The Symbol for Italian Music throughout the World
It is light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek, rustic and sentimental, heartfelt and at times even slightly subversive. It is played on the mandolin and the calascione, the triccheballacca and the tambourine, the castanets and the putipù, but also on guitars, pianos and drums. It is sung with Mediterranean vocalism or with the passion of opera, and can be danced with the frenzy of a tarantella or the pure embrace of a slow dance. It is the Neapolitan song, multifaceted soul and cornerstone of the culture of an entire group of people.
From its origins
The origins of Neapolitan song lie in the fables and ballads composed at the time of Federico II of Svevia, who founded the university of the same name in Naples in 1224. The Neapolitan musical tradition grew in popularity in the 16th century, thanks to the so-called 'Villanella alla Napoletana', a form of secular composition of a rustic, sentimental and often satirical nature.
Alongside these rhythms, the notes of the tarantella and opera arias began to blossom in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the true "Golden Age" of Neapolitan song developed between the beginning of the 19th century and the Second World War, thanks to the inspiration of poets and composers such as Raffaele Sacco, Filippo Campanella, Salvatore di Giacomo, Liberio Bovio, E.A. Mario, Ferdinando Russo and Ernesto Murolo.
The historic Festa di Piedigrotta (Feast of Piedigrotta), traditionally celebrated every year on the 8 September in the area of Naples bearing the same name, close to the Chiaia district, became the favourite focus and theatre for these compositions, which many emigrants took with them, in their hearts and minds, as fragments of the homeland from which they had had to leave. Neapolitan song was then exported all over the world, becoming a true synonym of the Italian musical spirit.
From the 1950s onwards, the charm of the Neapolitan song was kept alive by events such as the il Festival di Napoli (Naples Festival), but also by the activity of master lute-makers who still today preserve and enhance, with excellent skill, this musical soul of Campania.
