How Disco Uplifted Italian Queer Culture in the late 70's.

An examination of gay anthems and deep cuts coming in the Italian disco scene.

In the 70s and 80s queer culture in Italy grew and existed on two different levels. On one side, it lived hidden and underground, somehow secluded from the “normal” occurrences of daily life. It thrived in the nightclubs, in the dark alleys and cruising spots and in the ‘salotti’ where cultural elites would gather and socialize.  On the other it lived en plein air and vibrantly on Italian TV shows, music, film through artists, dancers, singers and sketches en travesti.

This was a mirror of the Italian mass/popular mentality and culture of the time, riding the wave of paradox. It was something that was reflected in every field of Italian life, from politics to entertainment, from the Parliament to the Vatican, from the more cosmopolitan and progressive cities to the rural, conservative areas . If queer culture was critiqued, ridiculed and condemned on the surface and in regular daily life, there was at the same time a deep fascination for it,  it was the manifestation of the forbidden fruit, embedded in the very DNA of Catholicism, oh so dear to Italy.

Many artists have built the very foundations of their careers on ideas and messages like gender identity, homosexuality or just plain drag play. Including Renato Zero, Amanda Lear, Cristiano Malgioglio, Anna Oxa, Ivan Cattaneo, Giuni Russo, Caterina Caselli and many more. Boys flaunting make-up and high heels, odes to polysexual intercourse, girls singing lyrics with masculine gender; they are all just the very tip of an iceberg that sits on top of an incredible and inspiring universe that Italian queer culture in entertainment was at the end of the 70s.

Of course the puzzle is immense and complex, and so many forces come into play. In this article we will explore some of the ‘minor’ artists - meaning less popular - that contributed and/or attempted at exposing the queer underground culture through disco music to a bigger audience. For the moment we will save the previously mentioned performers (Zero, Lear, Oxa, etc) for individual articles further down the road: Ivan Cattaneo alone would need an entire book for the revolution he started.

But before diving into the music,  it is important to underline that an instrumental accomplice to the growth in exposure and awareness of queer culture in Italy was disco music. In the mid ‘70s, Italy not only imported disco music from the US, but also its intrinsic culture and the values it stood for. Echoes of the social and cultural revolution ignited by the disco phenomenon in America, swept through Italy as well - from the bigger cities to the smallest villages. Music and dance as a vehicle of self expression and physical freedom became, in Italy too, the very matrix of gay culture starting from the early 70s. 

Hence disco (which at that time was not yet considered a genre per se, but rather a type of music that people could dance to at parties and in discotheques) became the platform for queer culture to come into the spotlight in all its sparkling glory. But it's never that simple, because even within that disco queer universe, there are many different ways to deal with the subject; so we have organized our heroes in different groups.

Russel Russel and Nadia Cassini at the club Easy Going in Rome, 1978

GROUP 1 - The real deal

This first group of artists are the ones that express their queer factor as self assertion without that touch of irony that was often used to deal with anything gay. The disco trio Easy Going, named after a trendy gay discotheque in downtown Rome, are among the first to be openly gay in Italy and sing about it. The producers were Giancarlo Meo together with Goblin's founder and frontman Claudio Simonetti,  with his label Banana Records. Easy Going formed in 1977 fronted by the Roman disco DJ Paul Micioni and 2 back up dancers Francesco Bonanni (resident DJ at the “Mais” club) and Ottavio Siniscalchi (light technician at “Mais” too). Their first single  “Baby I Love You” was played regularly at David Mancuso’s The Loft in New York. Their tracks across three albums from 1978 through 1980 are drenched with statements and innuendos about their homosexuality. A highlight is “Fear” released in 1979, where the singer threatens to rape his girlfriend to show her he is not gay, but then he changes his mind not caring if she thinks so. On the surface it’s a strange and absurd concept but not too far from the frustration many closeted gay men were living in those years in Italy.

