Wednesday Aug 6, 2014
We had a rare treat today walking through the streets of Naples. We were strolling down Spaccanapole, which is the long, narrow street that cuts like an arrow through ancient Naples, appearing to divide the city in two. We were heading to where musical instruments like mandolins are made and sold. A young woman came walking down the street playing a tambourine and singing what sounded to me like a Hari Krishna chant. I figured she was either selling tambourines or she had gotten separated from the other Krishnas in the back streets of Naples. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Her singing and percussion resonated through the small alleys lined with stone buildings and was so compelling that I had to turn around and follow her to the piazza. There in front of a great cathedral she sang and played for a long time after. Sure enough Pasquale was already there, as if he had heard a call to prayer.
Before I tell you more, listen to and watch the attached clip.
Here’s the real story. Her name is Valentina.
She doesn’t perform professionally. She does it because it’s traditional Neapolitan music called Tammurriata, and she sings it while playing the instrument which is called a Tammorra. It’s just what she does. People do throw money her way, but she does it not for the money. IT IS JUST WHAT SHE DOES.
If you want to see the whole clip, go to my Facebook page or Pasquale’s Tammurriata di Valentina
What is she saying? Much of the Tammurriata has double meaning and it was the way the common people talked about love and life. An almost literal translation is as follows:
Don’t you touch my foot, don’t you touch my foot.
If I gave you my foot, you would want to have something else.
Don’t you touch my leg, don’t you touch my leg.
If I gave you my foot and my leg, you would want something else.
…
Well she keeps adding body parts in the tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, working her way up past her culo (you know, the thing you sit on?) and then to various parts of the body for which the slang describes their essential characteristics. Such is her characterization of the Neapolitan man.
She adds a question and observation regarding Neapolitan women,
How good is a women, how good is a women?
She steals the heart of a man and plays with it.
That’s love and life Napolitana style. No moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.
Of course that pizza is tasty. Almost as tasty as … never mind. If I told you that, you’d want me to tell you something else.
