Thursday 13 June 2024, at 6 pm, at the Civic Library of Varese, in via Sacco 9, Franco Zanetti, author together with Federico Pistone of the volume “Eiar Eiar Alalà. Songs on the Radio 1924-1944″ (Baldini+Castoldi, 2024), will dialogue with Diego Pisati, journalist from «Prealpina».
Franco Zanetti, journalist, director of «www.rockol.it» has always been involved in music and entertainment, collaborating with dozens of newspapers, writing books and translating many others and is considered one of the greatest Italian experts on the Beatles. With Federico Pistone, journalist of the «Corriere della Sera», he analyzed the most famous songs broadcast by the Eiar (Italian radio audition organization) over the course of two decades: from 1924 (date of birth, one hundred years ago, of the national radio) to 1944.
The title of the volume, Eiar Eiar Alalà, wants to underline the role that this new tool of mass communication had in the construction of consensus by the fascist regime. In its pages, the reader will be able to find 130 songs, some of which are still very well known today (such as Bambina inamorata, Parlami d’amore Mariù, Ba ba kiss me little one, Fiorin fiorello, Don’t forget me, I would like you only for one hour), songs that accompanied, through the radio and records, the life of the Italians of those years. For each one, a sheet presents the authors and performers, describes the composition of the music and the development of the text and places it in the historical context in which they were written, recorded and disseminated. Songs so popular and rooted in widespread culture that in some cases they have been reinterpreted in an anti-fascist vein.
The journalist Diego Pisati, a great music expert and authoritative author of the cultural pages of the newspaper «La Prealpina», will dialogue with Franco Zanetti.
“Eiar, eiar, alalà”, a book recounts twenty years of songs on the radio
