“Eiar Eiar Alalà”: songs on the radio in the twenty years

2024 is a year of homegrown media anniversaries. Italian television is seventy years old, given that the first regular Rai broadcasts date back to 1954. Radio broadcasts, on the other hand, are just a century old given that the Uri, Italian Radio Union, was founded in 1924. One hundred years ago, however, radio was still a privilege for a few given that in the second half of the 1920s there were only just over 40 thousand users in the national territory while the few existing broadcasters broadcast very few hours a day. The development of new broadcasters and the diffusion of radio devices required direct intervention from the fascist regime, which saw radio as a useful propaganda tool. Thus in 1927 the Eiar, Italian radio audition body (the ancestor of the RAI), was founded, a state body that had the aim of making radio broadcasts popular. Furthermore, the regime launched some projects to spread radio sets. The “Rural Radio” project, inaugurated in 1931, aimed for example at spreading radio outside urban environments by providing farmers with thousands of radio sets. In the cities, however, the "Radio Balilla" was widespread, a radio set made by the best companies. It was a simple radio, inexpensive (and payable in installments), and was not capable of receiving from abroad, thus avoiding interference with fascist policies.

The increase in the number of devices was also accompanied by richer programming, aimed at a varied and socially differentiated audience. In 1929 the first radio dramas were broadcast and the following year the first radio newspaper, the "Giornale parlatto", began: fascist propaganda thus made its entry on Italian frequencies, which however also included journalistic columns and reports on the main sporting events ( such as the Giro d'Italia and the football championship). In 1933, “Cronache del regime” was inaugurated, a program dedicated to the story of the fascist exploits and conquests of the regime.

Above all, as Franco Zanetti and Federico Pistone tell us in their “Eiar Eiar Alalà” (Baldini+Castoldi, 2024, pp. 368) , with the birth of the state radio organization, Italians discovered the radio as a means of entertainment . Radio plays, farces, light shows and, above all, songs invaded the airwaves. It is no coincidence that the production of songs in the first two decades - 1924/1944 - of the life of national radio was abundant and, often, of excellent quality. A production unfortunately often forgotten, because it was accused, in a too generic way, of being an instrument of mass distraction in the hands of the fascist regime. It is no coincidence that the anti-fascists called the state broadcaster, guilty of subservience to fascism, "Eiar Eiar Alalà", thus distorting the motto "Eia Eia Alalà", coined by Gabriele D'Annunzio already during the Great War to replace the "barbaric hip hip hooray”, and later enthusiastically adopted by the regime.

However, Zanetti and Pistone remind us that the radios of the time, alongside songs that are unplayable today such as "L'ha dice Mussolini" or "Ho scrotte ar Duce", broadcast unforgettable and unforgotten masterpieces. Any titles? “A thousand lire a month”, “Lili Marleen”, “Speak to me about love Mariù”, “Mamma” and many others. In fact, the pages of the book present 130 of the songs that accompanied, through the radio and records, the life of Italians in those years , recounting their daily lives, dreams, desires, fears and passions. Each song is accompanied by a sheet that introduces the authors and performers, describes the composition of the music and the development of the text, and places the song in the historical context of the period in which it was written, recorded and broadcast. In the volume there are also QR Codes that allow you to listen to some of the songs in the version of the vocal trio Sorelle Marinetti. What are you saying? Shall we turn on the radio?