Renato Carosone and Neapolitan Music: Challenging Paradigms of Hybridity in the Mediterranean

Abstract

abstract:Hybridity has been a favored metaphor used to discuss cultural mixture in the Mediterranean and beyond. The mobility, interconnectivity, and exchange that characterize Mediterranean historiography lend themselves to the depiction of a cultural landscape of hybridity and mixture. The discourse of hybridity, however, has often been analytically “fuzzy,” with scholars sliding effortlessly from discussing instances of “aesthetic hybridity” to quasi-causal forms of “unconscious hybridity.” In the context of the Mediterranean the concept of hybridity is often used to reconstruct a regional unity built out of crossovers and hybridization. Discussions of “unconscious hybridity” must always, however, be contextualized in relation to the politicized discourses that invoke them—whether to decry or celebrate them. In this article I discuss this notion of Mediterranean hybridity in relation to Neapolitan music, focusing especially on the neglected work of Renato Carosone (1920–2001). While Neapolitan music is often celebrated for its cultural hybridity, such discussions often problematically conflate models of hybridity with models for hybridity.