Italian Birds of Passage ─ The Diaspora of Neapolitan Musicians in New York

Neapolitan song, more than any other Italian musical repertoire, defined the Italian popular music tradition. Naples established one of the first Italian birthplaces for the public entertainment industry with its numerous music halls, vaudeville theaters, publishers, maestri and performers. The Neapolitan dialect left behind its folkloric dimension and opened the field into which entered new musical trends from abroad: maxixe, fox trot, shimmy, blues, rag, tango. From Enrico Caruso to the most middling small-town vedette, Italian vocal music abandoned its operatic tendencies for a more 'popular' life by introducing new subjects, employing new techniques, and attracting new audiences. This book reviews the years spanning the political unification of Italy and the fascist regime of the early 20th century through the examples of significant performers such as Gilda Mignonette to trace the transformation of a popular tradition written in dialect to a popular tradition written in Italian. The migration of Southern Italians contributed to transform this deeply 'localistic' cultural inheritance into one of the first modern examples of transnational music. Neapolitan popular song benefited from serendipitous historical circumstances. Although they were forced to join the mass migration of Italians to the United States between 1880 and 1920, Neapolitan music protagonists managed to maintain strong ties with the art form's traditional origins in Italy while at the same time participating, with other ethnic groups, in the production of 'American' identity.

Simona Frasca is the History of Music Chair at University Federico II in Naples, Italy.