World Music

From Naples towards the world

Not only musical meetings, in a disc by Cantodiscanto

"On the volcanic rhythm of the taranta, on the persuasive melody of the raï and phrased syncopated jazz it slips full with Malmediterraneo brilliance, the last recorded work of Cantodiscanto (cd Forrest Hill Records, 16,99 euros). Formed in Bologna in 1991 the group is born from a Neapolitan nucleus directed by Guido Sodo, that involved the poli-instrumentist and singer Carl Lojodice, the percussionist Roberto Zeno (engaged then with the Modena City Ramblers and replaced from Paul Caruso); to them they have joined the singer Silvia Testoni, the contrabbassist Felice Del Gaudio and Roberto Bartoli and the clarinettist Guglielmo Pagnozzi.

Naples, also musically, remains the departure point of the band, that inserts the own search on the wake of that one shiningly undertaken from La nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare by Roberto De Simone, Eugenio Bennato, Carlo D' Angiò and Fausta Vetere since 30 years ago. The popular tradition, therefore, works as base of cultural and instrumental contaminations of Countries that in the centuries have stratified and overlapped their history of Mediterranean communities. The famous city of the gulf, of the Vesuvio and of the islands is also outlined as an atavistic place of pleasures ( I'te cunzolo ), make-upped as always it has been in order to receive the tourists, coming from the Saracens coasts, or American soldiers disembarked from aircraft carriers.

The other songs tell of crashes and encounters between a pedlar on a beach of the Algarve, a Neapolitan child and a Palestinian boy. A comfortable Naples returns like that one that some times ago has hosted, thanks to the participation of the city council's member of the Province Guglielmo Allodi, the Palestinian child Ahmad providing him of a cardiac transplant in order to continue living.

Echoes and sounds from Gaza to Gargano, from Maghreb to Andalusia, they melt with Latin American arpeggios ( Bandiera ), Caribbean percussions and they succeed creating a continuous

alternation of observation points and giving colour to a disease. The Mediterranean disease is the song that gives the title to the album, perceived in all its vehemence nevertheless therefore difficult to define with the simple words: an evil that burns like I do not know what ,   warms the blood , it bites like a taranta and makes the heart jolting before calming itself slow into the river. The landing place is on one beach of the South, in that South of the world perennially torn to pieces and suffering, where the life - to the search of a dignity - goes ahead however.

Goffredo De Pascale