Raccontare la città a suon di musica: dalle la la lands agli hoods nella musica popolare statunitense

Narrating the City through Music: From the la la lands to the hoods in US Popular Music. The paper aims to highlight the potential of songs to tell places, not only through song lyrics, but also through musical genre. To this end, it takes as an example the difference between the different ways of representing the city that characterise different musical genres, such as jazz (which is often accompanied by a positive image of the city) and rap (which, on the contrary, generally presents a negative image of the city). The focus is on the US music scene. After briefly introducing the different ways in which music and the city are related, we will first analyse the image of the city, or rather of a number of specific cities, offered by jazz music and then the role of cinema in reinforcing the association between jazz music and the urban image. Finally, some examples of rap music and related cinematography will be examined.