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In the summer, gelato is my favorite guilty pleasure. And because sin a curiosity go hand in hand, whee I go to Italy I try out as many tastes of gelato as I can. But did you know that gelato has always been at the center of a moral debate? And that Italian popular music has always sung about its “wicked” sides? Mina, Bobby Solo, Paolo Conte, Fedez, Gianna Nannini, and Bugo are just some of the singers that for about one hundred years have played with gelato’s testes, freshness, sweetness, and sensuality.

Er cono gelato (1937)

Vittorio Senzani (autori: De Paolis – Bertini)

In 1937 the only remedy for “la callaccia” (the heat) of those who burn with love and try to run from “er peccato” (sin) is Er cono gelato (Ice cream cone). Vittorio Senzani praises the latest “ritrovato” (discovery) to restore body and soul. per ristorare corpi e anime. 

By the early 20th century, gelato and sin have already shared a long history together. In 1780, John Moore, an English doctor living in Naples, states that frozen desserts threaten social order as much as alcohol. (Calaresu 2013:51) A little bit more than a century later, conservative authorities in Glasgow, Scotland, consider gelato the epitome of lust (McKee 201), so much so that they tried to close down all gelato shops owned by Italian immigrants.

This moral tension double when you think that Er cono gelato comes out during Fascism. The regime’s propaganda’s officially at war with foreign music, which they considered “perverted,” above all music with African-American and Latin-American influences like jazz and blues. However, the audience loves rhythms and melodies coming from the other side of the ocean. So, just like Scottish authorities had to allow the sale of the “sinful” dessert, Fascist authorities had to let foreign music go ahead. (Tomatis, 36)  And jazz and blues became key to the development and functioning of Italian music industry of those years.

But American impact weighs on another front, too: gelato industrial production. Since the end of the 19th century, Pellegrino Artusi, regarded as the father of Italian national culinary tradition, Le macchine per la produzione industriale del gelato, di fabbricazione americana erano consigliate già da Pellegrino Artusi, considerato il padre della tradizione culinaria nazionale. Per la diffusione di macchine per la produzione industriale del gelato si dovrà aspettare la fine della Prima Guerra Mondiale, ma già nel 1928, numerose fabbriche statali e private competevano nella produzione del ghiaccio artificiale e prodotti derivati. (CAPATTI et al 2003:260)

Se mi compri un gelato (1964)

Mina

When sexual liberation movements boom, songs excite instincts instead of freeizing them. Once again, ice cream holds the spotlight. In 1964, Mina promises her lover:

Se mi compri un gelato,
Con le labbra ghiacciate così,
A cuore a cuore, ti bacerò.

(If you buy me an ice cream,
with my frozen lips, like this,
heart to heart, I’ll kiss you.)

Festivalbar, one of the most popular Italian song festivals in the summer, starts that year, and Sergio Liberovici, Michele Straniero, Emilio Jona e Giorgio De Maria publishe Le canzoni della cattiva coscienza (Dirty conscience songs). Mina’s song—written by Piero Soffici, who authored also the hits Stessa spiaggia, stesso mare (1963)—comes out also in Spanish and Japanese. And in 1998, film director Gianni Amelio uses it as the soundtrack for his film Così ridevano.

During the first two decades after WWII, Itlaian industrial confectionery is developing fast. Since 1950, Algida and Motta—two of the biggest players in the sector—had marketed industrial gelato. In 1951, Motta starts producing posicles, and in 1955, both Algida and Motta begin the production of ice cream cones and cookies. At the same time, refrigeretors enter Italian households for the first time and homemade gelato slowly disappears. (CAPATTI et al 2003:271)

From the 1970s and the early 1980s, songs featuring gelato boom with artists coming from different genres—from rock to progressive rock, and from pop to jass to Neapolitan melodic music—and expliring all different tastes and combinations.

In 1977, Alberto Camerini offers a Gelato metropolitano (Metro gelato) “easy to digest for everyone, old and young, tutti frutti, signed Alberto Camerini, nutricious, digestive, tonic, and energizing.”

Gelato Metropolitano (1977)

Alberto Camerini

With his cheerful guitar, Camerini provides the widest assortment of ice creams of all Italian music.

