Raiz
Wop

Long ago, when Italy was a poor, poor country, and all the poor men of the south had no work, there was a phenomenon called migration. Migration consisted of one or two or more families boarding a small vessel and crossing the Atlantic to reach the coveted shores of Argentina or Brazil or the United States of America... a great country this; indeed. A country that welcomed them with open arms, providing them with fruit and vegetables and warm food... but above all a chance for the future: a thing never seen in their parts, where everything was a donkey-back ride and eating potatoes and fishing for clams for Turiddu the friend. And these, not satisfied, what do they do? Well, they set up the first trade networks outside the law, organize themselves to evade all kinds of controls, and try to favor members belonging to this or that clan.

Life, in certain neighborhoods of some very well-known cities, becomes a hotbed of shady business, scams, and violence; where those who suffer, albeit briefly, are the original inhabitants of the place. The schemes of these organizations have leaders and followers all over the world, but especially in our dear beloved Italy, the country of tripe and mama, the submachine gun and the tear, the rock and the moray eel; to conclude: the seaweed and the shit under the shore.

This entire phenomenon of social decay and international gangrene is re-proposed in elegiac tones on the album of this guy Raiz; who gives a view of the barbarization of our lives that is at the very least sweet and justifying, as if it were a new Iliad where an Enea, mafiùs, has crossed the Atlantic to continue the glorious Italian lineage.

The Luce film theme starts... Comparisons with the migration phenomena of Arabs and North Africans are embarrassing, to say the least, because: firstly, we have nothing to do with those societies, except for certain historical crimes for which we are guilty towards them (see Eritrea or Libya with the never-too-praised JimMorrison-Gaddafi); secondly, these people he talks about have never existed.

A fact, I had a grandmother who lived in the south all her life and never got to do what she most wanted to in life: the relatives were constantly terrified of the opinion of the "neighbors," and she, a smart woman, had to refuse all the jobs and studies that suited her best.
Moreover, she was married to an impotent man, my grandfather for the record, who according to her forced her never to speak and to stay at home for days and nights. Magical south of sun, love, bread, and fantasy!

The era of the grand tour is over... Italy is what it is: a hotbed of various kinds of mafias and clientelism, where it is impossible to do anything if you don't know Mr. So-and-so who introduces you to Mr. Such-and-such. Raiz sings to us that this is a beautiful land... Give me a break, Pistola.