Riccardo Schwamenthal, E lo chiamano Jazz…
(…And They Call It Jazz )
The project revolves around Jazz music – a genre whose roots reach deep into Blues and is directly linked with the rhythmic beats of the earth and of man’s labours. The core of the exhibition is a narrative by images of the time when Jazz music landed in Italy and became so popular that the world’s leading Jazz musicians, welcomed as stars, used to draw crowds in Milan’s night clubs. At the same time a whole generation of outstanding home-grown musicians were becoming established and branching out from Jazz into cinema and melodious singing. At the heart of the exhibit are the images created by Riccardo Schwamenthal, one of the leading eye-witnesses of that period. These form the basis of a narrative and exploratory journey made up of videos, special documentaries, infographics and sound tracks, created in consultation with Rocco Pandiani, designed to make as widely accessible as possible the story of an artistic sphere which, by definition, has always been regarded as elitist and out of reach for ordinary folk.
There is also a documentary section that takes a detailed look at how Jazz culture gained popularity in Reggio Emilia from the end of World War Two, with images and testimonies most of which are on public display for the first time.
