Better Place

A Brief History of Italian Rap Rap took root in Italy in the creative hothouses of the centri sociali or cultural centers. The centri are one of the lasting socio-cultural experiments of the politically charged 1970s. Centri members, dedicated to a radical left and often anarchist vision, consider themselves to be part of a national Movimento Antagonista, or Antagonistic Movement. Chanting "Power is like space — you don't ask for it, you take it" (Il potere è come lo spazio — si prende non si chiede), students and workers appropriate abandoned buildings to create sites that "autonomous" from the influence of the state and the market place. While the centri were first founded in the center of Northern industrial cities, in the past decade they have been established among the hideous and numbing high-rises built on the periphery of sprawling cities, as well as throughout the South. Young squatters convert empty factories, schools, prisons, gas stations, and stores into cultural retreats offering films, concerts, discussion circles, and photography workshops. A number of centri publish fanzines, operate sophisticated recording studios, and broadcast pirate radio stations. These community initiatives also provide sorely needed social services like Italian language courses, day care, AIDS prevention, and drug counseling for students, workers, the unemployed, the homeless, and immigrants. While members view their voluntary associations as significant contributions to the cultural life of underservered urban neighborhoods, they are under constant threat of police eviction and arrest. From Punk to Rap, Late 1980s — Early 1990s During the late 1970s and early 1980s, punk was the music of Italian centri sociali. By the late 1980s, the sound shifted to rap and it was said, "In every city a centro sociale, and in every centro a posse" (In ogni città un centro sociale, in ogni centro un posse). Italian Rap groups like Lionhorse Posse and Nuovi Briganti (New Brigands) were formed in and became closely associated with the centri Leoncavallo in Milano and Messina's Fata Morgana, respectively. The tune "Curre curre guagliò" (Run, Man, Run!) by 99 Posse recounts the day in 1991 when 500 students and unemployed workers left a university assembly to retake the centro Officina 99 in Naples. Two Italian Rap bands emerged from the centri sociali who are credited with revolutionizing Italian music and music making: Onda Rossa Posse and Isola All Stars. Inspired by Public Enemy, Rome's Onda Rossa Posse (Red Wave Posse) formed in 1988 in the centro Forte Prenestino and its pirate radio station Radio Onda Rosse to create a "music from below" (musica dal basso) based on the contestual creativity of African American rappers. Rapper Militant A explains how this cultural adaptation occured: "We, and others, searched to recreate in Italy the great energy of the American ghettos, but it's useless. There were those, in that period, who were rapping in Italian but did it in a way that was too much like the original sources, paying attention only to aesthetics, which is important, but it loses all sense if it's not tied to substance. And so it was natural to say, "Let's do it ourselves." ("Noi, e altri, cercavamo di ritrovare in Italia la grande energia dell'espressione dei ghetti statunitensi, ma inutilmente. Qualcuno, in quel periodo, fa rap in italiano, ma lo ripropone in modo troppo uguale ai modelli originari, badando solo all'estetica, che ha la sua importanza, ma se non viene collegata alla sostanza perde ogni senso. Allora viene natuarle dire: "facciamolo noi." ) In 1990, the Italian Rap band released the now legendary rap Batti il tuo tempo in response to the fall of the Soviet Union. The tune's chorus Batti il tuo tempo per fottere il potere ("Keep the beat and screw the power") became the battle cry of la Pantera student movement that opposed university privitization. The following year, Onda Rossa Posse attacked the politics and economics of the Gulf War with its self-produced and distributed casette Baghdad 1.9.9.1. The Italian Rap song critiqued the United States with its flag "the color of death" and the complicity of media giants CNN and the Italian national RAI Corporation. Italy's involvement in that dirty little war was personified by the Italian air force pilot Cocciolone "who left Italy decisive and proud in his defense of petroleum" His plane was shot down and he was held prisoner. After the war, it was revealed that this media hero Cocciolone had pleaded with superiors not to go into battle. Onda Rossa Posse created a model for radical rap in Italy that had a lasting impact on the self-described Movimento Antagonista. The Italian Rap groups Ak 47 and Assalti Frontali (Frontal Assault) emerged from the ashes of the defunct band. Until the police shut it down in 1990, the centro sociale L'Isola nel Kantiere in Bologna was a major crucible of Italian rap. For five years, DJs and rappers gathered at the centro to take part in the informal jam sessions dubbed "Ghetto Blasters." An Italian-style "posse" formed during these all-night house parties, consisting of a loosely organized group without defined roles for artists and fans that jettisoned the rock concept of the "band." In 1991, the centro's Isola Posse All Stars issued the underground hit Stop al panico, a biting description of state repression following the murder of three carabinieri officers on January 4, 1991 in the Pilastro section of Bologna. It turned out that the killings were the work of neo-fascists. Eventually, other Italian Rap artists were attracted to the Bolognese centro, like the transplanted cook from the Puglia Papa Ricky, the posse Sud Sound System from the Salentine peninsula in the South, and the influential group Sangue Misto. The work of these artists struck a balance between leftist politics and hip hop aesthetics. The Contemporary Scene — The Next Generation In 1999, it can be argued that after a decade's time rap Italiano has entered into its 4th generation. If Italian Rap artists rapping in English constituted the pioneers, then centri-associated rappers were their heirs and the B-Boys were the movement's third wave. The elements that characterized Old School rap Italiano described throughout this site — musical hyrbidity, Italian Rap in dialect, and the use of political and social messages — are, for the most part, a thing of the past. Rap's militancy and political awareness have waned in Italy as it has in the States. If Italian Rap speaks to its time, maybe this shift can be attributed to the changing political landscape. Berlusconi's right wing coalition of neo-fascists and ethnic separatists is no long in power, and a nominaly "left" government has been in power since 1995. While xenophobic rheortic and violent attacks on immigrants continue, East European and Third World immigrants have become everyday presence in an increasing multicultural