SPAKKA-NEAPOLIS 55
Janus

80166702191749

8016670291749
Spakka-Neapolis
Italia

 

Janus is the new album of SPAKKA NEAPOLIS 55, the well known Neapolitan world music band. The album is the second of the band after the debut album Aneme Perze / Lost Soul, (Real World Records). The group was born in 1999 with the name «Spaccanapoli» and in 2004 changed its name in SPAKKA NEAPOLIS 55.

The new album can boast the participation of some very special guests like Alim Qasimov, The Master of Mugham, the most illustrious interpreter of the traditional music of Azerbaijan, considered a living legend and one of the most beautiful voices of every time of the Middle East. Nando Citarella, one of the most versatile and well known artists in Neapolitan music and theatre and Maurizio Capone with his tools, a leading figure of the Neapolitan music scene.
The album was produced by Antonio Fraioli, a musician from long time involved in musical search between modernity and tradition and founder of the group Spakka Neapolis 55 with Monica Pinto, the singer of the band.
The mixing of the 13 songs of the album have been carried out by three different sound engineers: Marco Messina ex 99 Posse, Luigi Turaccio (already keyboardist of the group for several years), that carried out the recording sessions, and Enzo “Soulfingers” Rizzo, producer/engineer of Mano Negra, Manu Chao, Les Negresses Vertes, Modena City Ramblers, which took care the mastering, too.

Janus, an archaic Italic deity, depicted with two faces looking in two opposite directions, well represents the musical path and the search of this new album which tells, so intense and personal, both the tradition and the reality of our days.
The music of the new songs is written by Antonio Fraioli, who continues the search towards new sonorous plots, where the inherit of the traditional rhythms and the melodies are richness for to express, trough the intense voice of Monica Pinto the sound of now days. Some songs like E nnuvole, Poco è o tiempo, N’atu sole, works up a musical language more linked to the World Music mood, while in songs like Scampia, the sound is more hard, further from tradition to emphasize the images and the meaning of the lyrics. The album contain also some traditional pieces: Lu ruciu te lu mare or the Tarantelle Ahi lu core meu and Uellì uellà, typical from the province of Salento, and a transfigured Tammurriata (an ancient Neapolitan dance) like Spata r’oro, that are revamped, sometimes also rewritten, through refined and original arrangements that improve the traditional feeling.
Listening to this album you can meet the sound of deeps drums, impassionate voices, grooves, exciting melodies and rhythms from ancient Italian dances….. and the sound of a band parade.
The lyrics of the new songs are written by Annapia Ferrara and Pasquale Russo (the latter already the author of Cala ‘a sera soundtrack of the film Le Rose Del Deserto of Mario Monicelli), and deal with different issues. Scampia is a borough of the northern outskirts of Naples, sadly known as the scene of one of the most terrible wars of the Neapolitan mafia of few years ago. It is known like «The drug paradise», too. Scampia is a shout of denunciation and disillusion against the bad government and the political class. Experiences of real life lived by Annapia Ferrara, which in Canzone precaria instead, expresses the anger of people like her, which live on their own skin the condition to be precarious workers. A condition that doesn't give any certainty for the future, working for a long time with contracts that expire every few months, putting the workers in position of not being able to assert their rights.
In the 'A Riffa all the beautiful Napoletanità (being from Naples) is, still resisting. The «riffatore» that still exists in some alley in Naples and the province, walks for the streets in a very theatrical way, calling the people and showing the prizes to attract people’s attention, to sell the numbers. Continuing his performance he extracts the winning numbers from a small basket. In this way he realizes his profit, offering the hope of a winning just for some little coin. Elsewhere, improbably the «riffatore» could be respected like is in Naples: more easily he should be judged like a poor or a madman!
The band, founded in 1999 by Monica Pinto and Antonio Fraioli since its debut has made a long series of international tours during which they achieve a big success both of public and of critic.
(France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Canada, Jappon, Malaysia, Czech Rep., Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, U.S.A. Hungary, U.K. Mexico, Finland, New Caledonia, Croatia, Greece).
Moreover, in 2001, the group opened two Manu Chao’s concerts, held in Genoa and Naples.
In September 2002, the band opened the two world premiere concerts for the presentation of the album Up of Peter Gabriel. Again, in June 2004 Spakka–Neapolis, opened the concert in Genoa and performed with the English rock star.
In 2003 in Canada the band was awarded with «Prix Miroir» for the category Musiques et Traditions du Monde.

FILM and THEATER
The famous American TV series The Sopranos has chosen the song ’OMare from Album Lost Souls / Aneme Perze like soundtrack of the episode n.43 The Weight.
In 2006 the Spakka Neapolis music has been chosen by the «Theater for a New Audience» of New York (USA), for the show entitled Souls of Naples (These Phantoms by Eduardo De Filippo), directed by Roman Paska and interpreted by John Turturro. The show was staged at the Teatro Mercadante in Naples, New York and Paris.
In 2007 the songs ’O Mare, Santa Notte and Mmiezo a Festa were chosen for the soundtrack of the TV series The Long Way Down (episode n.1 and n.2), produced by the BBC with Ewan Mc Gregor and Charley Brooman, and in the some year, the songs ’O Mare and Santa Notte were included in the double album The Long Way Down published by Real World Records.
In the 2008 in preview the instrumental version of the song Spata r’oro from the new album Janus is in the soundtrack of the documentary-fiction about the battle of Fallujah Angeli distratti by Gianluca Arcopinto.

 

 

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