VARIOUS ARTISTS
La Musica Della Mafia: Il Canto di Malavita
PIAS/ Beggars Banquet
· Songs of the bad life.
In Steven Soderbergh’s Full Frontal, one of the characters, a journalist, proposes a story to his editor about the reason for mass culture’s obsession with gangster films. Movies about the Mafia offer a walk on the wild side, he says, with few tangible repercussions for those who revel in their violent moralism.
But the outlaw has long been a central figure in popular culture, particularly since the cult of individualism has risen to prominence globally in the past several decades, and the influence of characters that transcend the law prevails not just in movies but also in music. This is particularly notable in folk traditions, where the life of crime often embraces the spirit of individuality – for country singers like Johnny Cash ("Folsom Prison Blues") and Merle Haggard ("I’m a Lonesome Fugitive"), romanticized criminality was once their stock in trade. And they’re just the most famous examples.
So it’s interesting to see a record like La Musica Della Mafia raising such a rumpus in its native Italy, where some critics are saying the CD glamourizes the Mafia with il canto di malavita (literally, "songs of the bad life," but also translated as "songs of the life of crime"). Truth be told, this compilation marks the first time that these songs have ever been recorded for posterity – it’s a collection of tunes that were originally meant to be played only at celebrations of the ’Ndrangheta, the notoriously brutal gangsters of the southern Italian region of Calabria.
Granted, the lyrics of these songs may be concerned with murder, imprisonment and the code of honour, but to say that they condone or promote criminal activity misses the point entirely. These renditions have been pieced together from the ’Ndrangheta’s oral tradition by musician Mimmo Siclari and his group, and thus the record is simply a chronicle of a way of life – folk music in its simplest sense. It’s beautiful music, too, predominantly tarantellas sung and played with palpable emotion.
If the purpose of music is to transport those who hear it to another world, La Musica Della Mafia definitely takes us on a non-judgmental tour through the realities of life in Southern Italy, where the ’Ndrangheta’s code is a more powerful force than civic law could ever hope to be. Take a walk on the wild side.
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