Exploring the crates of vinyls marked '3 discs 5 euro' in flea markets, in dusty cartons kept by diligent movers and among the 45s that once set jukeboxes ablaze, now stacked in the cellars of 1970s-80s waterfront clubs: this is how Della Noce and Sannino, in collaboration with names like Massimo Di Lena, Lucius Aquilina of Nu Genea o Pellegrino Snichelotto of the label Early SoundsThey conducted a real work of musical archaeology.

They rummaged through forgotten b-sides, poorly recorded rarities printed in very limited copies, underground productions, perhaps sung in English in search of vain glory, discovering a repertoire disco-funky-boogie-afrobeat endless and unexpected Neapolitan territory that nobody knew anything about, probably not even at the time. An unexplored territory resulting from 70s-80s experiments which, however, concealed priceless gems, both in terms of arrangements, danceability and even the lyrics, which travel freely without patterns or binaries, between rage and passion. A sound that mixes international and popular combined with bursting, genuine and unflinching lyrics.

Throughout the history of Naples, from the Angevins to the Bourbons, from the Spanish to the French, from Garibaldi's invasion to the post-war Allied occupation, the city has always endured incursions and appropriations without ever endorsing them, with the smug look of someone who has always survived it all and will always continue to do so. In Neapolitan music This form of resilience is everywhere and contains as much the wit of the gnarler as the courage of the rebel, which from Masaniello to the Four Days of Naples are an inescapable part of this city's genetic heritage. A heritage that the mainstream over the years has always returned by sweetening it or relegating it to niches, but which finds its true authenticity in the underground.

This underground was also rediscovered through a musical period around the time of the '80s earthquake, in which Naples was much more up-to-date than people thought, of which the Napoli Segreta DJ sets and compilations give us a small glimpse.

But not everything.

'Napoli Segreta' (Secret Naples) is a diversion, a ploy to divert attention from everything that is not in this compilation. Because there is only one way for Naples to remain truly secret. Don't talk about it at all'.

 

Source: CoolClub