Italian Hip-Hop:
Culture, Resistance & Alter-Globalization
Hip-Hop’s explosion onto the global stage in the last quarter of the 20th century brought forward new forms of political expression and representation worldwide. Global production/dissemination of Hip-Hop spans languages, cultures, ethnicities, and borders, embracing international inclusion over national exclusion. During the early 90’s Italian Hip-Hop formed into a social protest movement against the fear imposed by Cammora blood feuds, as well as the imposed racialization of political groups who sought to identify Italy as an exclusively “white” nation. Disenfranchised youth in Southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno, began occupying abandoned buildings and creating community centers called centri sociali ocupati. At these centri sociali left-wing politics began to merge with Hip-Hop culture creating praxis for challenging the prevalent ideologies of racial, political, and socio-economic hegemony of the Northern Italian regions.
Since the unification of Italy in 1861 there has been a large divide between northern and southern populations. The people of the Mezzogiorno have faced racial exclusion due to their shared history with the cultures of Northern Africa, which in the perspective of political elites has deemed them not “white” enough to be “real” Italians. The group Almamegretta entitled one of their albums “Figli di Annibale” in reference to the “Carthaginian general who fought the Roman Republic,” insinuating that the disenfranchised youth of the Mezzogiorno identify with cultural roots other than imposed “whiteness” in resistance to forced racialization (Dawson & Palumbo, Hannibal’s Children, Pg. 7-8).
In the era of globalization and mass capital flight, cities across the Mezzogiorno have experienced a large influx of immigrants, referred to colloquially as extra-communitari. The vast majority of the immigrant populations, as can also be seen in the US, as well as throughout the EU, are being exploited for cheap labor, while simultaneously being discriminated against for their “otherness”. Corporate business practices, which on the one hand need cheap labor for the vast accumulation of profits, yet on the other support political parties such as the Lega Nord (Northern League) who campaign for the deportation of immigrants, even when businesses cannot persuade citizens to take jobs at such low wages, expose the internal contradictions of the capitalist system. Many MCs from the Mezzogiorno have articulated an identification with these immigrant populations, not only historically as a multicultural multitude of Mediterranean peoples, but also from the present perspective of solidarity with a shared existence struggling against labor exploitation, racism and income inequality.
In the following essay I will explore three significant aspects of Italian Hip-Hop: how do local dialects challenge the hegemony of “standard” Italian language in mass media productions; how does sampling world and regional Italian music challenge the hegemony of both “whiteness” in Italy and the Americanization of Italian music; and how does graffiti art challenge the visual hegemony of Northern Italian monuments imposed upon the people of the Mezzogiorno.
Linguistics in Italian Hip-Hop Culture: Reclaiming Regional Identity
In the early years of Italian Hip-Hop artists had not yet formed an identity separate from American Hip-Hop artists. Language, our human technology for expressing wants, needs, desires, and dreams, is integrally interwoven through various local dialects, which operate as our most potent tool for both inter and intra-cultural communication. While MCs like Kaos One rapped in English to appeal to a wider global audience, Frankie Hi Nrg was the first popular artist to rap in Italian with his song “Fight da Faida”. Not only were Italian audiences exposed to a Hip-Hop song in “standard” Italian, but they were also exposed to “a brief burst of a woman rapping in Sicilian dialect” (Mitchell, Doin Damage, Pg. 6). By using regional dialects Italian Hip-Hop artists could now rap with a linguistic flexibility that rapping in English or “standard” Italian did not afford them. This also gave way to the hybridization of slang with words such as “rappare,” “scratchare,” and “slenghare” (Mitchell, Doin Damage, Pg. 6). Suoni Mudù, a Hip-Hop group from the Barese region of Italy, took the linguistic flexibility of regional dialects further by using local slang in their song “Citt e Caminn” to mock the Camorra and expose their relationship with neo-fascist politicians (Mitchell, Doin Damage, Pg. 7). Nuovi Briganti, a Sicilian based Hip-Hop group, raps in the Messina dialect for “maintaining contact with the poor and dispossessed people of [their] locality, who have difficulty expressing themselves in ‘standard’ Italian,” and also because they believe “rap is a [form of] communication” (Mitchell, Doin Damage, Pg. 8). This keeps Nuovi Briganti in touch with the people of Sicily whom they maintain a cultural relationship with through culture, dialect, and shared struggle.
