L’immigrazione nella canzone italiana (1991-2018)

The essay investigates the presence and development of the topic of immigration in Italian music. Insofar as its emergence as a specific subgenre is located in 1991, year of publication of “’O Scarrafone” (The Cockroach) by Pino Daniele, immigration song is recognized as a fairly recent genre in comparison to the older Italian emigration song, to which it is nonetheless linked by a historic and thematic relation. For at least twenty years, the migrant has been represented as a fringe figure - prostitute, beggar, illegal immigrant. This probably contributed to the strengthening of stereotypes, even when motivated by empathic strains, or by a more or less aware paternalistic and moralizing aim. The more militant current of the sub-genre has been characterized by a somewhat hybrid esthetic. It originated from the need to contrast, in an artistic way, nationalistic instances and xenophobic unrests surging to the fore in the 1990s. The latest protagonists of this evolution seem to be the Italian rappers of foreign descent who gained major visibility breaking with the well-established representations of previous decades.