Biographical notes
GILDO DE STEFANO is a musicologist and journalist beside being the art director of the Ragtime's Italian Festival. Expert of the musical universe in general, with a particular fondness for American music, he’s a first rate jazz authority and he graduated in Sociology of Mass Communication.. Among his books: Il Canto nero (Negro Song, Gammalibri, Milano), Storia del ragtime (Ragtime’ History, Marsilio, Venezia) the only one in Italy and in Europe, two editions, Trecento anni di jazz (Three hundred years of jazz, SugarCo, Milano), musical anthropology of the blacks in America, Jazz moderno (Modern Jazz, Kaos, Milano), Vesuwiev Jazz (E.S.I., Napoli), Il popolo del samba (Samba’s People, RAI-ERI, Roma), with the préface by Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Ragtime, Jazz & dintorni, (Around Ragtime and Jazz, SugarCo, Milano),
with the prèface by Renzo Arbore. He has written monographs: three on Frank Sinatra (Marsilio, Venezia),
The Voice - Vita e italianità di Frank Sinatra (Life and Italianness of Frank Sinatra, Coniglio, Roma), L'italoamericano (Logisma, Firenze); Vinicio Capossela (Lombardi, Milano), illustrated by Sergio Staino, Francesco Guccini (Lombardi, Milano), Louis Armstrong (E.S.I., Napoli), The Voice (Coniglio, Roma), Una storia sociale del jazz (A social history of jazz), with the préface by Zygmunt Bauman, Saudade Bossa Nova (Logisma, Firenze), with the préface by Chico Buarque de Hollanda, a couple of books with the friendly contribution of the Italian showmen Renzo Arbore and Gianni Minà,
Ballata e morte di un gatto da strada (Ballad and death of a cat in the street),
a biographical novel on Malcolm X, with a preface by Claudio Gorlier and the supervision of Robert Giammanco,
Lo zoo di Scampia (Zoo Scampia), and Il Ragtime – Storia di quel ritmo sincopato antenato del jazz (The Ragtime - History of that syncopated rhythm, the ancestor of jazz, Logisma Firenze)
with the prèface by Amiri Baraka
. He has collaborated with the RAI-Italian RadioTelevision, for whose broadcasting structure he has conducted various transmissions on the jazz, and with many newspapers and magazines, both Italian and foreigner. He regularly writes essays for the Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana (New Italian Music Journal) and collaborates with the Italian Encyclopaedia Treccani for entries on Afroamerican musicians. Among the many awards he won a National Ministerial Award of Journalism and the International "Campania Felix" for his work as a journalist for legality. He teaches Afroamerican Musical Civilisation in the Italian universities and music conservatories and he has also published a e-book, the story collection Racconti partenopei (Neapolitan stories). He is a member of the National Union of Writers and Artists and is the art director of the Italian Ragtime Festival.