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I Watussi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

David Forgacs
David Forgacs*
Affiliation:
Department of Italian Studies, New York University, New York, USA
*
∗Email: david.forgacs@nyu.edu
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Abstract

The article reflects on the ‘absent connection’ between the fictional Watussi of the Italian hit song of 1963 and the real Tutsi, many of whom had fled Rwanda at that time to escape violence from the ascendant Hutu majority in the last years of Belgian rule. It considers the song's long afterlife and the stubborn persistence, decades later, of comic stereotypes of ‘Africans’ in Italian popular culture despite the growing number of African migrants and their children in Italian society.

Keywords

TutsiRwandaCongopopular culturestereotypes
Type
Research Note
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 437 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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