Ritmi, suoni e contaminazioni culturali a Napoli

Abstract

This paper focusses on the urban landscape of Naples and on the cultural vitality that has always characterized it. Naples is a complex and contradictory city, with many faces and many nuances. The city does not pause to be framed in a pattern that is unique, rational, firm, but escapes the predictable patterns to become a floating signifier, which moves in a hundred interpretations and a thousand stories. Naples is perhaps the emblem of the city in crisis, of the city as a crisis. As a gate to the South, a virtual bridge which creates openings, breaks and exchanges towards other worlds, as the centre of a strong marginality and spearhead of a cultural universe, Naples is expressed, however and always, as a purposeful and productive place where creativity, from ‘other’ worlds, allows to mark new tracks, unreleased cultural and artistic tracks. Tradition and innovation, local and global, particular and universal: without putting together these dimensions, it is not possible to approach the cultural, social and political study of this city. The Neapolitan artistic and cultural production, in its various forms, has always narrated, documented and represented the thousand faces of Naples, its segments, its systems, subsystems, stratifications and changes that have characterized the history of the city. Among the various communication forms, music is an essential active ingredient and resource of meaning in the social construction of people’s identities. Therefore, musical languages are a significant indicator of social and cultural transformations, and can be considered as a significant analytical category.