TROPICALE: When the Dolce Vita discovered exotica, calypso, mambo, samba and other tropical rhythms (1959–1969)

Tropicale is the explosion of joy of the Italian economic miracle, the promise of distant destinations becoming all of a sudden tangible, the illusion of a taboo world where everything seems possible.

Through rare and unreleased cuts from the CAM Sugar archive, Tropicale traces the incendiary liaisons between Italian film music and tropical culture in the 1960s across bossa nova, samba, Latin jazz, exotica, calypso, mambo and other tropical rhythms.

Featuring music by the likes of Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Bruno Nicolai, Armando Trovajoli and many more cult composers, the collection stands as the dancing side of the Dolce Vita years when Italian cinema, and society as a whole, looked for escapism via exotic music, design and lifestyle.

Across 26 tracks, the South-American and Caribbean soundscapes meet with the flamboyance of Italian jazz resulting in a one-of-a-kind hybrid of Mediterranean and Latin melodies and sensitivities, bursting with congas, igniting percussion, tense double-bass riffs, horns and uplifting drum breaks.

The collection stands as a testament of the fascination Italian cinema developed for tropical sounds, equally applied to carefree comedies and high-browed essai cinema from the likes of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Tropicale includes 26 tracks, 8 of which are completely unreleased and 13 never before published in digital format.

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