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Italian beat (Italian : beat italiano) is the Italian form of beat music (Italian: musica beat), circa 1963 to 1968, inspired mainly by British popular music of the 1960s.
Italy is iconic worldwide for his mainstream "neapolitan" melodic singing style, and historically, very xenophile but quite slowly receptive to musical influences from abroad.
State (then monopolistic) radio and TV, and domestic show-business executives were lukewarm, or frankly hostile to the early rock'n'roll wave of the 1950s.
Rock and roll was seen as a gimmick, or just noise for "teddy-boys" (actual term for young rogues) taste; only some mild-mannered "modern-style" singers (like Tony Renis of "When, when, when" fame) were allowed to be aired, publish records with main labels, and participate in the institutional "Festival di Sanremo" contest.
The early pioneers of rock'n'roll (so-called urlatori) had some media coverage as novelties, but soon, those who wanted to pursue a career in music business had to switch toward the traditional mainstream.
From 1961 to 1965, teenagers-oriented music was a mix of pretty-face pop, twist and French yé-yé influences.
Situation changed slightly around 1965. Notably:
Some visiting top acts, like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones [1]
The creation of "Whiskey-a-Go-go" or "Marquee" styled rock clubs (such as Rome's Piper Club, Milan's Paip's, and Piper 2000 on the Tuscan Riviera), was soon imitated in smaller towns.
The infamous "disc-eater", a cheap 45 RPM player, that strongly boosted singles sales, and the massive diffusion of juke-boxes.
The emergence of contests and festivals, friendly to new trends, like the Cantagiro, or Davoli Contest (sponsored by instrument manufacturers and distributors).
The easy reception of powerful medium-wave foreign stations like Radio Luxembourg, Radio Montecarlo or Radio Koper allowed Italian youngsters to bypass the mediatic block, and stay updated to the latest anglosaxon trends (some radio enthusiasts even managed to catch the elusive Channel's "pirate stations" like Radio Caroline, and German TV shows such as Beat Club).
Under music executives' pressure, the state broadcaster RAI reluctantly agreed to pay some attention to the "beat" hype, and the upcoming soul/R&B vogue.
Research estimates the number of small groups (Italian: complessi) active in Italy in 1963 — either pro or amateur, including jazz — at around 300; it jumped to 1500+ in 1968. [2]
Some groups had the chance to hit the domestic charts, and to be remembered today, including Dik-Dik, Stormy Six, Equipe 84, Nomadi, and the New Trolls.
The New Dada band had the honour to open for the Beatles in their 1965 Italian mini-tour.
Usual differences, disputes and especially the national military service led to a premature end for the vast majority of them.
Virtually no popular Italian singer or group of the Beat era had any success outside Italy, except in some Spanish-speaking countries. This is due to their local scope, often imposed by managers; few singers were fluent in English, and "sing Italian" was the rule.
Most bands which survived to the early 1970s switched to melodic mainstream or prog-pop, and only a few are still active with at least one original member, though some acts had brief revivalist reincarnations.
Some British pop acts, unable, or unwilling to face the strong domestic competition, opted to move and stay in Italy, where they were revered as "British original" numbers. Many of them spent all their career in Italy, and thus are well remembered there, but virtually unknown in their homeland. These bands developed a peculiar style, singing usually in Italian with a strong British accent.
The top bands were arguably Shel Shapiro & the Rokes, and Mal Ryder & the Primitives, who had several Italian hit singles. [3] Other popular acts include Bad Boys, Thane Russall, Mike Liddell, Kim Brown & the Renegades, the Senate; the Motowns, fronted by Lally Stott; and the Sorrows, the only band to have also had some chart success in UK.
Foreign but non-British beat groups included the Pyranhas, Evy , Nino Ferrer and Antoine from France; Trutz Groth & the Black Stars, and the Honeybeats from Germany; Rocky Roberts & the Airedales from the United States; and Kameleoni from Yugoslavia.
Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock is typically centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
4 time signature and utilizing a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.
The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States with significant influence on the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. British pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Merseybeats, the Dave Clark Five, the Hollies, Manfred Mann, Herman's Hermits, Peter and Gordon, the Animals, the Zombies, the Yardbirds, the Moody Blues, the Kinks, the Spencer Davis Group, Them, the Pretty Things, the Who, Small Faces, and the Bee Gees, as well as solo singers such as Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Marianne Faithfull, Tom Jones, and Donovan were at the forefront of the "invasion."
Power pop is a subgenre of rock music and form of pop rock based on the early music of bands such as the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds. It typically incorporates melodic hooks, vocal harmonies, an energetic performance, and cheerful-sounding music underpinned by a sense of yearning, longing, despair, or self-empowerment. The sound is primarily rooted in pop and rock traditions of the early-to-mid 1960s, although some artists have occasionally drawn from later styles such as punk, new wave, glam rock, pub rock, college rock, and neo-psychedelia.
Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1980s built on the post-punk and new wave movements, incorporating different sources of inspiration from subgenres and what is now classed as world music in the shape of Jamaican and Indian music. It also explored the consequences of new technology and social change in the electronic music of synthpop. In the early years of the decade, while subgenres like heavy metal music continued to develop separately, there was a considerable crossover between rock and more commercial popular music, with a large number of more "serious" bands, like The Police and UB40, enjoying considerable single chart success.
