Various artists

When people leave the bar after grabbing a coffee in Taranto, everyone wishes each other a happy May Day. This way of greeting one another feels vaguely alien to outsiders, and gives a sense of just how deeply Labour Day, with its accompanying concert, is truly felt by the people of Taranto. "Uno Maggio Libero e Pensante" remains one of the few major self-financed festivals in Italy, which is why none of the artists on the bill shied away from uncomfortable or divisive subjects, whether through the brisk, light rhythms of Rekkiabilly or the powerful jazz-and-soul flourishes of Canta fino a Dieci.

Speaking of Canta fino a Dieci: the world badly needs an album from them. Rossana De Pace, Sirlene, Anna Castiglia, Chriarch Re and Irene Buselli make up a transfeminist project, writing for people who are 'free and thinking', even if in the end their music simply makes you float. During their set they worked with a minimalist setup of guitars, bass and just a handful of percussion, from which rose bare, simple vocal harmonies, drawing the crowd in and creating a choral community made up of hundreds of people.

It's fair to say, without much risk of being wrong, that the defining trait of this Uno Maggio was collaboration itself: on stage, and between stage and crowd. A synergy made possible by how deeply rooted so many of the Taranto artists are in their own community, but also by the fact that none of them separated art from politics. It's wonderful to see three generations of street artists in dialogue on stage ‒ Don Ciccio, Mama Marjia, Fido Guido and Kid Yugi ‒ who turned a blend of reggaeton, hip-hop and even flashes of neomelodico into something genuinely enjoyable, regardless of the language gap, which doesn't really distance anyone unfamiliar with the Taranto dialect.

Continuing along the lines of politically engaged rap, there's Gemitaiz, in his second year at Taranto, by now practically a hometown artist. Then Cigno take the stage, the artistic project of Diego Cignitti. They impose a shift in register, producing noise and distortion by bringing directly on stage the unusual instruments needed to generate them, with no need for prior sampling. Giant forks, little sirens and chains thrashed about wildly conjure up an infernal, decadent atmosphere, perfectly suited to the performance. In barely ten minutes on stage, the crowd genuinely risked being swept away, carried off by the icy wind that kept clearing the stage of red and purple smoke. Within this dystopian padding of dissonance that makes Cigno's post-punk so recognisable, it was the bassline and drums that held onto some semblance of rationality.

If up to that point the music had been felt and experienced through the sonic and rhythmic choices of the guests on stage, from late afternoon onward Taranto's Uno Maggio shifted toward a more or less traditional singer-songwriter sound.

Margherita Vicario, however, has little to nothing traditional about her, being the multifaceted artist that she is: a songwriter with a biting pen, riding an easy, danceable groove that on "Ave Maria" and "Mandela" fills up with occasionally Latin-tinged vibrations, able to get her whole worldview across without ever asking permission.

Built on a similar spirit but realised very differently is the music of Marco Castello, who grafts onto a bare-bones funky backbone lyrics that move from criticising overtourism to celebrating the nature of his homeland, Sicily.

The expressive storytelling of Giorgio Poi seems to have been placed there specifically to prepare us, even physically, for the arrival of Brunori Sas. A supremely refined songwriter, Dario Brunori needs no introduction, and yet he still gives the impression of asking permission before letting us feel something, turning explicit self-irony into the perfect hook with the audience. If "Lamezia Milano" runs out its rhythmic charge (his words, not mine), with "L'albero delle noci", "Canzone contro la paura" and "La verità" he blends, like the shrewdest of alchemists, reflections on the meaning of life that could easily come across as bitter pills, but instead taste like paternal consolation.

It wasn't easy to switch to different beats with Sì Boom Voilà, who brought to the stage a genre that usually stays confined to squats, occupied spaces or small neighbourhood stages: a hardcore sound perfectly in tune with the mood of Uno Maggio. Michelangelo Mercuri moves through fast, almost rapped spoken word, never quite sliding into pure freestyle. Guitars (Davide Lasala and Giulio "Ragno" Favero), bass (Roberta Sammarelli) and drums (Giulia Formica) build a tight, aggressive impact: they take no prisoners and saturate the sonic space. They would have deserved a longer set, but of course room had to be made for Subsonica.

There couldn't have been a better way to close the night. Subsonica open the set with "Straniero", taken from the Turin band's latest album, released for their thirtieth anniversary: a tribal chant by construction, calling on the crowd to answer the rhythmic "boom" that closes every line of the chorus. The electronic tension of "Diluvio" builds through layering: wide synths, pulsing bass and a rhythm that never quite explodes, staying instead suspended in mid-air. "Liberi tutti", alongside a totally unexpected Willie Peyote, brings the stage back to more overtly political territory. They close the show with "Preso blu", delivered with a warmth that makes the interplay between vocal line and electronic texture feel even more osmotic.

Nobody wanted to leave, but time, like space on the page, can be a tyrant. A mirror of the siege the city of Taranto itself lives under, caught between the Navy and the ghost of the Ilva steelworks. At least for one day, the high-decibel, high-bpm sound waves managed to push back the iron dust. Given how strong the wind was blowing, it probably swept a good deal of it away too, leaving the city free to breathe.

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