Sounds of Southern Shores

Abstract

Proceeding with our examination of the cluster of cultural material that testifies to a revisiting of the many sites and locations of Italy’s Mediterraneanness, in this chapter, we will focus on the realm of popular music, a realm that has shown much ferment and creativity from the 1980s onward, from the pioneering work of Fabrizio De André’s Crêuza de mä (1984) and two artists from Sicily and the city of Naples, respectively, Franco Battiato and Pino Daniele. Daniele, in particular, advances the idea that to be Neapolitan is to share the destiny of the trans-Atlantic other (i.e., African Americans and Cubans) and incorporates musical elements from a Mediterranean at large, thus opening a path for the daring experimentations of the groups Almamegretta and 99 Posse. While these musicians carry out the negotiations of Italy’s Mediterranean locations through contaminations that move from the outside in, other southern musicians, including Eugenio Bennato and the band Sud Sound System, evoke the syncretism within, expressing concerns that widen the local struggles of the Salento and of southern Italy (i.e., unemployment, immigration, the questione meridionale, and the political corruption of the countryside) to a global dimension.