the book
noon, January 16, 2022 – 09:20
In bookstores the second volume of the “History of the Neapolitan song”
from Eduardo Cicelyn
Maestro Scialò never had hair. Maybe once they grew up, but no one remembers it. Neither does he, I think. Colored caps, not to mention scazzette, on the other hand they have never lacked. Since he is a musician from head to toe, he has always tuned his head in technicolor to dresses on the cheerful andante. All to hide the pale complexion of an indefatigable scholar. Conservatory master, professor at Suor Orsola and lifelong theatrical composer, with some cinematographic transgression (the last one for “Ariaferma” by Leonardo Di Costanzo), Pasquale Scialò is also a maniac connoisseur of Neapolitan music. In his own way, a severe archivist but without academic prejudices, in short, a bit of a librarian and a bit of a junk dealer who is passionate about the pezzotto from the stall, today he is sending the second volume of the History of Neapolitan song (Neri Pozza), a travel diary in what has always called the singing city. If the first tome drew, indeed arranged, with great detail the classical scene of one of the most famous musical repertoires in the world, the second by vocation of the author and not only by publishing destiny tells tome tome the evolution or transmutation of the form closed in the nineteenth century in a kind of open Neapolitan sound (today it is called fluid), which, depending on the containers that carry it, is modeled in many directions.
The book opens with the successes of Murolo and Tagliaferri in 1932 and reaches the mysterious milestone of 2003. Asking why an apparently insignificant closing date is not entirely useless. It was in that year that “Il fugitive” by Ninì Grassia was released with the participation of Tommy Riccio, a neomelodico of the first hour, whose success (“Aggio needs’ and me makes the lover”) is sung even by the legendary Pietro Savastano from the Gomorra series. That film for Scialò is the last original document that in some way perhaps symbolic sanctions a musical fact recognized on a national level. Not because the neomelodic etiquette is satisfactory for the scholar with a fine palate and eccentric tastes, but at least it appears plausible because of the next Time.news that moves quickly, without a particular trend or style taking over.
For the most recent phenomena, practically until the book was put into the machine, Scialò’s second acts as a tom tom, guiding the readers into the topographical bottlenecks of a song that makes the present resound directly from alley to alley, from balcony to balcony, from block to block. You will find in this second historical episode of the Neapolitan song everything you thought you knew or that you still like to know and listen: from “Tammurriata nera” to “Guaglione”, from “Nun è Sin” to “Anema e core”, from “Dove is Zazà “to” Agata “; and then Sergio Bruni with the timeless «Carmela», Renato Carosone, the Osanna, James Senese, the New Company of Popular Singing, Mario Merola, Nino D’Angelo, Pino Daniele, Enzo Avitabile, Enzo Gragnaniello, etc. etc. Here everything and everyone is told. Almost. For my part, literally, I do not understand the absence of Edoardo Bennato, rocker in the way in which his other less important and much cited colleagues have recently started to be rappers. The poet of Bagnoli and Nisida, the cantor of Parco Lambro at the festival of the youth proletariat, still capable of filling stadiums throughout Italy in the eighties, disappears from Scialò’s radar. And I regret it. Or maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it’s a nostalgia of my own.
The story of the maestro with the colored scazzetta is the impassive observation of the ethnologist who searches for the elementary structures of the relationship between the music that revolves around and that which comes from the most remote and celebrated past.. Its sieve is the sieve of the fisher of sounds who collects and preserves only the fruits that smell and scientifically taste of the sea. Then it comes to understanding and combining by shaking well before use. Pasquale Scialò in private life is in fact also a fantastic fish cook. His recipe for spaghetti with anchovy sauce is memorable, an essence that can be bought beautiful and made, a classic of Neapolitan cuisine. However, how he mixes the marine liquid with a mixture of dozens of minced spices, then pulling the sauce with a garlic treated with milk, boiled, cooled and boiled, it is a program of aesthetics not only culinary. The Neapolitan song, like its legendary spaghetti, can be proposed and re-proposed in a thousand ways, as long as the basic ingredients are respected and enhanced with extreme care and a skilful mixture of details. In short, the Neapolitan song will be palatable as long as it retains certain exemplary melodic particles and an appropriate and updated use of the dialectal language, despite or by virtue of any welcome and tasty contamination of flavors. Wherever you play and resound, Naples is a thousand colors. But it is also an ancient score that you must know how to read and interpret in every nuance. Laughing and joking, as they say, the Neapolitan song is a serious matter. In fact Pasquale Scialò, even when he explains the trivial sound of Squallor, Tony Tammaro, Coccobelli manages to fry the fish on his own. In the end we all agree that, if the raw material is fresh and good, the dish will always be delicious. It would only remain to understand how long certain dishes can be kept in the refrigerator. Maybe the answer will come with the third tome. Although we know that anthropology, even musical anthropology, is not an exact science. But who will ever allow himself to enter the master’s scazzetta?
January 16, 2022 | 09:20
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