When the juke-box played samba on the beach
In the years of La Dolce Vita, an elective affinity blossomed between italian cinema and tropical rhythms which, sixty years on, continue to soundtrack the Italian summer. A new collection unveils this untold story.
Afro-Cuban percussion is blazing through the sweaty room of a Roman club, punctuated by the frenetic, improvised beat of a jazz ensemble framing a Fellini-esque scene. A group of distinguished gentlemen in dark suits and neat hairstyles have spread out their blazers to make up a rug, subverting the traditional scope of the garment. A woman is dancing on it convulsively, as if possessed, with Middle Eastern grace and mystery.
Seated on the floor, men stare at her, masking their voyeurism with demure gallantry. Around them are their wives, equally fascinated by the scene. The dancer, meanwhile, strips down to her underwear, twirling each piece with heedless malice. Her name is Kiash Nanà, better known as Aïche Nanà. Born in Lebanon, she had found a career in Rome as a stripper. It is 5 November 1958, and the setting of this surreal scene is the Rugantino restaurant. The event, it is rumoured, once sedimented in the volcanic mind of Federico Fellini blossomed as La Dolce Vita.
Beyond gossip, the events of Rugantino tell of a change in the listening habits of Italians. It’s the story of a new sound which gradually spread from the cafés and nightclubs of Via Veneto to the seaside resorts of Italy’s economic miracle, from Sanremo with its Jazz Festival to the Romagna Riviera, via the Amalfi coast and the beaches of Versilia.
As if swept away by the frenzy of summer, the most austere and collected jazz let its hair down, embracing the contaminations and the exotic nuances of genres such as samba, bossa nova, calypso, mambo and cha cha. La Dolce Vita thus discovered its new musical direction, a manifesto in sound for the riviera, that made Italians dance and dream throughout the 1960s.
The Italy of the economic miracle, reinvigorated in its wealth and consumption, discovered itself as an exuberant and playful country. A nation that after the devastation of WWII was finally eager for frivolity, which the cinema of the time didn’t fail to capture in all its vices and virtues. Well beyond the locations, it was the musical commentary that captured this new culture. Tropical rhythms thus contaminated the universe of soundtracks, becoming the cornerstone of the productions of all the Italian maestros.
In 1952, years before the Rugantino episode, a then very young Armando Trovajoli, called to contribute to Nino Rota’s soundtrack for Alberto Lattuada’s film Anna, wrote ‘El Negro Zumbon’. The composition is a baião, a genre from the Brazilian tradition, which forever revolutionised the way dance music was conceived when applied to cinema.
More than sixty years later, the collection TROPICALE – When La Dolce Vita discovered Exotica, Calypso, Mambo, Samba and other tropical rhythms (1959-1969) curated by CAM Sugar rediscovers for the first time this elective affinity between Italian cinema and tropical rhythms. Across 26 tracks by the likes of Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Armando Trovajoli, Piero Umiliani, Luis Bacalov and many others, the album offers an unprecedented compendium from the tropical-edged repertoire of the CAM Sugar archive. The outcome is a collection that, although firmly retaining its cultural roots in the golden age of Italian cinema, sounds surprisingly fresh, when thinking of the influence that these genres continue to exert on contemporary productions and chart busters.
Spanning across cha cha cha, Latin jazz, mambo, bossa and samba, TROPICALE lulls us under the beach umbrella but equally drags us onto the dance floor. A reminder that there was a time when all you had to do was slide a token into the jukebox to dream of turning the Italian Riviera into a Brazilian or Caribbean beach.
On the album we find calypso for comedies and mambo for Italian spy movies, cha cha for art-house cinema and voodoo dances for erotic thrillers. We discover Pier Paolo Pasolini and Michelangelo Antonioni’s fascination for tropical rhythms, as well as a whole minor production of Italian cinema gems that CAM Sugar is bringing back to light, with a dedicated remastering work from the archival tapes.
TROPICALE – When La Dolce Vita discovered Exotica, Calypso, Mambo, Samba and other tropical rhythms (1959-1969) is out everywhere on June 21st, with the 2LP Gatefold and CD Digipak available to order on camsugarmusic.com
Opening image: TROPICALE – When La Dolce Vita discovered Exotica, Calypso, Mambo, Samba and other tropical rhythms (1959-1969) artwork by Riccardo Corda.