Banana, fragola e limone, arcobaleno zabajone, crema gel al tuttifrutti, stracciatella col biscotto,
panna in coppa, candelotto, fior di latte clandestino, un bel cono col pistacchio, zut, vaniglia torroncino babà deflagrante con nocciola latitante, verde menta alla granita, al caffè non è finita,
pesca, albicocca, ananas e dolce in bocca, tupamaro, grock schiacciato, colorato è il mio gelato.

Gelato’s good qualities (vitality, nutrition) attract everyone: its moral standing is out of the woods.

During the same period, some artists use gelato as Marcel Proust’s madeleines. From Lucio Battisti’s I Giardini di marzo (1972) to Maxophone’s Cono di gelato (1977) to Nino D’Angelo Nu’ gelato e nu’ caffè (1979).

I giardini di marzo (1972)

Lucio Battisti

Cono Di Gelato (1977)

Maxophone

Nu Gelato e Nu Café (1979)

Nino D’Angelo

From the album Umanamente uomo: il sogno, Battisti’s single sings about a child awkwardness and his family financial struggles. On the other hand, Maxophone’s and D’Angelo’s songs are about memories of past loves.

All three of them have fully absorbed the highbrow criticism of the 1950s, when the cultural elites looked at Italian popular songs as nothing more than keepsakes instead of cultural products worth of critical consideration.

Jazz composer, player, and singer Paolo Conte drives us away from these atmospheres with his 1979 Un gelato al limon (Lemon ice cream).

Un gelato al limon (1979)

Paolo Conte

Conte distances himself from D’Angelo’s quiet everday life, Maxhophone’s reminiscence, or Battististi’s haunting demons. Instead, he makes us dive in an extravagant, surreal, romantic atmosphere, where the lemon ice cream, which echoes throughout the piece, goes along with “the sensuality of desperate lives” who travel with a “suitcase full of uncertainty.” Awarded the Montale prize for poetry, Conte works on the album containing this song with the members of Premiata Forneria Marconi, guitarist Franco Mussida, bass player Patrick Djivas, percussionist Walter Calloni.

1980 is the year of Pupo’s Gelato al cioccolato (Chocolate ice cream). Together with Conte’s Gelato al limon, this is one of the most famous Italian songs revolving around gelato. Pupo’s second single, written by Clara Miozzi e Cristiano Malgioglio, turns gelato into the symbol for the object of sexual desire. The song talks about Malgioglio’s brief relationship with a young man from North Africa. However, the truth about it came out just a few years ago, because singing about non-heterosexual intercourse would have probably triggered moral panic in Italy in the 1980s (and probably even today).

Gelato al cioccolato (1980)

Pupo

In 1984, Gianna Nannini reaches national and international succes with Fotoromanza, singing about love like a “un gelato al veleno” (poison ice cream). The song talks about a toxic relationship where two partners engage in a battle for power rather than exchanging tenderness and romance. Michelangelo Antonioni shots its promotional video, and making this one of the most famous partneships between music and cinema in Italian popular music.

Fotoromanza (1984)

Gianna Nannini

With Fotoromanza, Nannini wins the Festivalbar, Vota la voce, and the golden Telegatto (best lyrics of the year), and Puzzle, her album, leads the hit lists for several weeks in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Come un gelato all’equatore (1999)

Pino Daniele

With his album Come un gelato all’equatore (Like an ice cream at the equator), Pino Daniele carries us away from Conte’s surreal atmosphere and Nannini’s toxic relationships. He also leaves behind the sounds of Napule’s Power, with which he produced hits such as Pino Daniele (1979), Nero a metà (1980), and Vai mo’ (1981). These albums define Daniele’s style, which he labelled “tarumbò,” i.e. a mix of tarantella and blues. Come un gelato all’equatore leans more towards commercial pop, but we can still enjoy his unique voice and guitar. Like Nino D’angelo, Pino Daniele couples savoring ice crem with making dreamy, summer love. But it should take us by surprise. In 1775, Neapolitan writer Filippo Baldini publishes his first long essay on gelato stating that “this product comes out of the most refines human mind” and is the effect of a well-ordered society. (QUINZIO 2009:51 e Calaresu 2013:62)

We enter the twenty-first century with a nihilist song by Bugo. Gelato has no flavor and no meaning, only color. In Gelato giallo (Yellow ice cream), “nothing can touch us,” “nothing can scratch us.” Bugo’s frozen relationship with reality leaves us bouncing off of shapes whose meaning is evanescent and fully relativized.

