“ZYX music”. The continental chronicle of Italo disco

Italo disco, as a field of musical production, has frequently been described as the missing link between Disco and the alternative electronic dancing scenes which developed in America in the late eighties. Its extreme vitality throughout a period of eight years (1979-1986) is evidenced by a very large range of productions, bearing proof to its continued existence. Certainly Italo disco has lent itself to such purpose and it is this very capacity which is at issue, because Italo disco did not possess any of the features which would have made it an efficacious operator of collective subcultural practice. Though a minor and deviant genre, it was also evidently a by-product of the consumer society without subcultural legitimacy, and could not claim for itself any authenticity. Nor did it endeavor to do so, thereby circumventing and problematizing the underground/mainstream dichotomy. All attempts at defining it as a genre have been thwarted by the complex criss-crossing of influences and interactions which fragment its supposed unity. But pragmatically, and to all purposes, the label Italo disco has obtained and generated a consensus around it, making it possible for listeners and users to communicate through it. Accordingly, it might be more conducive to a scholarly assessment to envisage Italo disco as a discursive arrangement, an operator in the structuration of subcultural constructs.