The Art of Making Do in Naples

Description

The "art of making do" refers to the informal and sometimes illicit entrepreneurial tactics of some Neapolitans who are pursuing a better life for themselves and their families. In the neomelodica music scene, the art of making do involves operating do-it-yourself recording studios and performing at the private parties of crime bosses. It can also require associating with crime boss impresarios who guarantee their success by underwriting it with extortion, drug trafficking, and territorial influence. Pine, likewise "making do," gradually realized that the completion of his ethnographic work also depended on the aid of forbidding figures.

Jason Pine is assistant professor of anthropology and media, society and the arts at Purchase College, State University of New York.

"Exploring musical performance as a pathway to the Neapolitan underworld, Jason Pine shows how the improbable becomes persuasive as he passionately embraces the challenges of uncertainty and vagueness that mark a highly stylized but passionate arena of social interaction. In the intense theatricality of their shape-shifting kaleidoscope of relationships and identities, Pine's vivid interlocutors challenge the realism of anthropological description through an aesthetic realism of their own, one that dissolves the boundary between art and life." --Michael Herzfeld, author of "Evicted from Eternity" "Jason Pine finds treasure in one city's 'a munezz', or what some people of Naples call trash--referring to neomelodica music. A great companion to Saviano's Gomorrah, Pine's outsider perspective enables us all to safely witness this dangerous art of making do. With the eye of a cunning journalist and the descriptive skills of a fine novelist, Pine illuminates the murky world of the Camorra and Naples' neomelodica scene. This is writing culture at its best." --Fred Gardaphe, author of "From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities"