19th century migration from Europe was the other side of the picture
from nation building and the rise of nationalism. Between 1870 and 1930,
the age of mass migration, about twenty million people left Italy, a
quarter of them for South America. During this era, Italian music and
Italian musicians, already present in South America since the mid-16th
century, became important and outstanding actors in musical culture all
over the subcontinent. They brought along with them their folkloric and
popular music and dance repertoires, customs and genres, transforming
and developing them in their new habitats. In the present volume,
musicologists and literature scholars from both Europe and America shed
light on different forms of interrelations between Italian migration and
urban musical culture in Latin America, from the 16th century through
the age of mass migration up until the present day, from Tarantella
through Tango to Chilean Pop.