2025 (EN)

PRESENTATION OF PIETRO PERONE'S BOOK: “PINO DANIELE. NAPOLI E L’ANIMA DELLA MUSICA, DAL MASCALZONE LATINO A GIÒGIÒ”.

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Naples  ||  | 10 January 2025
Tutte le Attività (EN) - Anno 2025

The presentation of the book by Pietro Perone, journalist and editor-in-chief of the Mattino, entitled: "Pino Daniele. Napoli e l'anima della musica, dal mascalzone latino a Giògiò" (San Paolo Editions).
It is a book that speaks not only of Pino Daniele ten years after his untimely death, but of the city that the singer-songwriter narrated in its chiaroscuro. The Naples of yesterday, the one that reunited on the evening of 19 September 1981 with Pino and his band in Piazza Plebiscito, for the dream of a change that is still being chased today, and the Naples of today, the one that walks on two tracks: one is the beautiful carpet of tourism and the other the dirty pavement of truth that includes young people who kill their peers.
"It is not a festive book, explained the author - the idea of writing this book was born on 31 August 2023, when the news arrived at the editorial office that Giovanbattista Cutolo, 24, a musician and a student at the San Pietro a Maiella conservatory, had been killed. The same conservatory that Pino would have liked to attend, which he later failed to enrol in because the aunts who raised him convinced him that it was better to seek a permanent place by enrolling in accountancy. I asked myself: can Naples, where a boy who lived only on music was killed, still be the city of Pino Daniele? And I searched for the answers by picking up the verses of Pino's songs and there in those songs I found all the answers: there are continuous social messages, secular prayers for Naples to rise again. Pino's verses are more relevant today than ever, but while I was doing this work three other boys were killed: Emanuele, Santo, Arcangelo. The initial question became a desperate cry that is present in the book, but there is also the hope given by Pino and his verses".

"An important meeting, emphasised president Michele Capasso, that analysed the moment of emergency that the city is currently experiencing, of a Naples that does not solve its problems, in which the unfortunate protagonists are its young people.
"Songs that narrate the dirty paper of Naples and that extol the hope of change: but there have been six deaths, including the three boys who killed, said Paolo Siani, president of the Giancarlo Siani Foundation, and the city observes the phenomenon without doing anything, we all know that some of the boys in this city, who are not a few, have their lives already marked".
"The story of Giògiò's murder, stresses journalist Federico Vacalebre, who masterfully coordinated the meeting, was already written long before. The book tells the story of the life of Pino Daniele, who was born in a Neapolitan vascio with a father who was a longshoreman and gambler and a mother who was a housewife. Pino Daniele was born as a boy destined to end up like our baby gang boys. This fate does not come true because two aunts adopt him and Pino's new life begins with the protection of a family that gives him culture, education and music".
"It is not true that things cannot change, it is not true that it will always be the same thing, things can change!"- commented Don Mimmo Battaglia, Metropolitan Archbishop of Naples, after having carefully analysed the importance of Pino Daniele in the development of a civil conscience in the city of Naples:
"A city, concluded Don Mimmo, that needs only one thing: DIGNITY".
During the meeting, Amina Bouayach, President of the National Committee for Human Rights of Morocco, spoke, accompanied by diplomats and personalities from that country who had previously spoken for her appointment as "Ambassador" and the presentation to her of the "Mediterranean Award for Social Solidarity 2025".
At the beginning of the meeting, a promo of the docufilm "Pino Daniele è terra mia"  by Michele Capasso was screened, in which the great musician came a few days before his end to define the section of the Peace Museum dedicated to him.