"El nost Milan": ‘New Italians’ rap, urban re-appropriations and identitarian claims

Journal title RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA
Author/s Chiara Giubilaro, Valeria Pecorelli
Publishing Year 2019 Issue 2019/4 Language Italian
Pages 22 P. 21-42 File size 247 KB
DOI 10.3280/RGI2019-004002
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Since its early days, hip-hop culture has been shaped by a strong spatial connotation that has variously pinpointed its key elements. The post-industrial city, in particular in its edges and interstitial areas, is in fact a crucial site from which history but, above all, geography of rap has been built over time. This work aims at critically reflecting on the relationship between rap and urban spaces in the light of number of complex cultural, social and political constructions in the Italian city of Milan. In so doing, the study will focus on the musical production of two Milanese rappers representing the so-called New Italians generation, Zanko and Ghali. The forms of vernacular resistance conveyed by an accurate linguistic choice, the image of the city communicated over videoclips and social media together with geographical references disseminated in lyrics and performances are just some of the fields in which our survey will be conducted.

Keywords: Rap, new Italians, cultural geography, Milan, urban spaces.

  1. Antonsich M. (2018). Living in diversity: Going beyond the local/national divide. Political Geography, 63: 1-9.
  2. Appadurai A. (2004). Il futuro come fatto culturale. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.
  3. Baker G. (2006). “La Habana que no conoces”: Cuban rap and the social construction of urban space. Ethnomusicology Forum, 15(2): 215-246. DOI: 10.1080/1741191060091538
  4. Baldirali L. (2013). Nuovo rap Italiano: la rinascita. Roma: Stampa alternativa/Nuovi Equilibri.
  5. Barone S. (2017). Feeling so Hood. Rap, lifestyles and the neighbourhood imaginary in Tunisia. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 194: 1-16. DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2017.1371001
  6. Bayat A. (2010). Life as Politics. How ordinary people change the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  7. Beer D. (2014). Hip-hop as Urban and regional research: Encountering an insider’s ethnography of city life. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(2): 677-685.
  8. Bertoni F. (2017). Con le mani per terra: trasformazione dei luoghi nella pratica corporea. Il caso della breakdance a Porta Venezia, Milano. Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, 114: 138-162.
  9. Best B. (1997). Over the counter-culture: Retheorizing resistance in popular culture. In: Redhead S., a cura di, The club-cultures reader: readings in popular culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
  10. Camilotti S. (2014). I “nuovi italiani” e la crisi dell’italianita. La mia casa e dove sono. MediAzioni, 16: 1-16.
  11. Carney G. (2003). Rappin’ in America: A regional music phenomenon. In: Carney G., a cura di, The sounds of people and places. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Cegna A. e Villacci M. (2015). Strade strappate. Storia rappata dell’ hip hop italiano. Milano: Agenzia X.
  12. Cherif P. (2018), Citta in rima: lo spazio urbano nel rap italiano tra gli anni Novanta e oggi. In: La stessa goccia nel fiume – “Il futuro del passato”. Gli studi di italianistica tra tradizione e modernità. Atti del Convegno. XXII Congresso AIPI, Budapest 30 agosto - 3 settembre 2016.
  13. Chouliaraki L. e Fairclough N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  14. Clo C. (2005). Hip Pop Italian Style: The Postcolonial Imagination of Second-Generation Authors in Italy. In: Lombardi-Diop C. e Romeo C., a cura di, Italy’s Postcolonial ‘Question’: Views from the Southern Frontier of Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  15. Cohen S. (1995). Sounding out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of Place. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20(4): 434-446. DOI: 10.2307/62297
  16. Colombo E., Domaneschi L. e Marchetti C. (2009). Una nuova generazione di italiani. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  17. Crang M. (2010). Visual methods and methodologies. In: Crang M., a cura di, The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Geography. New York: SAGE Publications.
  18. Di Quarto F. (2016). Auto-organizzare gli spazi pubblici: il caso del viaduto Santa Tereza a Belo Horizonte (Brasile). In: Commons/Comune. Geografie, luoghi, spazi, città. Firenze: Memorie Geografiche.
