Enzo Avitabile
Napoletana

Neapolitan Eschatology.

"Songs and music written in concrete" is the subtitle of an album that draws its roots from the most sincere and archaic Neapolitan spirit: a cultural recovery, before even being artistic, of a Naples that rediscovers its identity, its deepest essence, beyond the bogeymen and stereotypes of a city emptied and faded shadow of a Naples that time could erase, of a Naples proudly antithetical to that product of perverse degeneration that the author himself defines as Neapolitanism, that is, "the obvious, the moldy thought and word, the famous folkloric postcard to which for centuries the [...] city has been subjected and subjects itself."

"Napoletana" wins the coveted Tenco prize edition 2009. And deservedly, I add. That it is a heartfelt operation, after all, can be understood from the choice to channel the communicative urgency into a sparse and minimal folk, free from the excesses and baroques of small and large orchestras that yesterday and today infest the often annoying sideshow of Neapolitan music.

Recalling from the title the collection of the historic Neapolitan singer Roberto Murolo, "Napoletana" is a tribute to the Neapolitan song, a handful of "invocations in minor scale, daughter of the Greek tetrachord, echoes of a remote metric of mercy": a poor sound, but cultured and refined, precious in every aspect. Much is due to the sensitivity of an artist like Enzo Avitabile, his love for his land, his deep musical culture, the result of his activity as a university professor of ethnomusicology and enriched by his recent experience with the Bottari.

A folk with a Mediterranean flavor, a reduced-to-the-bone ensemble that, besides Avitabile himself, features the caresses of the velvety cello by Marco Pescosolido, the preciousness of the acoustic guitar by Umberto Leonardo, and the percussion, never intrusive, by his brother Carlo Avitabile. Note, in this regard, the moderate use Avitabile makes of his favorite instrument, the saxophone, compared to the space granted to other instruments, always played by him, such as the flute and the "harp."

Intense, yet never over the top, is his vocal interpretation, painting scenarios of other times, between melancholy and nostalgia, in "perfect Neapolitan": a "language" that once again demonstrates its intrinsic beauty, its poetic vocation, its innate musicality.

Avitabile gives voice to the paupers, returns the scepter to the poor people, reviving sounds, words, rhymes, airs that risk being buried by asphalt and concrete, as the subtitle of the work suggests. As well explained in the internal notes: "Voices of passions, traces of traditions, sounds of devotions for a very human and nobly popular metropolis that has never torn nature from its heart. A heart that remembers the grain that grows and the spring that is born."

"Don Salvato'" delivers genuine chills, carried by the crystalline sound of the harp: a sound profoundly melancholic and pungent like the spikes of grain. Avitabile's evocative singing, in every nuance, modulation, whimper, communicates real emotions and involvement to the listener. The lyrics, simple yet refined (in their effort to grasp the genuine simplicity of the popular crowd) outline the contours of moving images, culminating finally in a heartfelt invocation in Latin.

The sacred and the profane marry in the timeless magic of music that springs directly from the heart and speaks directly to the soul: perhaps it lingers too much on the same settings, the same moods, perhaps more could have been done in terms of arrangements. And if here and there, the minds less inclined to such music might be perplexed before passages perhaps too sweet, to melodies perhaps already heard because old as the world, how not to be captivated by the radiant simplicity of a prayer like "Ca nun mancasse maie o sole"? How not to be engaged by an arabesque "Amaro nunn' ess'a essere maje?", the liveliest episode of the lot, almost tarantulated in its hypnotic and pressing advance? And how not to be moved by the solitary, desolate voice of "Il lamento dei mendicanti", for harp and cello alone?

Finally: the silence that precedes "Carmela," the intense revisitation of the historic song signed by Sergio Bruni with Salvatore Palomba. The track, an authentic act of love, tribute within a tribute to one's land and culture, an emblem of a desperately claimed worldview, brings us back to the same sensations of "Don Salvato'" that opened the album and remains the pinnacle of the work: with "Carmela" the circle finally closes, lulled by the same hypnotic step of the harp, enchanted by the same sublime interpretation by Avitabile.

By this point, I fear I owe you explanations: how did I come to all this? There was on my part a need for new frontiers, there was a need to taste again the enthusiasm of discovery, of musical virginity. For this, I decided to be reborn, fleeing to Hell and starting again from the antipodes of myself: the Neapolitan song.

And yet one night on TV, moved before a live "Don Salvato'," in one of the now rare moments of lucidity of our television, a seed was planted in me. In the following days, I sought information on this artist that I knew only by name, which I then discovered was a renowned saxophonist and an appreciated singer-songwriter. But his jazz, his funky, his soul did not interest me, I bypassed his eighties, his nineties, and his two-thousands, to arrive at what perhaps was his only work that could meet my chords.

From apocalyptic folk to Neapolitan song? Unfortunately, yes. But let's think about it: if David Tibet had been a good Neapolitan guy, would he have deviated much from these sounds? Wouldn't he have written his "Nav Ner se Magnàin u Ciel"? And perhaps Naples is not less of an Apocalypse city than a Babylon, a New York, London, or Kathmandu? The apocalyptic Naples, not coincidentally chosen by Curzio Malaparte as the stage for the final act of his most significant works, namely "Kaputt" and "The Skin"?

Or I, like a bewildered traveler (one winter night), find myself alone reading a chapter of a larger book written within me?