Neomelodic Minstrels for the Mob

Ask average Italians what pops into their head when they think of Naples, and you’ll almost assuredly get the same three things every time: pizza, garbage in the streets, and the most powerful international crime syndicate in the world—the Camorra. It is in this reality that a distinctive genre of music rose to prominence over the past two decades.

Neomelodic music is a strange mixture of techno, pop, Latin American music, and traditional Neapolitan love songs, an entirely singular and totally bizarre form of music that, critics say, is generally performed by ex-criminals who became Camorra minstrels.

Neomelodic singers (ranging in age from 8 to 80) tell stories of love found and lost, of the crime that surrounds them, of dreams of success and escape, and of running away from the law, all in the Neapolitan dialect—a language that is very different from “normal” Italian. The songs are 100 percent cheesy and melodic—not to mention melodramatic—but at the same time they’re incredibly funny and tell stories that resonate with their audience.

Tommy Riccio is an old-school neomelodic star who shoots rays of pure charisma from his eyeballs. Rossella is one of the few female neomelodics. Alessio is a rising star (and a babe) who’s going to break into the mainstream Italian pop world very soon. And Giuseppe Jr. is a “baby” neomelodic singer who first stepped into the limelight when he was 9 years old.

In Naples and most other southern Italian regions, the neomelodics are superstars. They look like quintessential über-Guidos: shaved chests, plucked eyebrows, orange tans, pimped-out cars, skintight Dolce & Gabbana shirts, and an oil tanker’s worth of hair gel. While the people revere them as heroes, the mainstream media largely ignore them—which isn’t surprising. But the neomelodics work hard to break out into the mainstream, where they attempt to reconfigure themselves as friendly Italian products rather than local, Neapolitan ones.