Listening to The Blues Can Be Healthy

I am currently listening to some good blues played by Willie McTell. It's curious the relation between American folk music and my country, Italy. During WWII many American soldiers came to Italy to fight (the great writer Hemingway was one of them): some left sons, some left songs. And as a consequence of the Marshall Plan and the huge influence that the USA has had over the European culture in the second half of the 20th Century, Italy took a lot of all that, both in economical and cultural terms. For instance, Lucio Battisti, who's one of the most important singers of the last century in Italy, actually sung a lot of well known songs with an evident American flavour. So that it is strange for us to listen to American music, because it's foreign music, but our own music at the same time. Strangely enough, Italians are not so good at speaking English, as maybe you can notice by reading this notebook entry of mine... :-)