The Canzone Napoletana Phenomenon in the reflection of scientific critical thought
Authors: Yang Fuyin 
Published: March 2021

Introduction. The Neapolitan song is a phenomenon associated with stable patterns of perception. This was a consequence of the popularity of the genre in the field of “light music”, when from the end of the 19th century to the 1970s, other non-pop forms of Canzone Napoletana were ousted from the musical context and the minds of listeners. The transfer of interest from authenticity to the field of musical “pop culture” naturally provoked a certain mode of silence in the research environment. Little interest in the study of the genre indicated a lag in scientific and analytical processes in comparison with practical results. Background. The active studying phase of the South of Italy song tradition falls on the middle of the 20th century and is associated with the activities of a music critic, professor of ethnomusicology Diego Carpitella (1924&#8722;1990). This defender of Italian folklore took an active part in ethnographic expeditions and the 1950s discussions, collected more than 5,000 songs, and paid special attention to the music of southern Italy. An important contribution was also made by Roberto De Simone (born 1933) – Italian theater director, composer and ethnomusicologist, founder of Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare (from 1967 to the present). Today, the fate of the historical past of Canzone Napoletana appears to be the object of close attention in Italy. This is evidenced by regularly held international conferences dedicated to the stylistics and poetics of Neapolitan song, its historical past, personalities who made a significant contribution to the formation of the genre, as well as monographs of various topics. Objective of the researching. In Ukrainian and Chinese musicology, the state of elaboration of the information field on the issue of Canzone Napoletana is extremely weak. Therefore, it seems relevant to refer to the review of foreign scientific sources. Thus, the subject of research in this article is the tradition of scientific and critical understanding of the phenomenon of Neapolitan song, formed at the crossroads of different areas of modern Italian art history. The identification of the leading issues in the coverage of the phenomenon of Canzone Napoletana in the works of modern scientists is the subject of this article. The research material, on the one hand, is a song “Te vogliо Bene assaje” as an example of commercialization of the genre, on the other hand – a monograph “La canzone napoletana. Tra memoria e innovazione” (2013). Results. The prerequisites for modern scientific thought aimed at studying the musical folklore of the South of Italy first arose in the 19th century. In the context of Romanticism’s interest in folk culture, musicological search was more of a practical nature: collection and recording of the texts of Neapolitan songs, musical notation of samples of spoken creativity. The origin of these processes is investigated in the collective monograph “La canzone napoletana. Tra memoria e innovazione” (2013) prepared by historians, sociologists, anthropologists, musicians. They entered a group for the study of Neapolitan song on the initiative by Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean (ISSM, Italy). Paola Avallone points to the ability of Neapolitan music to sublimate the musical traditions of various Mediterranean peoples, due to contact with the southern regions through geographic, commercial interaction. In Italy itself, the Neapolitan song is already recognized as a cultural phenomenon, the uniqueness of which is surprising against the background of the region’s economic problems, the depletion of its natural resources, and weak state financial support. The study of Neapolitan song at an interdisciplinary level dictates the development of such directions as: historical, methodological, scientific-analytical, morphological. The Neapolitan song is inextricably linked with the cultural environment of the southerners, their special “lifestyle”, mythological and religious ideas. Marialuisa Stazio characterizes the Neapolitan song of the late 19th century as unique because of its strong connection to collective memory. The attitude to the Canzone Napoletana as a certain musical archetype reveals the insufficiency of methods and imperfection of the tools of analysis due to the archaic nature of the origins of the Canzone Napoletana, as well as because of the incompleteness of its evolution from 1824 to 1970. Many of the samples created during this period have many similarities. At the same time, the forms of communication changed: from “flying” leaflets to “compilations” – collections of Neapolitan songs, like “Passatempi musicali” by G. Cottrau; from author’s songs to the involvement of the media in the 20th century, “television festivals of the Neapolitan song”. In the last decade, the Internet resources YouTube, Spotify, Pandora have played a decisive role in promoting the musical product Musica Napoletana. Conclusions. The Neapolitan song is of interest as a cultural and economic phenomenon. It has turned into a “tourist” product, a souvenir, which fully represents the cultural originality of the southern region, acts as a carrier of the cultural code of the nation and the Mediterranean as a whole. The problem of its preservation, as well as of bringing the existing developments in the field of ethnomusicology to a common denominator, giving them a certain integrity, remains urgent.