99 Posse are a politically charged group from Naples who emerged from the centri sociali scene of the early 90’s. The group’s name refers to “the day in 1991 when about five hundred students and unemployed workers left a university assembly to occupy the ‘Officina 99’ in Naples,” which the group also references in their song “Curre, Curre, Guagliò” (Santoro & Solaroli, Authors & Rappers, Pg. 15). Rapping in the Neapolitan dialect, 99 Posse share a dialectical relationship with the people of Italy’s most unemployed city, and as Tom Behan states in his essay Putting Spanners in the Works: the politics of the 99 Posse “linguistically Neapolitan today is probably still the majority first language of people born in the [Naples].” Although the 99 Posse treat “street credibility” and left-wing political rhetoric as significant aspects of their music the group has signed with the major label BMG, as well as performed in 1994 and 2000 at the commercial Club Tenco annual Rassegna della canzone d’autore (Santoro & Solaroli, Authors & Rappers, Pg. 21-22 Table A1).
Some Italian Hip-Hop artists have decided to rap in “standard” Italian so that they can reach the widest audience possible. Jovanotti became a commercial success by rapping in “standard” Italian. Another group Menti Criminali (Criminal Minds), though not as popular as Jovanotti, also chose to rap in “standard” Italian so that what they “experience and feel is clear from Sicily to Milan” (Mitchell, Doin Damage). While this may diminish the “street credibility” of using regional dialects, the choice of rapping in “standard” Italian can also be contextualized as a political choice against sectarian and politically correct stances that tend to create dissension within movements.
The linguistic recontextualization of Hip-Hop, from an appropriated form of art, to an art form that lends itself to dialects across the globe, opens up the door for a globally shared practice. People from Ghana, to the US, to Italy, all share in an artistic form that is not necessarily homogenizing their culture, but rather giving people a new form that they can use to communicate with young people locally. This shared musical practice that cuts across political, social, ideological, and linguistic boundaries is reflective of the post-modern political conscious, which has been articulated to a great extent by native Italian political theorist and activist Antonio Negri. The idea of the multitude challenges the presuppositions of political ideologies prevalent in the left-wing movements of the early 20th century, updating the struggle for global emancipation through a lens that analyzes not what is to be done, but rather what is already being done that we can realize as sites for resistance. By reclaiming regional identities through the utilization of regional dialects, some Italian Hip-Hop artists have challenged the hegemony of “standard” Italian in the mass media, the 21st centuries most omnipresent site for standardization.
Music in Italian Hip-Hop Culture: Reclaiming Acoustic Space
Creating music with an eclectic blend of “fisarmonica (piano accordion), violin, djembe (an African drum), requinto (Mexican guitar), tub bass, balalaika and other arcane instrument(s)” the group Mau Mau are acoustically representative of Italy’s multicultural society (Mitchell, Questions of Style, Pg. 14). Mau Mau have distanced themselves from the often-sectarian Posse groups, pushing the boundaries of what Italian Hip-Hop can be. Unlike many groups Mau Mau not only uses live instrumentation, but also play completely acoustic live sets. Borrowing from Reggae, Hip-Hop, Algerian Rai, Mariachi etc… Mau Mau challenges the hegemony of uniform musical arrangements, while also challenging racialization through lyrics. The practice of bridging international alliances acoustically may prove to have as far reaching effects as building regional identity linguistically. For instance, Manu Chao, who like lead singer of Mau Mau Luca Morino is multilingual, sings in a wide array of languages, and in turn has become an international success while maintaining a relationship with the anti/alter-globalization movement. Lyrics can reach out to people who understand their meaning, but music, being a universal language, reaches out to people across the world emotionally. The members of Mau Mau take this universality seriously, following the musical philosophy of Senegalese musician Baba Maal, and in turn have created a sound as diverse as both the Mezzogiorno and dialects of Italy (Mitchell, Questions of Style, Pg 14).
Almamegretta are more similar to Posse style Hip-Hop yet integrate many diverse samples into their work. With a heavy emphasis on the style Dub Reggae, Almamegretta have produced songs such as Fa' ammore cu'mme and Sanghe e Anema. The influence of Fronne e’ Limone can also be heard in songs such as Nun te Scurda, which creates a sound rooted in Italian, Northern African and Jamaican musical styles. As Joseph Pugliese explains in his essay Whiteness and the Blackening of Italy “southern rap confirms both a transatlantic connection with African American culture and a transmediterranean reconnection with African and Arab culture,” stating that bands like Almamegretta, “embody this type of transoceanic cultural connection and reconnection” (Pugliese, Whiteness and the Blackening of Italy, Pg. 19).
While many groups have integrated world music sounds in to their songs many continue to sample instrumentals in the style of American Hip-Hop. Sa Razza, a group from Sardinia, rap in their local dialect, yet borrow from the LA Hip-Hop tradition of heavy basslines and G-Funk with songs such as Lassame Arregoli iz Disi and Storto Dal Mirto. Isola Posse All Stars old school classic Stop al Panico also borrows heavily from the American Hip-Hop tradition of drum’n’bass.
