“One of us”: the neomelodic music industry as a Camorra-mediated space of subaltern publicity in contemporary Naples

Abstract

ABSTRACT The term ‘neomelodic’ defines a pop-folk music genre featuring the mediascape of Naples, Southern Italy, since the late 1980s. Neomelodic songs depict the experiences of lower-class Neapolitan subjects with a preference for those engaging with the Camorra, a powerful criminal organisation that is also a major investor in the local media industries. This article constitutes an exploration of the Camorra-mediated neomelodic milieu of cultural production vis-à-vis the political landscape of the current Neapolitan social peripheries. In so doing, it ethnographically shows how the neomelodic modalities of cultural production mediate and reify local forms of organised crime hegemony vis-à-vis the discursive power of the state. Accordingly, it also demonstrates how such modalities turn the neomelodic industry into a relational infrastructure of subaltern publicity, which engenders political dynamics of personal mobility and social identity construction amid its sponsors, performers, and publics.