Tutto è ritmo, tutto è swing: il jazz, il fascismo e la società italiana (Everything is rhythm, everything is swing: jazz, fascism and Italian society)

In Europe, jazz arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century, but in Italy it entered the Twenties, just when the Mussolini regime was affirmed. Product of that America towards which fascism showed love and hate, jazz landed with the transatlantic liners returning from New York, with the emigrants, the great orchestras on tour, the dances but above all the radio and the cinema. In some realities it took root thanks to wealthy American tourists like the composer Cole Porter who used to holiday in Venice. Italians reacted positively to that new music, especially the young, and listening to it soon meant taking on different behaviors and using new consumer products. All this in a country where the Church thundered violently against those rhythms considered amoral and dangerous. And above all under a free-market regime, that of Mussolini, who decided everything about the life of the citizen, also what to listen to, where to do it, with what restrictions and which permits. On the one hand, prohibitions, censorships, and nationalist and racist expressions on the one hand, and impulses to modernity and attempts at Italianization on the other, American music survived and took root. This book is a story of the impact of jazz on Italian society, from the establishment of the fascist regime to the end of the Second World War.