Italia. Even the once formidable mafia has lost control of the economic and political control of Sicily and others parts of Italy. According to ZKR, the former editor at defunct Aelle magazine, Italian Rap is now seen as a way to "communicate feelings, not just strictly political ideas." Those feelings "connect to kids' lives, everyday reality and the desire to be heard and considered." Lyrics lean towards musings on Hip Hop culture and aesthetics: questions of style, improved prosody (le metriche), boasting (autocelebrare), dissing suckers, and being hardcore. Love songs, scored to R&B choruses & Puff Daddy-inspired samples, have become more prevalent. Sotto Tono and Sab Sista come to mind. The past couple of years has seen the emergence of gansta style Italian rap artists like Flaminio Maphia & Maku Go e Sardo Triba, who record sexist raps & pose making L.A. gang-inspired hand signs. Gotti is the name of a fashionable Hip Hop clothing line in Italy. In addition, contamination is now frowned upon and there is greater emphasis on maintaining boundaries between some "true" essence of rap and other international styles like reagge, jungle, dub, etc. Has rap Italiano simply become rap in Italian? Boh! I don't know. The music has certainly become more sophisticated, more in keeping with American rap. Give a listen & judge for yourself. One thing that seems to differentiate the Italian scene from its American counterpart is the production of "mix tapes." Italian Rap recording artists who are signed to major labels and who often use pseudonyms create underground recordings on vinyl and as cassettes for distribution outside the mainstream channels of national chain stores. Rapper-runned independent entities like Area Cronica help to maintain artistic control of the final product. The problem facing Italian Rap in the 21st century is the lack of sales. That's the word on the street. The Language of Rap Italiano The Italian contribution to the Hip Hop Nation was not achieved without struggle. Early attempts at rap were in English, and excruciating painful examples are found on Jovanotti's 1990 CD "Giovanni Jovanotti." UGH! Sergio Messina's "Gladio," a description of plans for a right-wing coup d'ètat funded by the C.I.A., is probably the only artistically successful rap in English by an Italian artist. In time, Italian artists conquered the rhythms of the big beat. And as they did, they rediscovered their own voice, ancient cadences of non-standard Italian. The Land of Many Voices Many Italian rappers reposition international Hip Hop by using Italian dialects in opposition to a national trend in flattening language distinctiveness. Italian rappers deliver their politicized rhymes in Genovese, Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Venetian in a conscious search for a popular voice rooted in place and the everyday lives of working people. Non-standard Italian is a significant social phenomenon in Italy, where speakers from the north are unintelligible from those in south, and where up until recently the inhabitants of some neighboring mountain towns could not understand each other. The term "dialect" of course is a political category not a linguistic one. These languages did not derive from Italian — the literary Florentine written by Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch in the 14th century, and codified two centuries later. Like Tuscan, Italian dialects were vernacular languages derived from Latin, not Italian. The "dialects" were not confined to the illiterate masses but were used in written forms from the Norman court in Sicliy to Venetian operas. It was in the 15th and 16th centuries that local dialects took on negative connotations in relationship to centralized seats of political power. The devaluing of non-standard Italian, especially southern dialects, intensified after the unification of the country in 1861. After World War II, Italians became increasingly fluent in the national language with the introduction of television, higher education, migration, and increased leisure travel. Popular music played an important part in the tranmission of standard Italian, from the musical pap presented at the annual San Remo festival to the cantautori's (singer songwriters) protest music during the 1960s and 1970s. After the 1960s, Italian-sung popular music increased with the diminishing role of Naples, with its rich song tradition, as a major producer of popular mass culture. Despite the increased use of Italian, less than half (44.6 percent) the population speaks Italian only or predominately at home according to a 1997 survey conducted by the Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Less than 20 percent speaks Italian in the southern regions of Calabria, Campania, and Sicily. Italy remains a bilingual country, with people speaking Italian and their familiar local dialect. et and that what the record industry is saying as well. Italian Hip Hop Rap's transnationalism provides powerful opportunities for Italian youth to address the specificity of their local conditions, while being globally-connected to the larger Hip Hop nation. This engaged cosmopolitanism includes membership in Hip Hop posses, crews, and "families" based locally and linked nationally through the centri, the Hip Hop media, and the Web. Ultimately, Italian rappers and supporters are affiliated with the international Hip Hop movement that privileges new forms of group formation that undermines the notion of the nation state. This network happens on an individual basis, as when artists join creative forces — Napoli's Almamegretta recording with Bristol's Massive Attack, Frankie Hi Nrg Mc performing with Run DMC and Public Enemy, and 99 Posse collaborating with dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson on their CD Cerco Tiempo. In addition, rap concerts bring together members of the Hip Hop Nation from the Boot and beyond. In July 1995, a week long international Hip Hop festival sponsored by the Dionysia Project was held at Tor Bella Monaca, a sprawling housing project on the outskirts of Rome originally built for poor migrants from the surrounding countryside. Performers and artists were invited from Italy, South Africa, and United States, and members of the Hip Hop family traveled from different parts of Europe. NYC Graf pioneers Lee, Stash, & Futura 2000 held workshops with their Italian counterparts. Italian Hip Hop and American rappers performed on the same stage — Colle der Fomento, Commonsense, Havoc & Prodeje, Ice One, KRS1, OTR, La Pina, and Piotta e la Comitiva. One of the best Italian expressions of this international collaboration is La Pina's recording Stessa Gente (Same People) from her 1998 CD Piovono Angeli. With guests Al Tariq, Black Attack, Rival, and Torch, this polyglot rap in English, French, Italian, and German embodies rap's potential as a heterogeneous voice of solidarity and resistance.