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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - From Sceneggiata to Youtube. The Contemporary Form of Production and Consumption of Neapolitan Neomelodic Music
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Projects & Abstracts
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2013-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Mimmo Gianneri
2013/03/01
IULM University, Milan
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Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - From Sceneggiata to Youtube. The Contemporary Form of Production and Consumption of Neapolitan Neomelodic Music
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16281/16868
13
FROM SCENEGGIATA TO YOUTUBE
THE CONTEMPORARY FORM OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
OF NEAPOLITAN NEOMELODIC MUSIC
Mimmo Gianneri / Ph.D. Thesis Abstract1
IULM University, Milan




   My research concerns the contemporary Neapolitan Neomelodic music market and imaginary.
It focuses on the analysis of a sample of Neomelodic music videos played by some actual local
singers and uploaded on YouTube from 2005 to 2013.
   Neapolitan Neomelodic music is a subgenre of local popular music especially addressed to
teenagers and played in the slums of Naples and its hinterland. The market not only reaches a vast
area of Southern Italy but also the suburbs around some great cities like Milan, Turin, Rome and
their provinces.
   My dissertation attempts to answer to the following questions: are Neapolitan Neomelodic
music videos a form of local young generations’ self-representation? Are they able to describe the
needs and the desires of that particular kind of young people?
   In the first chapter – after a theoretical introduction about the role that popular songs play
in Italian cinema and the place they have in our national imaginary – I examine the history of
Neapolitan popular music.
   Neomelodic music combines two different traditions: Canzone classica napoletana and
Sceneggiata. The first one, originating at end of 19th century in the Neapolitan bourgeois salons,
is an admixture of popular farmer songs, opera and romance; it is able to speak to all urban social
classes. In the 1920s, running parallel to Canzone classica napoletana, a new form of theatrical
representation begins to consolidate: Sceneggiata. Grounded on existing songs, it addresses
popular audiences, especially those who have recently moved from the country. The main song
of Sceneggiata is called canzone di giacca (“jacket’s song”) because the performer doesn’t wear
the traditional tailcoat. Sceneggiata’s singers make deep use of canto a fronna, a typical modulate
Mediterranean singing, used as a form of communication between the underworld’s criminal bands.
   Sceneggiata has a melodramatic repertoire. Its structure is made up of three acts. In the last act
the main character sings the title track addressing his rival or his lover. For instance, one of the
most successful Sceneggiata, Zappatore (L. Bovio, F. Albano, 1929), tells the story of a farmer’s
son who goes to the city and denies his origins. In the final scene, o’ zappatore (the farmer) bursts
into the bourgeois party to tell his son that his mother is gravely ill. After the song the moved and
regretful son kisses his father’s hand.
   During the final period of Sceneggiata, between the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s, Mario
Merola was the most important performer. In those days themes became more centred on crime
and there were many screen adaptations played by the same theatrical performers.


Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIII, no. 20, Spring 2013                                                     155
Mimmo Gianneri

   Cinematic Sceneggiata was influenced by Italian B movies like Poliziottesco or Spaghetti
Westerns, while theatrical Sceneggiata fell into crisis because its popular audience was changing
(it was indeed adapting to the city life). Again, in these movies the criminal protagonist wishes
to achieve a middle class life so Merola’s son is often a student who wants to become an honest
worker and to cut himself off from his father’s illegal life.
   In Giuramento and Tradimento, both directed by Alfonso Brescia in 1982, Merola’s character
is flanked by Nino D’Angelo. He was a young Sceneggiata’s actor and also a lively vocalist.
He is considered the first Neomelodic singer. Neomelodic music, in fact, directs its attention to
a popular audience who doesn’t wish to be depicted as it was in the past. For instance, in Pop
corn e patatine (one of the songs of the album Nu jeans e ‘na maglietta, 1983), Nino D’Angelo
remembers his gone by romance describing how together with his girlfriend he ate popcorn and
chips and drank Coca Cola…
   In the second chapter I analyse the semantic and syntactic features of Neomelodic music and
describe its media landscape.
   Pezzotto is one of the most distinguishing elements of the Neomelodic musical universe. It is
the imitation of national and international pop music styles and rhythms. Neomelodic songs are
often written in a mix of vernacular and Italian. Unlike Canzone di giacca, in fact, they have some
lines in Italian, whose function is to emphasize some passages. The balance between Italian and
vernacular in Neomelodic songs is useful to understand the relation between this subculture and
the external world. For example, in Fotomodelle un po’ povere (from the album Passo dopo passo,
1995), Gigi D’Alessio uses Italian to scorn his upper-class formeer girlfriend.
   Just like other musical subcultures around the world – such as Mexican narcocorrido or
Argentinian cumbia villera – and despite its apparent cultural autarchy, Neomelodic music
grounds its success on the ability to rework commercial music culture. The Neomelodic market
rests on a star system where, for the faithful fans, singers have to look like a local version of most
important national and international pop stars.
   The Neomelodic industry adapted itself to the changing media landscape: radio and popular
cinema in the 1980s, television in the 1990s, internet and social networks like YouTube in the
2000s. In the end of the 1970s Nino D’Angelo became popular thanks to the self promotion he
did through hundreds of local radio stations; and then, in 1980s, he reinforced his fame through
popular cinema.
   From 1990s, following the example of Gigi D’Alessio, Neomelodic industry grew thanks to
weddings, First Communions or 18th birthdays. In these special occasions singers are hired to
perform. Neomelodic aspiring artists are initially supported by their families while local labels
deal with the recording process and the promotion of the singer. In this media landscape most of
the local televisions’ shows host Neomelodic singers’ performances to profit through fans’ phone
calls. In the 1990s music videos broadcast by local televisions became one of the most important
form of promotion for labels and singers.
   In the third chapter I propose a theoretical overview about the journey development “from 20th
century video/film to early 21st century social video,”2 next I focus on YouTube architecture and
social experience and then illustrate nowadays the Neomelodic subculture’s use of this popular
video sharing platform.
   YouTube for the Neomelodic market is not only an archive for previous contents, like music


