The Political Pentagram: Music, Regional Identities and Resistance to Cultural Globalisation

Can specific genres have a political dimension moving across various identity levels? Two Mediterranean musical traditions have long worked as multilevel identifiers of global, national and regional belongings: flamenco and canzone napoletana (Neapolitan song). However, since the early 20th century both genres have been constructed as ‘national’ primarily abroad, rather than in their home countries. In the 21st-century they have benefited from certain advantages of globalisation such as increasing possibilities of encounters and metissage. At the same time, they have acted as forms of resistance to neoliberal globalisation. But while the former has become a vehicle of regional politics, the latter has not acquired a political dimension. Through cultural encounters and fusion with Arab classical music (music andalusi), flamenco has become a badge of cross-cultural encounters, interculturalism and multicultural politics. It has thus been turned into a platform against racism and xenophobia. In particular, the two genres combined have contributed to the rise of a form of 'intercultural regionalism' with its myth-based narrative of regional identity and simultaneously a plausible framework for interfaith coexistence. The canzone, which consolidated its international position through the Italian diaspora, is more urban oriented and centred around the city of Naples, where regional identity has rarely assumed an articulated and visible political dimension. It has also a fused with various genres, but never in the form of political program. The paper contributes to a theory of ‘local/global music’ nesting overlapping political and cultural identities, functioning simultaneously as a vehicle of regional, ethnic, urban, global and diasporic belongings, while acting as a tool of resistance to the most disruptive aspects of cultural globalisation.