Italy's Brand New Generation of Music

Italy has always been considered a "third world country" from the point of view of the music industry, but this seems about to change. Brand new Italian indie acts have started to be noticed in England and are now ready for global acclaim.

The Italian music industry scene has always been closed in itself and even if the market is always open to import new music genres, trends and albums from abroad, major record labels are mostly interested in signing only "traditional" Italian acts to gain a secure income within the country. As a consequence, acts which don't follow the strict rules of the mainstream market don't have many chances to make them notable to a vast public. This choice is a real disadvantage in terms of international success and visibility of the Italian music scene around the world and for this reason the popularity of Italian acts and music outside the country is almost inconsistent.

Thanks to the local indie scene, this is beginning to chance. In fact, bands like the indie-electronic band Disco Drive have made themselves noticeable in the international music scene receiving in 2008 8/10 in the NME for their second album, Things to Do Today.

Disco Drive, along with other Italian indie bands as for example Blake/e/e/e, The Death Of Anna Karina, The Zen Circus and Brian Ritchie and Settlefish, represent a turning-point for the Italian music industry that starts to have global ambition.

Record labels such as Unhip Records to which all the bands named above are signed, are trying to compete with the major and to organize gigs all over Europe to promote their acts, even if the margin of profit is very low. On this matter the singer of Settlefish says in an interview for The Times:

"We started playing France and went to America and England. If you're willing to get 100 bucks and sleep on the floor, you can get a show anywhere."

But competitive indie acts are not the only progress that the Italian music scene has made.

In fact, making the most of the famous good weather, music festivals represent another important element of promotion for the local music scene. The free indie festival Italia Wave Love Festival has grown and developed remarkably since its first appearance. Thanks to the decision of moving its location from the small town of Arezzo, where was originally based, to the bigger Livorno in 2007, this event is gradually becoming one of the most various and interesting summer festival all over Europe. It is divided in six different venues set all over the town of Livorno to satisfy the most different music tastes.

The main stage located in the huge Stadio Comunale di Livorno is reserved for the performances of international and Italian emerging bands while each other is focused on particular music genres and art in general , giving life to smaller sub-festivals. The most remarkable are called Elettro Wave, the Psycho Stage and Cultwave.

As the name suggests, Elettro Wave ( See the video above ) is dedicated to electronic music and being subdivided in four areas hosts not only well known international and local indie acts but also resident Djs from the most famous clubs in Italy and the most interesting Italian bands became visible thanks to social networks such as Myspace Italia and often without any kind of record experience. The Psycho Stages instead focuses the attention on the Italian indie scene and hosts a selection of notable indie acts coming from each part of Italy.

Finally, Cultwave has been created to promote a wide range of cultural events. Being located in the inner city of Livorno, it is open to everyone who has an interest in art in general and it is an opportunity to bring together people of all ages and belonging to different social backgrounds. This cultural festival includes the Italia Wave Meetings, presenting a wide range of debate and discussions on important social and cultural themes, CineWave, a space for short films and full-length movies, TeatroWave, dedicated to theatre experimentation and ComicsWave, which hosts sequential artists from all over Europe.

As if this wasn't already enough, on the occasion of the festival The Arezzo Wave Italia Foundation organizes every year various contests for bands, djs, vjs and audio and video projects and the winners will perform during the event.

It is seems that Italy is making giant leaps in the music scene and it is ready to become a new great competitor in the European music industry very soon.

By Elisa Fabbri