lovers, America is even “Atlantis… heart…destiny…smiles and white teeth on glossy paper…the dreamy
and mysterious world of Donald Duck.” In short, a bit of everything that is loved with the innocence of children, thanks to the filter of Uncle Amerigo.
And then there are those who, without irony, but also from Naples, abandon the American dream, unsustainable, unachievable, because—says Edoardo Bennato— “What you want is America and I can’t give it to you, / you want America / lying across the sea,” and so it’s better to live in the noise of Bagnoli and title the album Ok Italia! But America can be in the sound, like in the blues and gospel of Zucchero (I’m thinking of “Hey Man,” “Solo una sana e consapevole libidine,” and many others), in the jazz notes of Paolo Conte’s stars, in Sergio Caputo’s Mediterranean swing, in Fred Buscaglione’s chewing gum Dixieland that swings between Sitting Bull and Marylin Monroe, or maybe the grammelot of “Prisencolinensinainciusol” by Adriano Celentano who actually invents American slang, and yet it’s very credible!
In short, these are just some of the many Italian songs that offer a perspective on America (and for the sake of decorum, let’s not mention Eugenio Finardi‘s resentful invective as he sings the praises of “Sweet Italy”!): chimera, distant dream or scarecrow, it is by far the most invoked country in the history of our song.
(Washington, DC, November 2023)