Like the linguistic recontextualization of Italian Hip-Hop, there has been an acoustic recontextualization of Hip-Hop in Italy. This acculturation of sound and style is an ever changing process, reflecting the Americanization of mass media in the 20th century, the multicultural society of the Mezzogiorno, and the massive waves of immigration continuing at this moment. While groups like Mau Mau have created the cultural praxis for young Italians to accept the wide array of musical forms emerging in the Mezzogiorno, many groups have also incorporated “elements of traditional regional Italian music, from the Apulian peasant shouts and chants used by Suono Mudu, to the Neapolitan shepherd's horn used by 99 Posse” (Mitchell, Questions of Style).
Graffiti in Italian Hip-Hop Culture: Reclaiming Visual Space
Through the process of acculturating Hip-Hop in Italy practices other than music production have become popular such as freestyle, and breakdancing. Graffiti art, one of the integral expressions of Hip-Hop culture, has also crossed the Atlantic Ocean and influenced a generation of young Italians in the Mezzogiorno. While this essay has explored the linguistic elements of implementation regional dialects, which gave Italian Hip-Hop new meaning, and acoustic elements, which give Italian Hip-Hop its transoceanic sound, it would be amiss to overlook the aspect of reclaiming visual space. As documented in the film Videocracy, commercial television has played an integral role in reorganizing the visual culture of Italy. With a history burdened by fascist political leaders, Italy is no stranger to the dangers of mind control through visual mediums. Joseph Pugliese notes in Whiteness and the Blackening of Italy, former PM Silvio Berlusconi argued that “graffiti is making our cities more like African ‘cities’ instead of European,” reinforcing feelings of racism in the northern regions.
The practice of graffiti art itself remains an expression of resistance to dominant cultural forms. One of the sites for this study of resistance is the statue of Dante at the Piazza Dante in Naples. Dante, an Italian figure, has been used to reinforce cultural hegemony of the north over the south (Pugliese, Whiteness and the Blackening of Italy). The history of brigandage and exclusion of the south reemerges in the resistance of monuments aimed at dismissing the history of the people of Naples and replacing it with dominant figures that represent the north.
Conclusion
As Steve Brown states in his essay How Music Works “Music is a device for creating group-level coordination and cooperation,” concluding that an “area of intense analysis in socio-musicological studies has been in the music of social protest where it is through music that social/political movements exert much of their influence on the society at large.” This is evident in the case of Italian Hip-Hop, where music functions at the group level to build cohesion under oppressive situations. While it is expected that social/political movements charged with the excitement of creating a better future will have internal disagreements, usually in the form of disputes concerning political correctness, the Italian Hip-Hop movement illustrates how music can bring people together to experience shared rituals, in turn strengthening group solidarity and identity. The Italian Hip-Hop movement also challenges politically correct postures concerning ideas of cultural appropriation and imperialism on the left, and racist postures of cultural purity on the right, creating not only a new musical form, but more significantly reflecting a broader shift in societal consciousness.
Now, in 2011, while the Eurozone puts countries like Italy and Greece in an economic stranglehold, and the Arab Spring oscillates between moments of victory and defeat, it will be interesting to watch how global alliances play out. Whether previous forms of cultural solidarity will bring forth new forms of economic solidarity based on mutual aid and peaceful coexistence remains to be seen.
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- Behan, Tom. Putting spanners in the works: the politics of the 99 Posse. Popular Music (2007) Volume 26/3. Cambridge University Press, pp. 497–504
- Brown, S. (2006). How does music work? Towards a pragmatics of musical communication. In S. Brown and U. Volgsten (Eds.) Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music (pp. 1-27). New York: Berghahn Books.
- Dawson, Ashley & Palumbo, Patrizia. Hannibal's Children: Immigration and Antiracist Youth Subcultures in Contemporary Italy. Cultural Critique. 59 (2005) 165-186
- Mitchell, Tony. Doin' damage in my native language: The use of "resistance vernaculars" in hip hop in France, Ita... Popular Music and Society. Fall 2000; 24, 3; ProQuestMitchell, Tony. Questions of Style: Notes on Italian Hip Hop. Popular Music. Vol. 14, No. 3 (Oct., 1995), pp. 333-348Pugliese, Joseph. Whiteness and the Blackening of Italy: La guerra cafona, Extracommunitari and Provisional Street Justice. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies. Vol. 5, no. 2, July 2008.Santoro, Marco & Solaroli, Marco. Authors and Rappers: Italian Hip Hop and the Shifting Boundaries of Canzone d’Autore. Popular Music (2007) Volume 26/3. Cambridge University Press, pp. 463–488
