Jazz and Fascism. Contradictions and ambivalences in the diffusion of Jazz Music under the Italian fascist dictatorship (1925-1935)

This chapter focuses on the fascist radio broadcasting of EIAR (Ente Italiano Audizioni Radiofoniche), during the so-called jazz ‘diffusion’ period in which Mussolini gradually recognized the importance of radio for the construction of a totalitarian state. The essay will shed light on the use of jazz music in the ‘Volgarizziamo la Radio’ (Radio to the People) campaign conducted by Mussolini in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In fact, for its seductive and frenzied rhythms, jazz was chosen as the music that could fascinate Italians and attract listeners to the first fascist radio shows, not realising at first that the diffusion of jazz music, with its syncopated rhythms, and its cultural associations, was received in different ways by different communities, and in many cases, came to represent New World values including forms of freedom and individual expressiveness. This ambivalent relationship between jazz and fascism gave birth to an ‘Italian way to jazz’, which even if it didn’t express an explicit repulsion against fascism and its values represented an anomaly in the successful accomplished building of the Italian fascist totalitarianism.