Made in Napoli

“There are more recording studios than pizzerias in Naples” is what you can hear when you ask to someone about music in the city of Parthenope. During the 80’s a new musical genre was born in town: Neomelodic, a synthy-pop melodramatic music, a strange mix of traditional neapolitan music and modern globalized pop. Nowadays, you can hear it in every corner of the city and its surroundings spreading out from windows and cars right on the road. Although geographically limited, neomelodic industry is a business of 200 million of euros per year completely independent from the logic and interests of the main music national labels. However everybody in Naples wants to be a singer, especially the youngest, therefore there are hundreds of “amateur” singers who are satisfied with recording a disc for few thousands of euro and sometimes attending at local tv shows. The main celebrity of the scenes, worshipped as superstars, release new videos –with millions of visualizations - and attend to local tv shows during the winter in order to promote theirselves waiting for summer when most of the marriage and celebrations happened. One of the peculiarities of the neomelodic music is that lyrics are authentic, close to the life of the audience, even inspired by real events. Sometimes they speak about trouble with law, but majority of the songs are about infidelity, passional, irresistible and erotic love affair or depict the social characteristic of the neapolitan urban context: the dynamics and values of the tiny alleys neighborhood where people live in “i bassi” - small houses of one or two rooms on the ground floor with direct access to the street. The popularity of a singer in Naples is mainly based on the authenticity of their performances, their message and the accessibility: they are not unattainable. Fans can find easily their phone number or their manager and often everybody knows where is their house. While all the teenagers of the world are listening Beyonce, in Naples a 13 years old girl prefer to listen Emiliana Cantone because she can understand her language – they even speak the same dialect - she can even call her while she’s at the local tv show and ask to dedicate her a song, or she can her to perform at her birthday party and taking the hundreds of picture with her. Can you have all of these from Beyonce?