Key Image: The Funk Off Band, an energetic jazz-in-the-street marching band during the Umbria Jazz Festival, 2024–25.

Umbria Jazz Feast — a Documentary Film PREMIERE
Directed by Alberto Guerri (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia / National Film School, Rome, Italy) and
Professor Pierpaolo Polzonetti (UC Davis)

What happens when Italian cuisine and wine are paired with global African music and served in a Medieval piazza in central Italy populated by local people, tourists, and migrants from the Global South? “Umbria Jazz Feast” is a research project that investigates multisensorial intersections during the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy. It presents a new look at this festival by addressing the question: how is jazz perceived as part of a new global identity intersecting with local and global cuisine, art, and culture?

Free

Umbria Jazz Feast is made possible by the generous support of the Eivind G. Lange ’77 and Mary G. Puma Engagement and Research in Italy Fund at the National Film School, Rome, Italy. At UC Davis, additional support was given by a Seed Grant for International Activities from Global Affairs as well as the College of Letters and Science and the Department of Music.

About the “Umbria Jazz Feast”

The purpose of this study is to document the cross-fertilization of global African-rooted American music and Italian art and cuisine, as experienced by people of different backgrounds and from different countries. The study will focus on the trans-cultural process of global cross-fertilization defined by Fabienne Darling-Wolf as ‘glocamalgamation’. The primary outcome will be the production of a documentary film with videographer Alberto Guerri of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. The academic part of the project will be developed in collaboration with ethnomusicologists Marco Lutzu (University of Cagliari) and Giovanni Giuriati (University of Rome La Sapienza and Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies IISMC of the Cini Foundation of Venice).