American rock has its roots from 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music, and also draws from folk music, jazz, blues, and classical music. American rock music was further influenced by the British Invasion of the American pop charts from 1964 and resulted in the development of psychedelic rock.
British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. Since around 1964, with the "British Invasion" of the United States spearheaded by the Beatles, British rock music has had a considerable impact on the development of American music and rock music across the world.
Rock music in Australia, also known as Oz rock, Australian rock, and Aussie rock, has a rich history, rooted in an appreciation of various rock genres originating in the United States and Britain, and to a lesser extent, in continental Europe and Africa. Australian rock has also contributed to the development of some of these genres, as well as having its own unique Australiana sound with pub rock and its Indigenous music.
Israeli rock is rock music created by Israeli bands and singers.
Yé-yé or yeyé was a style of pop music that emerged in Western and Southern Europe in the early 1960s. The French term yé-yé was derived from the English "yeah! yeah!", popularized by British beat music bands such as the Beatles. The style expanded worldwide as the result of the success of figures such as French singer-songwriters Sylvie Vartan, Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy. Yé-yé was a particular form of counterculture that derived most of its inspiration from British and American rock and roll. Additional stylistic elements of yé-yé song composition include baroque, exotica, pop, jazz and the French chanson.
The San Francisco sound refers to rock music performed live and recorded by San Francisco-based rock groups of the mid-1960s to early 1970s. It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. San Francisco is a westward-looking port city, a city that at the time was 'big enough' but not manic like New York City or spread out like Los Angeles. Hence, it could support a 'scene'. According to journalist Ed Vulliamy, "A core of Haight Ashbury bands played with each other, for each other"
Rock en español is a term used to refer to any kind of rock music featuring Spanish vocals. Compared to English-speaking bands, very few acts reached worldwide success or between Spanish-speaking countries due to a lack of promotion. Despite rock en español's origins in the late 1950s, many rock acts achieved at best nationwide fame until the Internet consolidated the listeners. However, some rock en español artists did become internationally popular with the help of a promotional campaign from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s called "Rock en tu idioma". Some specific rock-based styles influenced by folkloric rhythms have also developed in these regions. Some of the more prominent styles are Latin rock ; Latin alternative, an alternative rock scene that blended a Latin sound with other genres like Caribbean ska, reggae, and soca; or Andalusian rock, a flamenco-influenced style that emerged in Spain.
The trend of Australian music have often mirrored those of the United States and United Kingdom. Australian Aboriginal music during the prehistory of Australia is not well documented.
Psychedelic pop is a genre of pop music that contains musical characteristics associated with psychedelic music. Developing in the mid-to-late 1960s, elements included "trippy" features such as fuzz guitars, tape manipulation, backwards recording, sitars, and Beach Boys-style harmonies, wedded to melodic songs with tight song structures. The style lasted into the early 1970s. It has seen revivals in subsequent decades by neo-psychedelic artists.
Eugenio Finardi is an Italian rock singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist.
Croatian popular music is the popular music of Croatia.
British rock and roll, or typeset as British rock 'n' roll, is a style of popular music based on American rock and roll, which emerged in the late 1950s and was popular until the arrival of beat music in 1962. It was important in establishing British youth and popular music culture and was a key factor in subsequent developments that led to the British Invasion of the mid-1960s. Since the 1960s, some stars of the genre, most notably Cliff Richard, have managed to sustain successful careers and there have been periodic revivals of this form of music.
British pop music is popular music, produced commercially in the United Kingdom. It emerged in the mid-to late 1950s as a softer alternative to American rock 'n' roll. Like American pop music it has a focus on commercial recording, often orientated towards a youth market, as well as that of the Singles Chart usually through the medium of relatively short and simple love songs. While these basic elements of the genre have remained fairly constant, pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, particularly borrowing from the development of rock music, and utilising key technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. From the British Invasion in the 1960s, led by The Beatles, British pop music has alternated between acts and genres with national appeal and those with international success that have had a considerable impact on the development of the wider genre and on popular music in general
This article includes an overview of the events and trends in popular music in the 1960s.
Music of the United Kingdom developed in the 1960s into one of the leading forms of popular music in the modern world. By the early 1960s the British had developed a viable national music industry and began to produce adapted forms of American music in Beat music and British blues which would be re-exported to America by bands such as the Beatles, the Animals and the Rolling Stones. This helped to make the dominant forms of popular music something of a shared Anglo-American creation, and led to the growing distinction between pop and rock music, which began to develop into diverse and creative subgenres that would characterise the form throughout the rest of the twentieth century.
Progressive pop is pop music that attempts to break with the genre's standard formula, or an offshoot of the progressive rock genre that was commonly heard on AM radio in the 1970s and 1980s. It was originally termed for the early progressive rock of the 1960s. Some stylistic features of progressive pop include hooks and earworms, unorthodox or colorful instrumentation, changes in key and rhythm, experiments with larger forms, and unexpected, disruptive, or ironic treatments of past conventions.
