Ignored and forgotten: Research on Jewish-Italian music during the 19th and 20th centuries

Abstract

Why has research on Italian Jewish music been until recently almost nonexistent? This can only in part be explained by the small number of Jews living in Italy, compared to other European countries. Nor is racism a convincing answer. Even in the early years of Fascism, before Mussolini enacted the racial laws in 1938, the Jewish presence in Italy was not perceived, by and large, as ‘problematic’. Rather, what prevented people from gaining an awareness of Jewish culture was the peculiar form of the Italian nation-building project, which imposed an artificial notion of unified national culture upon a patchwork of local traditions. After unification, all Italians were forced to learn and speak one same language, forgetting their mixed origins—including their variegated musical traditions. In stark contrast to other European nations, where it was celebrated, folk music was ignored in Italy throughout the XIX century. Just as standard Italian overshadowed the many vernaculars, Opera became the only national musical language. A thorough investigation of the Italian Jewish tradition had to wait until the development, in the 1960s, of the international Folk Music Revival. Thanks to the work of ethnomusicologists like Alan Lomax and Leo Levi, the Jewish people’s contribution to Italian musical life is now beginning to be acknowledged.