From the Archives: Disco Sanremo (1976 -- 1979)

The rise of disco music culture at Italy’s most popular music event of the year.

This post was originally published in February 2024.

As the oldest and most followed platform for popular music tradition in Italy and the direct inspiration for continental (and now global) sensation Eurovision, the Sanremo Music Festival is still standing after more than 70 years from its first edition in 1951. Ever since its inception, its stage has been a mirror not only for the musical trends du jour but also for social, political and most importantly fashion changes of the country through the decades. 

One can clearly distill the melodic fil rouge that makes a song sound typically “sanremese”. If you listen to most winning entries from the 1950s till the 2020s, you’ll clearly single out the main ingredients: slow ballads, vocal virtuosity, catchy melodies and (somehow individual or collective) relevant, or otherwise, simply memorable lyrics. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but if you compare the first winning song, Nilla Pizzi’s “Grazie dei fior” from 1951, and last year’s “Due Vite” by Marco Mengoni, you would hardly believe that these songs stand more than 70 years apart. You might think that the canzone italiana is impervious to evolution.

Thankfully, innovation and rule breaking can be found in the hundreds of songs that never made the podium, many of which have been unjustly forgotten or overlooked - or that have triumphed thanks to record sales. Just like every other “new” genre that has had some form of commercial success, disco music started lurking onto Sanremo’s stage in the mid 70s and had to fight its way into it, trying to co-exist with the traditional melodic pop style that is now considered the typical “sanremese” fare. All of this happened while Italy faced political storms with kidnappings, murders, terrorist threats and inflation. It is perhaps to distract people from the grim reality, that Italian TV truly mastered in the late 70s the art of crafting a variety show.

1976

Winds of innovations towards disco and electronic music on the stage of Sanremo can be traced back to 1976. The band Daniel Sentacruz Ensemble, still riding on the wave of success of the track “Soleado” from the 1974 competition, performed “Linda Bella Linda”, a blend of pop and chanson, with a lurking disco beat that showed how young generations of musicians and listeners were ready to leave the introspective mood dominating the festival and were ready to open up to the world, to come together and dance. 

The year 1976 also marked the rise of synth music. Technology came to the rescue with the integration of machines with the traditional instruments to welcome a new era in music. Italian producer, singer and composer Toto Cutugno and the founder of the band called Albatros (as if to indicate that synth music represented the rebirth of music from the ashes of traditions) presented the magical “Volo AZ 504”. Though not disco in its DNA, with its spoken words and blaring lead synth, “Volo” opens the door of the festival to new expressions in music, in the attempt to keep the interest of young consumers. 

1977

The 1977 edition of the festival is mostly a sequence of classic pop, heartbreaking, yawn- inducing ballads about love and its many joys and problems. 

The only interesting acts were the band Matia Bazar that veered toward disco rhythms with “Ma Perchè”; Albatros came back with “Gran Premio” , while the iconic Donatella Rettore debuted with the track “Carmela” throwing “poisoned” candy from the stage during her live performance. The lyrics of the song feature homoerotic hints, mentioning male soldiers holding their guns in their hand and meeting secretly at night to make love. 

Donatella was already displaying her irreverent and revolutionary approach to music, which peaked in 1979 with the release of “Splendido Splendente”, a disco track about cosmetic surgery and gender identity. 

International acts making an appearance as guests during the 1977 Sanremo Music Festival include Barry White, Rick Dees, and the Belgian Eurodisco act Chocolat’s, who performed a medley of their most famous tropical-inflected hits, including “La chatte à la voisine” and “Brasilia Carnaval.” Chocolat’s performance never made it on air, though: due to timing constraints, RAI cut off its recording before they went onstage. 

1978

A pivotal moment for Sanremo’s festival came in 1978, thanks to the musical direction of Paolo Zavallone (aka El Pasador), who was quite keen on the new trends that were clearly developing not only in music but also in style and fashion. During this edition Anna Oxa made her debut on stage with a look curated by artist Ivan Cattaneo, sporting a stage persona that played with gender identity and rebellion. Her performance of the song “Un’emozione da poco” polarized the audience and made the festival a platform where artists could dare and be provocative about social and political issues. Magazines and newspapers made Oxa the symbol of a degenerate youth, lost and without any ideology. However Anna’s move was the reverb of a bigger change, triggered the year before with the movie “Saturday Night Fever”.

Young generations were stepping away from the collective awareness of a broken society, to an individual desire to be at the center of  their own existence. If in the late 60s youngsters used to meet and interact at social centers or political protests, in the late 70s they convene at the discotheque, surrounded by mirrors where all they could see was themselves in smoke and colored neons. 

In 1978 Sanremo also welcomed iconic international artists like Asha Puthli, singing “The Devil is Loose”, Grace Jones with “La Vie En Rose”, and Sheila B. Devotion with a disco version of “Singin’ In The Rain”. Diversity, eroticism and disco culture are clearly conquering popular culture. The jury is still out on how receptive the live audience was to such innovative bands. For instance, when Belle Epoque performed a live version of “Bamalama,” riding the coattails of “Black Is Black,” the audience barely batted an eye at its frantic, borderline Dionysian beat, or at the lyrics that overtly celebrated drugs, bondage, intoxication, and rough sex. 

1979

1979 perhaps marks the triumph of disco and electronic culture on the stage of Sanremo. First, the band Ayx recreated an actual discothèque-like dancefloor on stage with approximately 30 dancers moving to the beat of their “Ayx Disco”, all dressed in some super heroes of the night attire. The French band Il Etait Une Fois debuted with the slow beat and super chic “Impazzirò”. Enzo Carella with his iconic performance of the song “Barbara” brought a disco-infused ballad in the main competition.  

On the other side of the spectrum, the influence of Kraftwerk on Italian composers and producers shone through through “New York” a song performed by Lorella Pescerelli, with a stunningly beautiful arrangement supporting her lyrical dream to move to New York and become a star (another effect of the disco fever coming from the United States and taking over Italian youths).

We can say that by the 1979 edition of the festival, disco had had some influence on most of the participating artists, with a list of songs that were a balance between the traditional Italian love songs and the more upbeat compositions. Some bands such as Grimm, Collage and I Camaleonti,  also changed their style of singing that is definitely evocative of Bee Gees in the soundtrack of “Saturday Night Fever” vocalizing over faster BPM tracks, reflecting once again, that disco was the bridge not only to higher record sales but also to the future. 

The momentous Disco Demolition Night in July 1979 had barely any reverberations in the European music panorama. On the contrary, varieties and sub-genres of Eurodisco would continue to flourish, and, going into the 1980s, Sanremo would host even more memorable disco acts.