Canzoni d’Africa playlist

Songs about Africa

This is the third (and will not be the last) playlist we dedicate to songs about the 1935-1936 African Campaign, bearing witness to how crucial it was for the fascist regime to amplify and build consensus around the conquest of Ethiopia. And the songs played their part, in decidedly large numbers and involving the most popular voices of the time. The remoteness of the front from the homeland encouraged compositions in the form of letters, trying to reassure the women of the family primarily, mothers first, and then wives or girlfriends, who are assured, on the one hand, of a victorious return, and on the other, that she is always on his mind, even at a distance. Songs that exalt enthusiasm for a campaign in which the departing soldiers do not allow for uncertainties. And there are abundant evocations of places destined to become mythical in the official narrative of the enterprise, such as Addis Ababa, Adua, Macallè. The playlist ends with an instrumental piece, La bella di Ethiopia, a tango performed by Nullo Romani’s orchestra, and who knows whether someone may even have managed to dance to it on Abyssinian soil.