THE NAPOLI SESSIONS
For The Napoli Sessions of The City's Song, Thomas Noël addresses musicians who are at home in everything related to traditional Neapolitan culture, but also to contemporary jazz musicians and to musicians who shape the urban identity in a contemporary version.
The city's song - the napoli sessions
He collaborates with the jazz drummer and teacher Emiliano della Giovanna (1976), who grew up in Naples and has been living in Ghent since 2013. He knows the Neapolitan and Flemish jazz scenes very well and is, as it were, the link between Ghent and Naples. From this grows a larger collective of musicians and artists from both Flanders and Naples who jointly create a cinematic concert, in which the city is reflected and the diverse musical backgrounds of the respective musicians merge into a new sound. The aim is to interweave traditional Southern Italian folk music with new contemporary rhythms, music and timbres. The traditional spiritual background of the tarantella gives space to improvisations and solos by the individual musicians…
In the spring of 2023, Thomas and Emiliano traveled to Naples and they met Mimmo Maglionico , an established name in the Neapolitan traditional music scene. Mimmo plays various traditional wind instruments (shawm, flutes, etc.) and is also a singer-composer specializing in world music and fusion.
Other, local, voices are also integrated into the project and recorded on site: a choir, Neapolitan rappers, poets or spoken word artists, a percussion group (tammurriate), and so on… For example, there is singer/percussionist Carmine D'Aniello who grew up in the Scampia district (known from the film Gomorra), home to many underprivileged Neapolitans and is notorious for drug trafficking and mafia violence. After his studies, Carmine returned to Scampia and founded the music school DROM Music Lab and the recording studio Melograno. It has become the ideal location for The City's Song to bring the musicians together in Naples for rehearsals and test recordings.
In the visual aspect, exchange and interaction are also central. Ghent photographer and videographer Sammy Van Cauteren , known for the other City's Song Sessions (Ramallah, Tehran) works closely with Neapolitan photographer and videographer Silvio Siciliano . Silvio has been documenting the traditional music scene in and around Naples for over 40 years and has an enormous archive of image and sound material (tarantelle, tammurriate and traditional rites and customs from the region), which will be processed in the Napoli Sessions.
The City's Song – The Napoli Sessions: a multifaceted and layered project – music, image, sound, tradition and current affairs, folk music, jazz – built around six themes
La Morte (Death)
The Madonna (the Woman)
Il Mare (the Sea)
La Terra (the Earth)
The Fire (Il Fuoco)
The Dream (The Dream)
CREW:
Thomas Noël: project management, direction – composition – piano, Hammond, guitar, electronics, backing vocals (B)
Emiliano Della Giovanna: drums (B) (fixer/translator)
Sammy Van Cauteren: photography, video (B)
Mimmo Maglionico: shawm, flutes, vocals – composition (IT)
Marta Riccardi: bass, backing vocals (IT)
Roberto Trenca: strings (chitarre batente, quatro, guitar, etc) (IT)
Carmine D'Aniello: vocals, tamburo, percussion (IT)
Silvio Siciliano: video, documentary (archive) + fixer
article posted by:Thomas Noël, Cluster vzw