Jazz: una contraddizione futurista?

Jazz: A futurist contradiction? · The Futurists identified jazz as a symbol of modernity even before it spread to Italy. Struck by the similarity of jazz-band with Russolo’s noise music and of words-in-freedom with scat singing, the Futurists helped promote jazz in the Peninsula by founding cabarets, decorating them, illustrating sheet music covers, talking about it in their manifestos, and making musicians and dancers the protagonists of their works. In the first part of the essay, I will trace the reasons for this affinity during the 1910s and 1920s, focusing especially on the dual fascination with metropolitan American culture and the exotic and ‘wild’ character of jazz’s African roots. Jazz music, and more broadly jazz culture, exerted an influence on both the style and iconography of futurist works. Mainly visual representations – especially the iconography of the saxophonist and the dancer Josephine Baker – and artist writings, but also magazines, such as «Tabarino», will be examined. Finally, the progressive rejection of jazz by Marinetti and his comrades will be analyzed in light of the Italian political situation, especially colonial events and the autarkic phase of the fascist regime. The denial of any manifestation from abroad will also condition artistic representation, erasing from it any reference to the modernity of the genre or the depiction of African other ness to align with the dictates of propaganda.