An interview with Beatrice, imagined in the afterlife, to question what we believe we know about Dante’s love. It is the point of Beatrice without veils – I was not the great love of Dante, the show with Gigliola Cinquetti and Ennio Cavalli chosen by the Italian Institute of Culture of New York to open, Wednesday 21 October, its program of the Italian Language Week in the World. From 22 to 24 October the events continue with “The Language of Rap”, a festival that will include a writing workshop, concerts and conversations with artists.
In the show written by Cavalli, Cinquetti plays a Beatrice who can finally answer questions and say his own about the poet who made it famous. The subtitle, “Interview never granted and never denied”, clarifies the theatrical game: reread Dante and his age through an impossible conversation, with the freedom to mix past and present. Among the proposed hypotheses is what Beatrice was a “woman of the screen”, a figure behind which to hide the true great love of the poet: the Italian language.
From Dante’s language to songs, the program then goes to rap writing. Thursday, October 22nd at 6 pm, Amir Issaa conducts a workshop open to people of all ages, without need of musical experience. It is the first event of the festival of which the rapper, writer and educator takes care of the artistic direction and the conduct. Friday will perform Adriana and Dynasty; Saturday Davide Shorty and Skyzoo. Each concert will be followed by a meeting with artists.
The choice of rap for an event dedicated to Italian is mainly about texts. Writing verses to perform on a basis means working simultaneously on meaning and sound: choosing where to put an accent, finding a rhyme, shortening a sentence because it enters the rhythm.
“The rap is a formidable pedagogical tool to teach words, understand their strength and explore their expressive possibilities,” explains Claudio Pagliara, director of the Institute. The festival was also born to bring young people closer to the activities of Park Avenue. “In every evening we join an Italian artist and an American: we want to make them dialogue and promote an exchange that fully expresses the mission of the Institute”.
For Amir Issaa, the use of rap in teaching is a work that precedes this manifestation. He conducted laboratories in schools and universities such as Stanford, Georgetown, NYU and Berkeley. In the book Educazione rap, published by add editor in 2021, starts from the songs heard by the boys to face the tools of poetic writing. Trying to compose a text allows you to question the words: what they express, what images suggest and how their effect changes when they are pronounced on music.
In New York, the encounter between the two musical scenes also has a historical reference. The birth of hip hop is conventionally associated with the party organized by Cindy Campbell on 11 August 1973 in a condominium hall at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, in the Bronx. His brother, DJ Kool Herc, extended the instrumental sections of the albums on which the audience danced. That evening became the symbolic date of a culture raised through parties, dance, DJs and microphone interventions.
In Italy, that language has assumed its own accents and content. Between the end of the 1980s and the 1990s, an important part of the scene developed in social centers, around the masses, collectives that intertwined music and political militancy. Italian mixed with dialects and local expressions. In the songs of the 99 Posses, for example, the Neapolitan used to tell recognizable conflicts and places for those who listened to them: a musical form arrived from the United States was adapted to talk about their city.
The festival concerts compare different paths even within the same genre. On Friday, October 23, at 6 pm, Adriana, who alternates rap, singing and dancing and published in 2026 the first album Presa Bene, will be accompanied by Dynasty. Originally from Queens, Dynasty combines hip hop and soul and worked with musicians such as DJ Premier and Apollo Brown.
On Saturday, October 24, at 4 pm, he will touch Davide Shorty and Skyzoo. The first, palermitan, has built its path between rap, soul and jazz, passing also for the years spent in London. The second came from Brooklyn and collaborated with Pete Rock and Black Thought. The following meetings will allow the audience to listen to artists even outside the songs, through the story of their work.
All appointments are held at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, at 686 Park Avenue. The entrance is free, with mandatory reservation through the pages of the individual events on the site of the Institute.
L’articolo From Beatrice to rap, the Italian language at the New York Cultural Institute proviene da IlNewyorkese.
