In America they sang in Italian. An archive and a book written by Giuliana Fugazzotto sheds new light on American musical tastes of the early twentieth century. In what is perhaps her most surprising finding, she shows how greatly American popular music was influenced by the work of Italians. From about 1900 to 1930, have been produced some 7,500 tracks; these offered genres that included opera, Neapolitan song, dance music, and instrumental works. The new study on the topic will be presented on Tuesday, October 20th at 6:00 P.M. at the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago. Ethnic Italian Records by Giuliana Fugazzotto (Editoriale Documenta, 2015) and produced by Biblioteca di Sardegna

Author Giuliana Fugazzotto owns over 5,000 of these recordings, 78rpm vinyl discs that have recently been digitized and made available to the public in a wide-ranging project funded by the European Community. Her book illuminates for the first time the musical preferences, stylistic trends, and socio-cultural complexities of the Italian-American community in the early twentieth century. By studying, cataloguing, and analyzing thousands of sources, she has meticulously documented the process of contamination and fusion between traditional Italian repertoires and American culture.

An extraordinary heritage not only for the music world, but also for the social and ethnographic field; heritage which thanks to the digitization process will remain in history. The author will discuss her book in Italian with Alberta Lai, Director of the Institute. Simultaneous English translation will be provided by Thomas Simpson. The presentation coincides with the 15th annual Italian Language Week in the World, in collaboration with ItalCultura and the Biblioteca di Sardegna.