The Origins of Italodisco

hile italodisco provides an interesting case for examining the global trajectories of post-disco music, a proper discussion of this genre has yet to take place. Italian electronic dance music of the early 1980s is cited in the context of Eurodisco and synth-pop styles being absorbed into the North American club scene, and as a contributing factor to the evolution of house and techno in Chicago and Detroit. However, anthologizations of Italodisco are often done from the perspective of the genre’s subsequent rehabilitation rather than its initial production and dissemination. Most writers tend to conflate 1970s Italian disco, mostly created by conservatory-trained arrangers, with the fully electronic post-disco tracks that emerged from Italy in the 1980s, often produced by self-taught musicians on behalf of record wholesalers. Another misconception is the presence of a national cultural component, as in references to “Italianness.” In Italy, however, italodisco has only recently been called such, decades after the term was used abroad; on the contrary, the producers’ intention was to project an image of stateless cosmopolitanism as a strategy to increase their competitiveness in the global music market. This chapter will help to define the origins and the evolution of italodisco, which today is being re-authenticated and appropriated both within broader retromaniacal trends and by artists who situate themselves within an italodisco heritage or renaissance, in the light of a recirculation of post-disco genres, and as a process of symbolic construction of Italianicity as seen from abroad within the flows of cultural globalization.