Examples | Napoli | Other Mediterranean | Communitas

"Contaminazione" and Musical Hybridity

North Africa & Eastern Europe

Musical contaminazione takes many forms in Italy. In addition to blending the local with global pop forms like rap and reggae, Italian musicians are mixing Italian folk with elements of other roots music, especially from North Africa and East Europe. Instruments like the tambourine and the wood reed oboe, and vocal technique using melissa and vibrato are shared by communities throughout the circum-Mediterranean. Each year, Italian music festivals are organized around the theme of "a Mediterranean dialogue" and feature a wide variety of artists from Italy, Spain, North Africa, Middle Eastern, and Eastern Europe.

One of the best examples of musical mixing is found on the 1995 compilation CD Canti Sudati (Southern Songs). While not a "rap" recording by American standards, Canti Sudati situates its collective sound somewhere between Palermo and Marrakesh. To the un-trained ear, one is hard-pressed to unravel the various Mediterranean musical elements running through the CD.

The featured groups, like Càlic, Kunsertu, Re Niliu, and Taveranova, blend their own local sounds, whether from Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria, Puglia, etc., with that of North African and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Palestinian singer Faisal Taher's subtle voice featured on several cuts makes the cultural bridge across the Mediterranean all that more pronounced.

Canti Sudati demonstrates that repetitive music styles like ambiente, techno, and trip-hop are well-suited for highlighting the deep-rooted Arabic-elements in Italian music, while forming the basis for a pan-Mediterranean mix.

While not a Hip Hop artist by definition, the Neapolitan musician and band leader Daniele Sepe is a one-man champion of musical hybridity, recording songs from southern Italy to Latin America, and in styles from jazz to circus music. On the CD Viaggi fuori dei paraggi (Travels beyond the neighborhood), 99Posse's Zulu adds his rap to the yodeling and sampled fusillade on Vite Perdite, a lament for the carnage that was Bagdad and Sarajevo. Sepe's version of a Macedonian folk song Yerakina, with his soprano sax standing in for the ubiquitous Mediterranean reed instrument, explores the musical convergence of Italy and Eastern Europe.

Communitas

In addition to combining musical styles, Italian rappers, especially those from southern Italy, see themselves wedding folk and contemporary performance modes. This is most evident with Sud Sound System, whose live performances were said to evoke the healing rituals of tarantismo. Sud Sound System hails from the Salentine peninsula in Puglia where the healing of women's psychological conflicts was traditionally achieved through music, ecstatic dance, and trance. As French sociologist Georges Lapassade has shown, Sud Sound System's concerts hark back to these older communal events.

Rapper Treble explains this new fusion the band calls tarantamuffin;

"It's music as catharsis, and it joins tarantismo's rhythm with the sound of Sud Sound System and our posse. We immagine the sound to be therapeutic, that can help free one's self from internal ills and transmit positive energy to others. The women who were overcome by the disease took part in the ritual, shaking, and in that way freed themselves from the masculine culture and from the absurd and difficult conditions of agricultural labor. Mix that with a bit of modernity and you have Sud Sound System."

Rapper and audience at 1995 quartieri/the hood event at Tor Bella Monaca, Roma. Photo: Martha Cooper

This musical therapy is the creative synthesis of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

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"È la musica come catarsi, e questo accomuna i ritmi del tarantismo al suono del Sud Sound System e della nostra posse. Un suono che immaginiamo terapeutico, che può aiutare a liberarsi dai mali interiori e trasmettere agli altri energie positive. Lo facevano, dimenandosi, le donne colpite dalla tarantola, che si riscattavano così dalla cultura maschilista e dalle assurde condizioni del durissmo lavoro nelle campagne. Aggiungici un po' di modernità e avrai il Sud Sound System." BACK

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Examples | Napoli | Other Mediterranean | Communitas

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