La Niña

For many years now, “the” Sherwood (the festival) has become vastly more popular than “the” Sherwood (the radio station that organizes it). This is surely a consequence of the decision, made some time ago, to sell off its broadcast frequencies in order to survive purely online (this writer still remembers the dismay of watching some anonymous “jealous radio station” suddenly take the place of the one always playing in the car and at home). Be that as it may, this year too, as has been the case every summer for over twenty years, the car park of Padua's Euganeo stadium becomes, for a month, one of the biggest draws of the Northeast's summer season. Whether the shows are ticketed or pay-what-you-want, a packed crowd is almost always guaranteed. Credit, then, is due to an organization that has kept improving year after year, without ever abandoning the consistent political commitment of what began life as “Padua's communist radio station”.

And on Tuesday, June 16th, there was already a huge crowd in front of the stage when Casadilego opened the evening. Elisa Coclite, from Teramo, is in some ways a sum of elements that I'd normally love to despise: an indie singer-songwriter with pop ambitions (or the other way around – in the end it's the same thing), an X Factor winner and, consequently, a healthy carrier of a far too "measured" idea of musical performance, and on top of that, she took her stage name from a song by Ed Sheeran. But since my cynicism is softened by the pleasure I get from being thrown off balance, I found the passion this girl poured out onstage genuinely adorable, and the power of her lungs admirable – inversely proportional to her height. She's 23 and is, rightly, all love. Her music is hormonal, in the most romantic sense of the word and without the faintest trace of malice. The short dress seems to want to be suggestive, but then you notice the Birkenstocks with striped socks and you just want to buy her a Nutella-and-coconut crepe. Her limit is that her music is so clean you could eat off it: a bit more edge wouldn't hurt, but in the end, if she managed to win me over with that kind of proposition, she deserves full marks.

The atmosphere changes abruptly just before La Niña takes the stage: adolescent freshness gives way to an archaic kind of awareness. Carola Moccia carries forward a tradition, but steers it in a direction of her own choosing. One that starts, yes, in Naples, but embraces the whole Mediterranean, Spanish flamenco and Middle Eastern touches, with a unique ability to come across, depending on the moment, as hieratic as a priestess and as familiar as a friend.
If her latest album "Furèsta" (a masterpiece) already tips the balance more toward classically Neapolitan sounds compared to the more "urban" pop of her debut "Vanitas" (still a great record, though), live the electronic element is stripped back even further. Minimalist arrangements prevail: percussion, castanets ("O Ballo d'e 'mpennate") and, at times, just the voice alone ("Mammamà"), with forays into Baroque music ("Oinè").
Paradoxically, the most "modern" moment of the concert was a voice-and-vocoder-only version of the classic "Maruzzella". The best moments, though, are the ones where she picks up the guitar and launches into her more urgent songs, like "Salomè", "Guapparia" or "Figlia d'a tempesta", where pride and energy go hand in hand, driving the Sherwood crowd wild.
Both guardian and innovator in equal measure, La Niña is yet another proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Neapolitan music scene.

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