Seduced by reggae, soul, funk, they re-read the Afro-American sound culture, appropriate it, mix it with melody, record auditions that then become hit songs in their bedrooms and, from idols of their community, they turn into stars international in scope. It is not only hip hop in Italy, as has been the case for a long time in the rest of Europe, to be, with artists such as Mahmood, Amir, Rancore a place of human and artistic growth for the ‘second generation’, but also the others ‘global’ sound languages A lively scene, which feeds on new names every day and develops far from the traditional rules of the market.
However, involving a huge audience, even outside our borders. Awa Fall, a 24 year old Italian Senegalese girl lives in Bergamo and is an international reggae celebrity, a debut album recorded at 18, before the journey to discover the homeland of her family, a recent album, Music Unites, written in the months of isolation from the virus and, in between, over a hundred concerts every year, including an enthralling performance at the Africa Festival in Wurzburg, Germany, the largest European appointment with African music. Sans Soucis, born in Modena, Italian father, Congolese mother, studies as an opera singer, virtuoso of jazz song in its most pop version, also looks at the planetary market. For some years she has been living in London, where the opportunities are greater. And so it was. In the hardest months of the lock down, between listening to Congolese rumba and Lucio Battisti, he wrote a series of songs that attracted the attention of the launch pad of young artists, which will organize his American debut. It is the same structure that supported the debut of personalities such as Billie Eilish and Lazzo.
A choice, that of going to live in countries where the attention to youth cultures is greater, which led the Technoirs to leave Genoa, where they lived, to go to Berlin. The duo, he, Alexandor Finizio half Greek half Apulian, she, Jennifer Villa, Nigerian and Senegalese origins, adopted by an Italian couple, expresses a sound between funk, electronic and pop, already contained in two albums, the last one is called ‘ Never Trust the Algorithm ‘and tells of a desire, that of being able to create music without having to take into account the absolute power of the algorithm that determines the tastes of listeners. And then there is Anna Bassy, an Italian-Nigerian, born in Verona, who since she was a child has absorbed the songs that were listened to at home, reggae, above all and then soul and r’n’b. After so many amateur recordings, just in these days his first ‘official’ album, Monsters, has been released, which collects a series of ballads of great emotional intensity, sometimes even poised between folk and pop, compositions that, once heard , they seem to no longer want to leave room for anything else. A rare ability, his, to pursue a melodic perfection, which gravitates around a crystalline voice, capable of evoking, together, the Italian singing tradition and its roots.Bassy derives from Abasi which in Efik, the language of Nigeria, means ” God”