  19. Durand A. (2005). Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-hop Culture in the Francophone World. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press.
  20. Forman M. (2000). Represent: race, space and place in rap music. Popular music, 19(1): 65-90.
  21. Id. (2002). The ‘hood comes first: Race, space, and place in rap and hip-hop. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
  22. Id. (2004) e Neal M.A. (2004). That’s the joint!: the hip hop studies reader. London and New York: Routledge.
  23. French K. (2017). Geography of American rap: rap diffusion and rap centers. GeoJournal, 82(2): 259-72.
  24. Graves S. (2009). Hip hop: A postmodern folk music. In: Johannson O. e Bell T., a cura di, Sound, society and the geography of popular music. London: Ashgate.
  25. Hooks B. (1998). Elogio del margine: razza, sesso e mercato culturale. Milano: Feltrinelli.
  26. Ivic D. (2010). Storia ragionata dell’hip hop italiano. Roma: Aracne.
  27. Johannson O. e Bell T., a cura di (2009). Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music. London: Ashgate.
  28. Kelly R. (2012). Lookin’ for the ‘real’ nigga: social scientists construct the ghetto. In: Forman M. e Neal M.A., a cura di, That’s the joint!: the hip-hop studies reader. London and New York: Routledge.
  29. Kris A. (2002). Rap, Race, the “Local” and Urban Geography in Amsterdam. In: Young R., a cura di, Music, Popular Culture and Identities. Leiden: Brill.
  30. Langer R. e Beckman S. (2005). Sensitive Research Topics: Netnography Revisited. Qualitative Market Research, 8(2): 189-203.
  31. Lena J. (2004). Voyeurism and Resistance in Rap Music Videos. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5(3): 264-279. DOI: 10.1080/1479142080220682
  32. Mitchell T. (2008). Doin’ damage in my native language: The use of ‘resistance vernaculars’ in hip hop in France, Italy and Aotearoa / New Zealand. Popular Music and Society, 24(3): 41-54. DOI: 10.1080/0300776000859177
  33. Id. (2001). Fighting da faida. The Italian Posses and Hip Hop in Italy. In: Mitchell T., a cura di, Global noise: rap and hip-hop outside the USA. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
  34. Pacosa P. (2000). Hip hop italiano. Suoni, parole e scenari del Posse power. Torino: Einaudi.
  35. Pardue D. (2004). Putting mano to music: The mediation of race in Brazilian rap. Ethnomusicology Forum, 13(2): 253-286. DOI: 10.1080/174119104200028621
  36. Parker S. (2014). Preface to a Debate on ‘Street Music’, Urban Ethnography and Ghettoized Communities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(3): 675-676. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.1216
  37. Perry I. (2004). Prophets of the hood. Politics and poetics in hip hop. Durham: Duke University Press.
  38. Pieterse E. (2010). Hip-hop cultures and political agency in Brazil and South Africa. Social Dynamics, 36(2): 428-447. DOI: 10.1080/02533952.2010.48799
  39. Privitera D. (2016). Il Rap e i diritti dei migranti. Geotema, 50: 70-75.
  40. Rose T. (1994). Black noise rap music and black culture in contemporary America. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press.
  41. Rossetto T. e Andrigo A. (2018). Cities in music videos: Audiovisual variations on London’s neoliberal skyline. Urban Studies, 55(6): 1257-1273. DOI: 10.1177/004209801770792
  42. Santoro M. e Solaroli M. (2007). Authors and rappers: Italian Hip Hop and the Shifting boundaries of Canzone d’Autore. Popular Music, 26(3): 463-488.
  43. Sciorra J. (2002). Hip Hop from Italy and the Diaspora: a report from the 41st Parallel. Altreitalie, 24.
  44. Wilkins C.L. (2000). (W)rapped Space: The Architecture of Hip Hop. Journal of Architectural Education, 54(1): 7-19. DOI: 10.1162/10464880056468
  45. Wright S. (2000). A love born of hate. Autonomist rap in Italy. Theory Culture & Society, 17(3): 117-135. DOI: 10.1177/0263276002205125
  46. Zukar P. (2017). Rap. Una storia italiana. Milano: Baldini e Castoldi.

  • Music and words against racism: a qualitative study with racialized artists in Italy Annalisa Frisina, Sandra Agyei Kyeremeh, in Ethnic and Racial Studies /2022 pp.2913
    DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2022.2046841

Chiara Giubilaro, Valeria Pecorelli, El nost Milan: il rap dei ‘nuovi italiani’, tra riappropriazioni urbane e rivendicazioni identitarie in "RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA" 4/2019, pp 21-42, DOI: 10.3280/RGI2019-004002