Canzone Napoletana / Neapolitan Song

Canzone napoletana, or “Neapolitan song,” is a genre of traditional music sung in the Neapolitan language, or dialect. Many of the songs are about the nostalgic longing for the beauty of Naples - the sea, the air, the food. The Neapolitan song genre became a formal institution in the 1830s due to an annual song-writing competition in Naples. Many Neapolitan songs are now world-famous because they were taken abroad by emigrants from Naples and southern Italy, roughly between 1880 and 1920.

One of the most important native Neapolitan performers of Neapolitan songs is Roberto Murolo, who is known not only as a singer and guitarist, but also as a composer, scholar and collector of the music. His collection of twelve LPs, released in the 1960s, is an annotated anthology of Neapolitan song dating back to the twelfth century. Most of the arrangements performed by Joe Caliva are based on or inspired by the arrangements and recordings of Roberto Murolo.