Another intriguing artist is Cassandra, a temporary disco stunt of iconic Italian trans gender actress Eva Robin’s, who started her career as Amanda Lear ‘s backup singer in one of her tours.  In 1978 Eva/Cassandra  released the single “Disco Panther'' produced by Celso Valli and later featured in the movie Eva Man, the sexploitation cult movie starring Robin’s herself as a character who has two genders and gets entangled in a messy plot blending, science, thriller and sex. “Disco Panther” is an infectious disco track that features a Moroder-esque synth work and a wink to the famous Pink Panther theme melody - a very clever combo to mirror Eva’s feline-like nature. 

A more arcane figure in the Italian gay disco scene of the late 70’s is Eve Court who, in 1979, released an album called “Grazie, Amore!” written and produced by  pianist, composer and conductor Dino Siani. The album, preceded by the single “Phone Amour”, features the hidden gem called “Venere + X”, in which Eve describes herself as a creature coming from another world, becoming a woman next to the man she/he loves. As the track cannot be found anywhere, here is a remaster by our very own Disco Bambino.

Closing this first group is Leopoldo Mastelloni, actor, writer, singer, and incredible personality that surely needs more exposure for his sketches in drag brought on prime national TV. In 1978 Leopoldo presented on super popular TV Show “Domenica In” his single “Donna, tutto si fa per me” a disco version of an old Italian classic, where he plays with the idea of seduction and gender. 

GROUP 2 - The ironics

This second group of artists include the acts and production that celebrated the fun and colorful aspects of queer culture with a touch of harmless irony. Billy Moore and the brilliant “Go Dance” appeared for a split second on national TV, generating a lot of interest for the group and club play for the tracks. We spoke recently with Cesare Zucca, iconic  image maker and art director for many Italian artists through many decades, who was the creator of the Billy Moore performance group. “In the 70s, with the rise of disco music, labels hired session singers to sing over demos or instrumental tracks,” he told us in a phone interview “If the songs were well received by the audience and/or the DJs, then they would hire me to put together the performers that would go on TV or on tour to promote it”. In fact, after realizing that “Go Dance” started getting more and more attention from the audience, Zucca asked his friend’s boyfriend from Cuba to act as the lead singer, and three Italian drag queens as backup dancers - hired mainly because they could sow their own costumes and be creative at a low budget. 

Embodying the most tv and household-friendly aspect of flamboyance wereThe Sorelle Bandiera, a drag trio act formed by Adolfo Manzano Muñoz, Neil Hansen and Mauro Bronchi who became very popular in those years thanks to the song “Fatti Più in là”, the closing theme of TV show “L’altra Domenica”. In 1979, the “sisters” were the protagonists in the spy comedy L’importante è non farsi notare that featured a soundtrack with a few great disco tracks composed by Adriano Fabi. 

Group 3 - The ladies won’t have it

This closing group (for the moment) is dedicated to women who sing about falling in love with or intrigued by a gay man, a theme that seems to have been quite popular between the end of the 70s and the early 80s. “Un Po’ Gay” by Melissa Chimenti, is an incredibly underrated  pop disco track where she  sings about the idea of trying to have sex with a guy who is labeled as “slightly gay”. 

“Supergay” by Sonia Angento instead shows an obsession that she has with a guy who is only interested in other guys - “what would I do, just to have you”.

Finally, to close this group, we leap slightly forward into the 80s with another mysterious singer, Hildegard. In her highly sought after album “Alta Infedeltà”, she includes the beautiful track “Gay” which is an anthem to not being afraid to be gay. 

For the sake of transparency, we should note that, of course, these songs and artists might not meet today’s standards in terms of gender and orientation discourse, but that hardly matters. Additionally, all the aforementioned songs and artists mainly sang about gay men or, with the exception of Eva Robin’s, featured standard male-to-female drag performance. Sapphic themes were more widely accepted, as evinced in songs such as Virginie et Barbara "Viens" (100% Italian production despite the plastic french accent); Cecilia with "Ninna nanna di Saffo", Gianna Nannini with “L’America” and Antonietta Laterza with Le belle signore, though not properly disco tracks.