Guarda Come Dondolo

Song of the Day 09/30/2022

Guarda Come Dondolo by Edoardo Vianello

Guarda come dondolo directly translates to ‘watch how I swing’ and was made famous by the popular singer Edoardo Vianello, whose cinematic tunes have been included in the soundtracks of over 60 films. He was considered one of the most popular Italian musicians of the 1960s. 

Vianello was born in Rome in 1938. I often forget how so many of the European artists of the 60s spent their infancy and adolescence amid fascism and war, only to end up living out their teenage years in states of post-war depression. Surprisingly, there’s not much pain nor suffering to be found in Vianello’s oeuvre. Instead, one gets the impression that his work exists in a realm of fantasy, escapism, a destination compartmentalized from the sorrows of post-war Europe, post-Mussolini Italy—a fanciful safe-haven of sorts, where despite recent history, joy and whim are possible. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that; while history is often grotesque, music is a refuge. 

It’s nice to be reminded now and then that the fruit of an artist’s labor doesn’t need to stem from a reflection of the past or an interpretation of the present. Music, art, film, whatever, can be something entirely novel, different, allowing its audience a new, perhaps more cheerful perspective. It’s often not the world that dictates art, but the other way around. The artists who created the music of the 60s did more to shape the future than we realize.