In pursuit of a sound future: industriousness in Maltese popular songs of the 1970s

After its independence in 1964, Malta embarked on an extensive economic programme to diversify the island’s economy. This intensified in the 1970s under the socialist Labour government, which promoted the value of industriousness (bżulija in Maltese) as a key value for the country’s economic progress. In parallel with these economic and political developments, the Maltese music scene of the 1970s experienced a boom in the production of locally composed popular songs in Maltese, most of which depicted the island's landscape, the surrounding sea and the daily lives of hard-working people whose survival depended mainly on the hard work that industriousness entailed. Some of these songs achieved unprecedented popularity. This article will draw on this context to examine how the politically charged ideological discourse on industriousness was obliquely embedded in these songs, even those in which the worker as such featured only marginally or not at all.