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Article Excerpt
On February 4, 2006, the US press announced, not without a hint of puzzlement, the death of Romano Mussolini. The reason for such puzzlement was that Romano, besides being the last living offspring of Italy's World War II dictator Benito Mussolini, was also a renowned pianist--of jazz, no less. The obituary note from the Associated Press had set the tone:
Jazz music was censored in Italy during the fascist regime, but the ban didn't reach the sheltered lives of Benito Mussolini's family members. Romano developed a love for jazz and became one of Italy's early connoisseurs, writing reviews in magazines and teaching himself to play the piano (David).
The curious news of the son of the Duce trafficking with jazz in spite of censorship was reported in a similar vein by the New York Times:
Romano Mussolini, the Italian jazz pianist whose fame as the fifth and youngest child of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was ultimately rivaled by his musical renown, died on Tuesday in Rome 230.... Amid the censorship under Italian fascism, it was Mr. Mussolini's older brother Vittorio who introduced him to ... music ... In the 1950's and 60's he was in the vanguard of Italian jazz with his group the Romano Mussolini All Stars, and he played with American greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Chet Baker (Kiefer).
On that day, Italian papers did not differ from their American counterparts, and insisted similarly on this curious intertwining of jazz and fascism. As the daily la Repubblica, reported, the funeral of the late Mussolini begun with Gershwin's "Summertime" set as an overture, continued then with fascist slogans and salutes, and finally ended, curiously indeed, with the black gospel "When the Saints Go Marching in." "Faccetta nera" on the one hand, dixieland and Louis Armstrong on the other--these were, in other words, the oxymoronic musical poles that wove the soundtrack of the peculiar procession (N. A.). One extra note of curiosity was added by reports that the death of the pianist had been made public the night before on the web site of the neo-fascist party Alternativa Sociale, led by Romano's own daughter Alessandra. She had penned, along with her father, the very anthem of the party--"L'orgoglio di essere italiano."
Whatever that orgoglio, that pride of being Italian could be, the association of pride with neo-fascist politics did certainly cast, if not ominous shadows, at least some penumbra of surprise on Romano Mussolini's jazz: the fact that jazz and fascism could coexist so peacefully was the leitmotiv of surprise and awe that run, with little variations, through all the necrologies of the day. It is not that we had not been warned of the fact that fascism, in Jefrrey Schnapp's words, is "neither monolithic nor homogeneous [. F]ascism's aesthetic overproduction relied on the ability of images to sustain contradiction and to make of paradox a productive principle. Hence, the rhetorical figure that ... lurks at the core of every analysis of the fascist phaenomenon: oxymoron" (Schnapp 3). Yet, this oxymoron, and this apparent contradiction of jazz and fascista seemed more radical than all the others we had been accustomed to accept. Sure enough, Magnus Enzensberger had already pointed out the aporetic relation between the reactionary politics of fascism and the revolutionary aesthetics of fascist avant-gardism; and Fredric Jameson had insisted on the same contradiction of fascist conservatism and modernist progressivism in his book on Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist (Enzensberger and Roloff; Jameson). In spite of all these forewarnings, however, it is as if we had been too eager to dismiss Theodor Adorno's slogans that "jazz and pogroms go together," or that "jazz can easily be adapted for use by fascism" (Adorno "On Jazz" 60); and, just as eagerly, we had embraced Eric Hobsbawm's alternative slogan of jazz as the music of the Uncommon People set in the unmistakable tone of "resistance" and "rebellion" (Hobsbawm). In the funeral procession of February 14, accompanying to his ultimate destination the jazz player who never denied his affection for the figure of the father as Duce (Il Duce mio padre is the title of his 2004 memoir), Eric Hobsbawm's "uncommon people," alas, had met the common people of Hanna Arendt's banality of evil. This was the ultimate, and utterly puzzling oxymoron--and the ghost of Adorno was its repress returning.
Yet, how puzzling could truly be, in the last analysis, such crossing of jazz and fascist chants? How strange was this love for jazz on the part of the son of Italian fascism? Was Romano Mussolini truly at odds with his father's cultural policies and with the much reported censorship of jazz? Undoubtedly, this is what the literature on jazz and Italy has accustomed us to believe. Outlining a cultural history of Italian popular music, Marcella Filippa, for instance, wrote quite convincingly of Mussolini's provincial cult of opera and Puccini-like bel canto (see also Sachs; Tambling), and concluded by summarizing on fascism's consequent "vilification" of jazz--the "devil's music," in short (Filippa 331).
Such demonization of jazz had in fact begun in Italy even before the word jazz had started to circulate. "Villico Black Bottom," peculiar pastoral authored by Gabre (legend of Italian pop music since the success of his patriotic "Leggenda del Piave" of 1913), had warned peaceful and rustic Italy, already in 1928, of the incipient danger represented by new American rhythms and instrumentation. The object of this humorous attack was a new dance, the black bottom (on it, see Jasen and Jones), that had come from New Orleans, and, by 1924, had became so popular as to rival Charleston. In Italy, black bottom was popularized by Dino Rulli's "Josephine Black Bottom," punningly exploitative of the rising European fame of the much sexualized Josephine Baker; and by Eduardo Rusconi's "Danzano i campagnoli," which, like Gabre's "Villico," commentd on the spread of black bottom in the most remote and rustic provinces of Italy. In Gabre's song, black bottom, harbinger of chaos, had come from the far Americas to disturb a rhythm of life to which the pastoral Italian countryside had been acquainted since the times, it seems, of Theocritus. The consequences were, needless to say, catastrophic in the vein of stand-up comedy:
Sul verde monte, inerpicato, sta il bianco gregge a pascolar dal sol di porpora, baciato, Il paesel lontano appar, Nella capanna il pastorel allegro suona uno stornel non piu col vecchio zufoletto ma col moderno saxofon: Le pecoreIle fanno be ed anche lor, chissa perche, van per la china ruminando, belando, ballando, Van zompettando indietro e avanti, con eleganti evoluzion, e sembran tutte trepidanti al ritmo stran del Black-bottom. E di domenica mattina e tutto in festa il paesel, suona la banda contadina un vecchio e allegro ritornel. E giunto appena il mezzodi in piazza ancor, son tutti li ma, a un tratto un forte scampanio richiama a messa i suoi fedel. E le campane fan din don, e gia s'inizia la funzion, son la, le donne inginocchiate, scollate, truccate, Non hanno in capo il velo nero ma il cappellino coi pompons e sembran tante belle Otero con i capelli alia garconne. Dai farmacista o dai pievano sia nelle stalle o in mezzo al fien Con questo morbo Americano e da per tutto un tabarin! Stuck on the green mountain the white flock is grazing. Kissed by the purple sun, the village appears at a remote distance. The shepherd is in his hut gaily playing folk songs-- no longer with the recorder but with the modern saxophone: The sheep bleat, and they too, who knows why, while chewing the cud and bleating, start to dance. They jump back and forth with elegant pirouettes, and they all seem lost in the strange rhythm of black-bottom. It is Sunday morning, and the village celebrates the holy day. A peasants' orchestra plays an old, happy refrain. It is now midday and everybody is still in the public square, when, suddenly, the bells toll calls the faithful for the mass. The bells go ding dong, the mass begins, and the women are there kneeling, in sexy clothes, her face full of make up. They no longer carry the black veil but a little hat with pompons and they all look like Madame Otero with their fancy hairdo. At the pharmacy and at the parish in the stable or in the hay with this American disease all is becoming a whorehouse!
Almost as if he had...
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