The REDIRE database documents over 900 records from the Italian Fascist regime (1922–1943), exploring the use of phonographic recordings for propaganda and their role in totalitarian culture. Part of the EU Horizon 2022 Marie Skłodowska-Curie project (grant 101105514), REDIRE supports critical research into the history and media of fascism.
This database is part of the REDIRE (Recorded Sound Propaganda of the Italian Fascist Regime) project, which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2022 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101105514.
The REDIRE database gathers information on over 900 records produced during the 20 years of the Italian Fascist regime (1922-1943) by record companies based in Italy. It is part of a research project into the use of the record by Fascist propaganda, which expressed the totalitarianism, imperialism, racism, political violence and cult of the leader, of the State that benefited from it. A tool for scientific investigation and the result of critical research into the history of the Italian Fascist regime (particularly its violent and criminal dimension), the REDIRE database is not intended to exist as a remembrance site for those nostalgic for this regime and the political movements that preceded or followed it. Texts explaining the connection of the records and their contents with the fascist imagination are offered as often as possible within the datasets, in order to better understand the construction and political aims of these propaganda recordings.
The REDIRE database exhibits a surprisingly vast corpus of discs. By bringing this corpus to light, its aim is to better understand the history and functioning of Fascist sound propaganda. Firstly, it shows that the major international and Italian record companies, many of which continued to exist after the fall of the regime, participated massively in Fascist propaganda. Secondly, it questions what recorded sound propaganda is when it is conceived in a totalitarian context. In the REDIRE database, we find not only explicit recordings of political songs, but also implicit ones that accompany fascist policies or the fascist imaginary, without actually referring to them. These recordings testify to fascism's ability to invade all aspects of life in an attempt to shape it strictly according to its ideological framework. The REDIRE database thus shows the thematic scope of Fascist sound propaganda, or rather the declension of the same imaginary in the fields of schooling, the First and Second World Wars, the wars in Ethiopia and Spain, the founding of the Empire (Italian East Africa), Italian civilization, and so on.
The REDIRE database is not exhaustive (some records have disappeared or been missed), and may contain errors, particularly as concerns dates. Its sources (record catalogs, newspapers, library catalogs) are sometimes vague. Yet it opens up a perspective on how records were used to infuse politics into Italian mass sound culture. This is already the case through the style of propaganda songs; music that is often light, joyful, mixed with military accents, sung by men with proven lyrical skills and accompanied by fine orchestras. This is also the case with records featuring one of these propaganda songs on one side, and a non-political song on the other: as both are presented on the record as equivalent, the non-political song naturalizes the political song and, in turn, naturalizes fascism.
The REDIRE database and the project it is part of therefore aim to better consider the record and phonographic practices in research on Italian fascism and its mode of existence, as well as the political agentivity of sound and sound media. The database is freely accessible, and is open to suggestions and corrections from those who consult it.