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videos or live performances aired on television, but it is also a space where Neomelodic Pro-Am
culture tries to make its contents professional.3 Thus, many local video production companies
mark their works with company’s logo and they often have a YouTube channel where other
contents, including wedding videos, are showed. Wedding videos are a very sought after product
for their female fans.
  As for singers, we can look at a new generation of performers born in the 1990s and digitally
inclined who increases their one-to-one relationship with fans through social networks. Furthermore,
this new generation of singers is more than ever influenced by mass culture: they try to follow the
height of fashion; their songs are written mostly in Italian – with some lyrics in Spanish or English
too – and, sometimes, their music videos emulate the ones of famous international artists ones.
  The fourth chapter analyzes some music videos performed by actual Neomelodic singers. I
compiled a sample composed of music videos performed by five local stars: Alessio, Raffaello,
Nancy, Emiliana Cantone and Rosario Miraggio. All of them were born in the 1990s. Their music
videos have been uploaded on YouTube from 2005 to 2013. I also chose to include some other
artists, indulging in flânerie during my website4 surfing on the Neomelodic subculture.
  According to Sceneggiata tradition Neomelodic songs and videos tell stories. In these
melodramatic love songs, men are rarely punished for their infidelity, while young girls play the
following three main roles: the femme fatale, usually condemned for her behaviour; the young
lady suffering or rejoicing for her man; the elder sister who comforts her relative’s love pains.
  Neomelodic music videos are often set on a domestic space, where female teenagers cry or phone
up their lovers or their unfaithful men. Neapolitan urban space is shown only when the lovers walk
together: a girl without boyfriend doesn’t go through the streets of the city. Consequently, cars can
be considered as an extension of domestic spaces. Within cars lovers can hide away from prying
eyes and unfaithful men can preserve their integrity.
  From the analysis carried out it emerged that music videos are a distorting mirror of private
everyday life. Their stereotypical love stories provide a self-perceptive overview of the young
slum’s inhabitants and they represent a snapshot of the social relationship between male and female.
Music videos can be seen as a melodramatic or romantic photography book of the potential young
girl’s life, with all her pain and her delight. Music videos, in fact, are connected with (future)
wedding videos, not only because video production companies produce both, but also because
young female teenagers look at them dreaming and waiting for their show: the wedding day. On
that day female spectators succeed in being protagonists like local pop stars.


1   Ph.D. dissertation on 18th March 2013. Thesis supervisors: prof. Gianni Canova and prof. Massimo
    Locatelli.
2   Lev Manovich, The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life, in Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer (eds.), Video
    Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2008, p. 33.
3   I use the Pro-Am definition from Charles Leadbeater, Paul Miller, The Pro-Am Revolution: How
    Enthusiasts Are Changing Our Economy and Society, Demos, London 2004.
4   It’s a methodological approach adopted from Thomas Elsaesser, Tales of Epiphany and Entropy: Around
    the Worlds in Eighty Clicks, in Pelle Vonderau, Patrick Snickars (eds.), The Youtube Reader, Institute of
    Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2008, pp. 166-186.




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