“‘Na tazzulella ‘e cafè”by Pino Daniele – The “opium” of the Neapolitan people

Article written by Michele Sergio and published in L’Espresso Neapolitan of December 2018

We miss Pino Daniele. We lack the greatness of the musician, the virtuosity of the guitarist, the words of the poet, the sensitivity of the artist, the irony, the meekness and the privacy of the character, the social commitment of man. For us Neapolitans lack, more than anything, his affection for Naples and Neapolitan people. Pino is the father, the brother, the friend who, suddenly disappearing, has left inside and outside each of us a deep and hardly filled void.

During his early and brilliant artistic career, Pino Daniele has been able to embody the Neapolitan style (the real one, far from that cloying and oleographic but often propelled to eminently commercial purposes) better than any other musician (as he liked to define himself), proposing feelings , reflections and denunciations through an original and inimitable sound, genuine syncretism of Neapolitan, Mediterranean, Latin, blues, jazz and funky sounds. Contaminations and fusions of musical genres and instruments to talk about love and friendship, social and political themes, Neapolitan, national and global.

In his early twenties, in 1977, he published his first album, Terra mia, in which, among many pearls – Napul’è, Terra mia, Suonno d’ajere, Cammina cammina – his first hit stands out: Na tazzulella ‘e cafè . The song (promoted by that great talent-scout and friend of the Neapolitan people who is Renzo Arbore), alluring with its simple sounds of Neapolitan flavor, is a blatant denunciation of the power system that, guiltily forgetting the needs of the governed, try to conceal abuses and injustices behind sops given to the population.

“Na tazzulella ‘e cafè e maje niente ce fanno sapé” Pino begins, without blunt terms, he censures the bad habit of the powerful to keep the population in ignorance, granting the same only that little (the metaphorical cup of coffee) already , however, sufficient to keep it, so to speak, at bay, in a condition of widespread malaise but, fatalistically, accepted: E nuje tirammo ‘nnanze, cu ‘e dulure ‘e panza e invece ‘e ce ajutà , ce abbòffano ‘e caf蔝.

The happy lazarus, already very young, denounces, therefore, the mala-politics, the indolent and profiteer, ready only to fight for the sharing of power and devoted to their own interests and few associates rather than that of the majority of the people, strongly in need of help in the resolution of large and small daily problems:“E chiste, invece ‘e dà  na mano, s’allisciano, se và ttono, se mà gnano ‘a città ”.

Pino condemns the wicked social pact imposed since the days of imperial Rome (with the politics of the panem et circenses: the Caesar on duty lavished on the people the minimum food and fun – the bread and circus games for the note – in order to keep the social tension low and increase popular consensus) and up to the modern ones, to the tormented ’70s of the last century. The means change (the cup of coffee instead of bread, the football match in place of gladiatorial games) but not the purpose of the power system: through small concessions one can control the majority of the population, caring for consent, only by circumventing problems by never solving them.

The twenty-year-old man in blues does not accept this state of affairs. With a typically young freshness and freshness, in the text and in the music, he encourages the refusal of the patronage policy, that of private interest. He tries to awaken from the torpor the most who are not aware of the abuses of power, ending with unwittingly acquiescing to him, contenting himself with that little bit, a cup of coffee, always promptly granted, without demanding the resolution of problems, or opposing social injustice: “S’aìzano ‘and palazzi, they do things’ and crazy, they go around, they go there, they do it and taxes”.

Forty years ago a young Neapolitan artist so debonair, singing uncomfortable denunciations, trying to shake the consciences of his countrymen (and not), exhorting them to go beyond the deceptive appearances, to look, however, the reality, however unpleasant, to induce the rulers to address problems and solve them. He invited them to say enough to the Roman panem and the Neapolitan tazzulella and cafè, to free themselves from the fumes of social opium distributed by malaria to the population.

A real lesson of civilization and conscience, still, unfortunately, current.

Goodbye Pino and thank you.