Examples | Napoli | Other Mediterranean | Communitas
Examples | Napoli | Other Mediterranean | Communitas
"Contaminazione" and Musical Hybridity
"O' Sole Mio" — what could be more Italian, right? The epitome of the Neapolitan art song has been performed by the likes of Elvis Presley and scores of shmaltzy lounge singers across America. The sentimentally, the swelling chorus, the bombastic delivery. Want to try something different? Check out Papa Ricky's version in a rub-a-dub style. This blending of the Mediterranean and the Caribbean turned Italian musical history on its head. And it had it coming!
While some rappers and DJs like Il Generale and Ludus Pinsky base their musical production squarely on the American rap scene, other Italian hip hop artists are orchestrating a head-on collision between local Italian musical traditions and a host of borrowed international styles, from US rap to Jamaican reggae, and from North African vocal technique to Eastern European rhythms. The most inventive and exciting work during the past decade has been the result of this musical hybridity, commonly referred to as contaminazione (contamination).
Contaminazione reveals the similarities of seemingly divergent cultural realms linked by the myth and history informing the Mediterranean musical landscape. This synthesis is as much a musical preference as it is a philosophical and political strategy. Instead of lamenting the loss of purity and authenticity, Italian members of the Hip Hop Nation revel in syncretic cultural expression that taps deeply-rooted, ancient folk traditions, while at the same time, points to new possibilities and associations resulting from recent migrations from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.
This conscious cultural melange asserts that Italian folk music is not a static artifact from the past to be dogmatically preserved but a living tradition vital to new cultural formations and social identities. Here are a few examples of this new mix I find particularly daring:
- In Fight da Faida (faida = feud), Frankie HI NRG MC's call to arms against the Mafia's nihilistic power, employs traditional Sicilian musical motifs. The bouncy sound of the maranzano, or jaw's harp, blends with a funky trap drum, high hat, and guitar riff, to set the stage for a solo by Frankie's cousin Vabbina La Bruna with a children's filastrocca or nonsense rhyme.
- The chorus of Sud Sound System's "La rommanella," a first-hand account of youthful unemployment in Southern Italy, is the haunting street vendors' cries of "Lettuce for a salad/Lettuce for a salad/Charcoal, beautiful charcoal, who wants charcoal" ("La romanella per l'insalata/ La romanella per l'insalata/carboni, carbonella chi vuole carboni.") layered atop a straight forward reggae beat.
- Sensasciou's creation of trallamuffin, a mixing of Jamaican raggamuffin and trallallero, the traditional coral vocal style favored by Genoa's dock workers and stevedores.
Examples | Napoli | Other Mediterranean | Communitas
HOME