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It was 1977 and I can't imagine Naples that year, I can't, but I do imagine the faces. The curly hair of young people wrapped in total-jeans, thrilling, the white Superga getting stained with asphalt, the blue Vespas darting through traffic, all then reunited in Troisi's films. These young people caught in the middle, between the future earthquake and the remnants of cholera, so far from the explosion of punk, yet with "No Future" irremediably tattooed on their foreheads.
In 77 Pino Daniele was twenty-two years old, with fluffy hair, a big round face, and had no idea of punk's existence. I don't know what intent drove him, I only know that he took his guitar and began to describe the Naples that surrounded him and inadvertently ended up making the first Italian punk record.
"Terra Mia" is the "The Dubliners" for Neapolitans. Many life (or non-life) stories chasing and completing each other until reaching a terrible cyclical conclusion (or non-conclusion) that weighs on the conscience of the individual now definitively alienated from the rest of the world that has closed itself off, retreated, onto itself. "Terra Mia" is the way a Neapolitan takes to talk about himself and his life: terrible content that breaks backs, but delivered with a smile in that bittersweet way that Naples forces you to learn through blows and kicks in the teeth. "Terra Mia" is the quintessence of the Marxist-qualunquista that can germinate only in this place (or non-place). "Terra Mia," in its merits and its bestialities, is Naples, and the Gennariello on the cover offering a clod of this land is saying that it's not necessary to be there to know the things of this world, of Naples. It is necessary to be there only to be known by things, to let them grow on you like mushrooms, to dirty yourself with reality.
Tomorrow Andrea discusses his thesis. In a week, he'll flee to Belgium. It's over... one by one, we will all leave. I prepared a note for him. I wrote him: "Barres, nationalist, French reactionary, wrote: "there is no freedom of thought. I can only live according to my dead. They and my land command me a certain activity." Do not forget the natural selection you participated in."
The record is over, I lift the needle. I have something in my throat... I attach the note to a copy of "Terra Mia" ...to remind him who he is and where he comes from, where he grew up and who educated him. Even in Bastogne, a Neapolitan remains always a Neapolitan.
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