Napoli Centrale
Napoli Centrale

"And in James' voice, in his harsh vocal tone, resounds an ancient curse, the tearing of wounds that find no relief, comfort, or understanding from a blind and distracted city, which turns its attention to the most vulgar and banal melodicism."

Roberto De Simone

"Dint' o paese ce restan sule

Viecchie, mugliere, muorte e criaturi.

O' solito scemo, o zuopp' e o sciancat'

O' cane rignuso ch'ei costole afora"

That these are hard and deceitful days is quickly said, and it's also easy to say how leaden the sky is. It's not that you turn every corner and smell cordite, and it's not that corpses appear at every street corner, or, as most picture, brains splattered on the walls. No, this is not how Naples is these days. For those from Naples, Naples in the past week is no different from other days. The Neapolitan, for many, is a singular, disturbing creature: it's hard to attribute the stereotypes "tarantella sun pizza and mandolin," if "in Naples, death comes with tarallucci and wine." But the equation is simpler to solve than you might think: the Neapolitan is just proof that humans are extremely flexible animals, but also extremely malleable. It's maddening if you seriously think about the quagmire we're stuck in, and a people can't be in mourning every day, because someone dies every day: so what do you do? When someone is murdered, riddled with bullets, do you hide them under the bed or the rug? No, that's not possible. And so, the man, the Neapolitan, convinces himself it is normal to die of an inflicted death, especially if you get involved in certain circles, which then, what does it bother you, since it's "mob business." It happens that "under the bombs" ends a lady carrying groceries home, someone who "looked like" or "had a car just like," or a fourteen-year-old, and then you're promptly contradicted: if three people decide to kill each other in the street, the matter concerns everyone, not just those three. In Naples, there's no emergency, and it's pointless to try to instrumentalize the fear of a people, not the pain, nor the anger, but only the fear, the powerlessness, and the resignation of a people by blaming the pardon or the bad governance of five years: in Naples, there's no emergency because no Neapolitan feels it anymore, in Naples the emergency is "dint'è cape ra ggente." What to do, then? Fight or leave? Stay or go? This ship is truly sinking if all the rats want to escape, if what was good in Naples has been definitively lost. Perhaps, it would be better to destroy everything, to end it all.

And once again, records come to the rescue, a cover that itself is a whole program, a bunch of indistinguishable guys silhouetted against a post-apocalyptic nightmare landscape, which is nothing but a piece of countryside outside Naples on a misty morning: but these guys have something that's not right, they don't look Neapolitan, even if above the photo, on a yellow background, it says "Napoli Centrale." And indeed, among the four, there's an Englishman, Tony Walmsley, on bass, and an American, Mark Harris. And indeed, even the other two, Franco del Prete and James Senese, don't seem very Italian, perhaps they are Italian American? Not at all, Del Prete is a fine piece of a drummer straight from the surroundings of Partenope. While Senese... well, Senese is a child of war, with an American soldier father full of "yes" and "all right" and a young mother fascinated by negritude. Senese is a saxophonist, lover (worshiper) of Coltrane, Coleman, Miles, one who instilled a soul in "Un'ora sola ti vorrei" and who found a roundabout way to use Neapolitan classics even in the full jazz, funk, and fusion era.

Indeed, yes. If this record has been passed off as prog to you, send who told you this bullshit afangala. This is jazz, Weather Report-style with vernacular singing and sax immersed in scales suspended between the Mediterranean and Atlantic but owing to Trane. The start leaves no escape: the time to present the musicians and "Campagna" starts, brass in full display inventing an intro, while Senese's own voice starts declaiming with a desperate, cruel, polemical but above all virile tone the life of the laborers he has seen since the day he was born. Del Prete does what he likes on the drums, mixing funk, virtuosity, and jazz, not to mention the keyboards, maintaining just a semblance of sanity is the bass. But it's Senese who hits with compositional maturity: the material he writes gives musicians unprecedented freedom, but especially to his sax, using a style that's as American as can be, and bridging New York and Naples ("which are on the same parallel.").

But the opening track is just to make the unwary listener understand what cul de sac they've ended up in: with "Gente e' Bucciano" you end up in soul places frequented by Mayfield, with those organs that push for booty shakin' and Senese talking about people fleeing their homeland, then to find work in factories, today would be to find just a more open and clean place, and the saxophone amplifies his feelings, replicates them because he's pissed, it seems the brass is about to be turned inside out like a glove. Damn. "Pensione Floridiana," a brief truce, a divertissement, but with a frame-worthy bass line and an agile and calm Senese. And here we are. "Vecchie, mugliere, muorte e creature." So dark that light doesn't reach it, so perfect that you wonder how no one has ever given it attention. The text is eloquent, young people fleeing, the village abandoned to the weak and destruction. But beware: if they could, if it weren't so poor in life and prospects, in that place, young people would stay. But escape seems the only prospect: but to what? In the seventies, people rushed to work in Turin, under another master, in other misery; and today, under what other skies? What other destiny? After all, for many, life here is a perennial escape: putting a gun in one's pocket is just a way to escape misery, while those who find guns on them run from fear. But James only tells it like it is, narrates, and plays music, with that sax that comes in at the precise moment it had to, not a moment later or a moment before, and unravels fluidly and essentially its skein.

"Vico Primo Parise numero 8" is music painting, a faithful portrait of his birthplace, a chaotic street, frequented by all the characters you can find in a village, "Black market" ante-litteram so to speak with the instruments interpreting the moods that snaked under the balcony of the Senese house, while the sax, his sax, a very personal permanent center of gravity, antidote, and shield, protects him from racial discrimination, crime, and the squalor of the province; and our musician composes elegantly moving between the Orient, Africa, and America, territories from which Naples has osmosed indiscriminately all the best and worst.

Final act, but we already knew it, "'O lupo s'a mangiato a pecurella," with an apocalyptic ending, among the alleys a voice screams, angry and crazy, asks and wonders where peace is, if there will ever be any, and finally:

"O Crì, 'o Crì si mmuort,

ma a pace addo sta?

O Crì, 'o Crì si mmuort,

ma chi cazz t'ha fatt fa!

Durmite! Durmite!"

What is good, saving, about a 1975 record, that can still give hope? The critique, which becomes so constructive and furious, only when there's love for one's land, and the will to save it and the people who live there; the music: Senese testified that to go into the future, to change things, it was not necessary to leave Naples, to cut ties with one's roots, one could go beyond that vulgar melodism (a symbol of widespread indifference, not only on a musical level) and bend it to one's true and genuine feeling, bringing this city into the future, a future that with the Neapolitan power seemed to have arrived for Naples already in the '80s, and instead remained a simple proposal.

The point is that it can be done, Senese and companions have shown it: Naples and its moods can be ferried into the future, perhaps, thirty years later, not everything is lost, perhaps. . .

Or maybe not. Perhaps his was a nice dream, a handful of minutes of music, and nothing more.

Shit.