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Posters of Lenin, Marx, Che Guevara, and bright red hammer and sickle flags adorn the halls at Spaccanapoli's electrifying concerts - before packed audiences of Italian youth, who'd more typically be found at hip-hop or rock shows. Formerly known as E Zezi, the band are a bona fide gruppo operaio (worker's group) - the revolutionary socialist collective of automotive factory workers in their native Naples. Most of the members - playing mandolins, rattles, throbbing drums, flutes, violins, accordions, tambourines, and singing ancient a cappella chants - still work at the factory, and must take unpaid leave to go on tour. The original "e zezi" were anti-clerical troubadours, gypsy rebels eventually suppressed by the police in southern Italy, but their present-day namesakes are not about to disappear. Their impassioned songs - about racism, drugs, unemployment, and corruption - draw upon Neapolitan folk music, at times sounding positively pre-Judeo-Christian, yet filter reggae, rap and jazz into a potent mix that clearly drives a message still relevant to disaffected youth in the grimy shadow of Vesuvius...and beyond. |
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