Francesco Di Bella
Nuova Gianturco

Few albums have seemed to me from the first listen to be so consistent with the artist's time and the geographical context in which he has always moved.
Without a doubt, the departure of Pino Daniele, following that of his Neapolitan spirit many years earlier, left an apparently unfillable void in music sung in Neapolitan. Despite all necessary precautions, the almost concurrent start of Francesco di Bella's solo and songwriting career seems to have arrived to somewhat mitigate his absence.
The chronological circumstances also have an unexpected personal twist, because I discovered the album at the same time as the great success of the novel and the related TV series "L'Amica Geniale," set in the Luzzatti neighborhood near Gianturco, the district where in the 90s the epic of the social center Officina 99 took place.
For the younger ones, Francesco di Bella was the leader of 24 Grana, a Neapolitan band forged, like several others, in the aforementioned social center.
This, his first solo album of surprising beauty, is a good synthesis of what contemporary Neapolitan music has been and could be.
The melancholic Nuova Gianturco with a fine chiseling of electronics and acoustic guitar is already largely representative of the author, his history and musical sensitivity and seems placed there, at the beginning of the record, as a sort of artistic manifesto. Tre Nummarielle, also promoted with a beautiful video, is a delicate approach to the intimacy of a young couple, to whose difficulties at times it seems that only a stroke of luck can give a glimmer of solution, a theme dear to the Neapolitan spirit.
Aziz, sung in duet with Zulu of the 99 Posse, is a track that recalls the dub atmospheres of 24 Grana, with a clear social message corresponding to a less brilliant melodic structure.
The central part of the album always expresses a good songwriting vein, but the compositional level rises decisively in the last three compositions: Gina se ne va seems to emerge from the most convincing 80s new wave. Briganti se more, an old piece by D'Angiò/Bennato is treated with the respect due to a classic. Guardate fore closes, a little gem in double Italian/Neapolitan language.
Di Bella has always won over his audience with his straightforward and evocative vocal style, and in this album, he enhances it, rarely leaving his conversational register. At the end of the listening, the sensation is that of having spoken with a dear friend, sensitive and inspired.