🎻 Ethnic and folk music — Italian

Italian music combines an immense regional heritage with an art-music tradition that profoundly shaped European history. Italian opera, exemplified by Rossini, Verdi, Puccini and Bellini, spread the Italian language and vocal techniques throughout the world. Neapolitan song, Sardinian chants, southern tarantellas, Alpine traditions and regional dance music, however, each have distinct histories. The Sanremo Festival, founded in 1951, plays a central role in Italian popular song but is not itself a musical genre. Pop, rock, rap, trap, singer-songwriter chanson and electronic music today form a particularly active scene.