Gelato giallo (2006)

Bugo

During the past ten years, rap, hip hop, and ultimately trap music have fully gained popular recognition in Italy. Three artists have talked about gelato and its moral tensions: Fedez, the Dark Polo Gang, and Samuel Heron (featuring The Kolors).

Cono gelato (2017)

Dark Polo Gang

Drawing from characteristic themes of this style, Tony Effe, Wayne Santana, and Dark Pyrex sing, wear, and show off all the symbols linked to popularity and success (golden chains, cash, exotic cars, sex). Predictably, they make gelato as a symbol for oral sex—making Glasgow nineteenth-century administration shout “I told you so!” from their graves—and displaying their feelingless materialism.

On the other hand, Fedez plays the Ice cream pusher (2011), who sells a wide range of exit tastes, from marijuana to ketamine to heroin. He sprinkles his song with a little bit of irony to mix his brand new, psychedelic flavors—conveniently hidden in the false bottom of his cart—with renowned brands and tastes. But the ice cream pusher feels above any moral code withholding him from selling drugs in a park where there are kids playing:

Non venirmi a fare
La morale
Che pure tua madre è scesa per acquistare

(Don’t talk to me about ethics
Since even your mother has come down to buy.)

Ice cream pusher (2011)

Fedez

Fedez, however, is not Frankie hi-nrg, and and his lyrics don’t have either the moral tension or the social critique of Quelli che ben pensano (Prigs, 1997). I don’t wan to be like “cultural whipper” Michele Molina who brushes off all trap music sostenendo che non è musica, è rumore per smartphone. Questa, come molte altre che abbiamo ascoltato, rientra senza dubbio nella categoria della musica commerciale in cui la natura tecnica dei mezzi di produzione influenza in modo determinante il prodotto finale. Già nel 1964, Umberto Eco, criticava il tono polemico  di chi definiva questa musica “gastronomica” (Eco 1964, 213). E sosteneva che non soltanto ogni musica, ogni arte, utilizza delle tecnologie le quali non tolgono nulla alla creatività umana, anzi la spingono in nuove direzioni. Difatti, affermava il filosofo, grazie ai nuovi mezzi tecnici di registrazione si possono raggiungere “risultati estetici non di rado interessanti.” (Eco 1964, 236)

Chiudo questa rassegna sulla storia del gelato nella musica italiana con Samuel Heron e i The Kolors. Staccandosi da queste atmosfere edoniste e oscure, ci riportano nel clima spensierato di un sabato sera estivo pieno di musica, ballo, amore e gelato al limone (che loro non prendono mai!).

Nella pancia della balena (2020)

Samuel Heron – feat The Kolors

What ice cream do you like the most? And what song did you enjoy the most (or the least)? Do you know any other song about gelato?

Further Reading

Calaresu, M. 2013. “Making and Eating Ice Cream in Naples: Rethinking Consumption and Sociability in the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present 220 (1): 35–78. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtt018.

Capatti, Alberto, Massimo Montanari, and Aine O’Healy. 2003. “Science and Technology in the Kitchen.” In Italian Cuisine, 243–72. A Cultural History. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/capa12232.12.

Caselli, Roberto. Storia della canzone italiana. Milano: Hoepli, 2018.

Fox, Dorian. 2015. “Affogato.” Gastronomica 15 (3): 64–66. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2015.15.3.64.

Mitchell, Tony. 2007. “Paolo Conte: Italian ‘Arthouse Exotic.’” Popular Music 26 (3): 489–96.

McKee, Francis. “Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1991.” n.d., 337.

Quinzio, Jeri. 2009a. “Ingenious Foreigners and Others.” In Of Sugar and Snow, 1st ed., 50–74. A History of Ice Cream Making. University of California Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw39d.7.

———. 2009b. “The Land of Ice Cream.” In Of Sugar and Snow, 1st ed., 75–102. A History of Ice Cream Making. University of California Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw39d.8.

Scholten, Elke, Miriam Peters, and Jeffrey Steingarten. 2012. “ICE CREAM UNLIMITED:: The Possibilities of Ingredient Pairing.” In The Kitchen as Laboratory, edited by César Vega, Job Ubbink, and Erik van der Linden, 123–33. Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking. Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/vega15344.22.

Tarantino, Maria, and Sabina Terziani. 2010. “A Journey into the Imaginary of Sicilian Pastry.” Gastronomica 10 (3): 45–51. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2010.10.3.45.

Tomatis, Jacopo. Storia culturale della canzone italiana. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2019.