"Good Morning from Naples!" Sons et rythmes de la propagande américaine à Naples pendant la Guerre froide culturelle (1954-1964)

In Italy rock ‘n’ roll music landed in the Neapolitan bay in 1954 with the arrival of the Sixth Fleet -the NATO “Guardian of the Mediterranean” – and its armament. In 1951, for its geopolitical position, Naples (Italy) was officially recognised as the obvious location for the AFSouth (Allied Forces Southern Europe) Headquarters, the NATO command center for the defense of Greece, Italy and Turkey. But such a strong military presence risked evoking the ghosts of WWII: the violence, the bombs, and all the recent sorrow that had to be forgotten in order to support anti-communist propaganda. The American troops had now to appear as “not only allies, but, first of all, friends”, “influential unofficial ambassadors” of “peace, stability and goodwill.” These were the messages spread since 1956 by “Panorama. U.S. Naval Support Activity”, the Military Magazine for the American Forces in charge in Naples. The task of promoting a sonic propaganda in the Mediterranean was up to the Sixth Fleet Band, whose performances strengthened the image of the Sixth Fleet as the “US Navy’s ambassador in the Mediterranean region.” Based on military sources, this chapter will focus on the use of African-American music as a propaganda instrument in the Mediterranean area -as a sort of a “sonic weapon” – by the United States government during the Cold War. A double-edged weapon used by the US Department of State that, in a controversial way, spread also the seeds of the “dark side” of the American way of life expressed by the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll music. Even though African-American rhythms in Italy were not contaminated by any political antagonism, they contributed to the spread of a more secularized youth, posing the challenge of modernity to the Italian traditional political parties. The threat for the main political parties – Dc (Christian Democrats), Psi (Socialist Party), Pci (Communist Party) – was the laicization or secularization of the youth. From this perspective, the social and political impact of rock ‘n’ roll music in the Italian landscape in the political context of the Cold War era spread as well the first seeds of a political antagonism destined to explode with the generational and political Italian crisis of 1968.