ARNR 0903

Format: Digipack with 32-page booklet

Click here for MP3

After selling over 150,000 copies abroad, here it is at last in Italy: the controversial "cult" record of the Mafia's music which traces the origins of the criminal tradition through a repertoire of lyrics from the past that express an old Mafia with a code of honour that no longer exists.

Mimmo Siclari is the scholar and musician who has sought out these old songs of the 'ndrangheta throughout Calabria and has been recording them since the Seventies.
This first volume of the trilogy, SONGS OF THE UNDERWORLD, produced by the Calabrian scholar and photographer, Francesco Sbano, is a collection of eighteen dramatic songs which relate stories of blood, honour and "omertà", showing the old code of the 'ndrangheta and the behaviour of the associates.

This disc is a very important historical document which encourages us to think about the roots of a phenomenon and the current situation in Calabria, as well as being a means of preserving our country's heritage of popular culture.
It also acts as a starting point for reflection upon the phenomenon of the Mafia and of the 'ndranghetta , because it is only by understanding the phenomenon, through to its most secret rites, that we can really free ourselves from it.

"Drink to your friends' health, drink up, because on the 5th December the most trendy and cool cd will be arriving in all the best music stores: "The song of the underworld" or "The music of the Mafia".
It's a real cult disc, produced with an anthropologist's flair by Francesco Sbano and Maximilian Dax: the cd has been a success in Germany and France where it has been on sale since last year and arrives in Italy in perfect time for the next Sanremo Music Festival directed by Tony Renis (...)"
quoted from "Il Foglio" 11/11/2003.

TRACKLISTING:

• Introduzione parlato (0:30)

• ndrangheta, camurra e mafia (4:13)

• Sangu chiama sangu (03:11)

• U lupu d'Asprumunti (3:35)

• Parlato (00:28)

• I Cunfirenti (04:10 )

• U ballu da famigghja Muntalbanu (2:09)

• Parlato (00:19)

• Non su' lupu (2:53)

• U commisariu (4:25)

• Parlato (00:12 )

• Omerta' (3:31)

• Cu sgarra paga (3:18)

• Appartegnu all'onorata (3:45)

• Canto all'Aspromonte (3:19)

• Tarantella Guappa (02:24)

• Ergastolanu (4:04)

• I cacciaturi i muntaltu (4:50)

• Parlato (00:46)

• A'mbasciata (2:50)

• Parlato (0:15)

• Mafia leggi d'onuri (3:10)

• Addiu 'ndrangheta (3:27)

• Canto di carcerato (06:07)