Musical Excursions in the Heart of Club Tenco. Song Aesthetics in Italy through the Rassegna della canzone d’autore

Since 1974, and to this day, the Club Tenco of Sanremo – an institution founded by music en- thusiasts in the wake of the suicide of singer-songwriter Luigi Tenco in 1967 – has organized the “Rassegna della canzone d’autore” (Auteur song festival), a gathering place for the canzone d’autore community. Through the discourses it has produced and disseminated over half a century through its publications, and through the “Rassegna” itself – still today the most important festival for Italian singer-songwriters – the Club Tenco has championed a problematic equation between authorship and aesthetic value, and has established itself as a fundamental gatekeeper of taste in the field of canzone. Studying the musicking of the Rassegna thus opens a door for investigating the processes through which popular music aesthetics are constructed in Italy. This article pre- sents an ethnography of the Club Tenco’s Rassegna della canzone d’autore based on observations and dialogues with participants – musicians, audience members, professionals – collected during repeated participations between 2007 and 2019. This methodological approach is integrated with research on documents in the Club Tenco archive (letters, press reviews, press releases, etc.), and dialogues with previous research.