Jason Pine finds treasure in one city's 'a munezz', or what some people of Naples call trash
referring to neomelodica music. A great companion to Saviano's Gomorrah, Pine's outsider perspective enables us all to safely witness this dangerous art of making do. With the eye of a cunning journalist and the descriptive skills of a fine novelist, Pine illuminates the murky ... Read moreworld of the Camorra and Naples' neomelodica scene. This is writing culture at its best.
Fred Gardaphe, author of From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities Exploring musical performance as a pathway to the Neapolitan underworld, Jason Pine shows how the improbable becomes persuasive as he passionately embraces the challenges of uncertainty and vagueness that mark a highly stylized but passionate arena of social interaction. In the intense theatricality of their shape-shifting kaleidoscope of relationships and identities, Pine's vivid interlocutors challenge the realism of anthropological description through an aesthetic realism of their own, one that dissolves the boundary between art and life.
Michael Herzfeld, author of Evicted from Eternity Show Less