The XXVI edition of the Week of Italian Language in the World ended, which from 19 to 25 October involved the diplomatic-consolar network and the Italian Institutes of Culture of the whole world on the theme “Genial language: design, create with Italian”. In New York the Italian Institute of Culture has declined the theme in a program that has crossed seven centuries of Italian language, from Dante’s verses to hip hop rhymes, with a common thread: the word as a tool to invent, tell and create dialogue between cultures and generations.
“This year’s theme, “Lingua geniale”, asked us to show Italian as a creative and lively language and I believe that these evenings have done it the best way,” said Claudio Pagliara, director of the Italian Institute of Culture in New York. “From Dante’s verses, rereaded with irony by Gigliola Cinquetti and Ennio Cavalli, to the rhymes of Italian and American artists who met on our stage, a audience of different generations met together with passion for words. The rap has confirmed itself as an incredible tool to bring young people closer to our language and hip hop, born here in New York, has returned home also speaking Italian. This is the dialogue between cultures that the Institute wants to continue to build”.
The Week opened on Wednesday 21 October with “Beatrice without veils – I was not the great love of Dante. Interview never granted and never denied”, written and interpreted by Ennio Cavalli, with Gigliola Cinquetti as Beatrice. Introduced by the director of the Istituto Claudio Pagliara, the show has imagined a talk show from the afterlife where Dante’s muse finally takes the word, with irony and contemporary look, until compared to an influencer of our days. In the middle of the evening, the intuition that Beatrice was the “woman of the screen” behind which the poet concealed his true great love: the Italian language. Between a dialogue and the other, Gigliola Cinquetti interpreted live “The Sunday going to Mass”, while the evening closed on the notes of “I don’t have age”, the track with which at sixteen years won the Sanremo Festival and the Eurofestival of 1964. The large audience welcomed the show with great warmth.
From Thursday 22nd to Saturday 24th October the Institute hosted “The Language of Rap”, the first festival dedicated to the encounter between Italian rap and American rap, conceived and conducted by Amir Issaa, rapper, writer and educator. For three days the Italian rap has made symbolically the journey back to the city where hip hop was born, putting every evening in dialogue an Italian artist and an American. The festival opened on Thursday, October 22 with the rap writing workshop led by Amir Issaa, open to participants of all ages to play with rhymes and discover the strength of words in Italian.
On Friday, October 23, in front of a Greek hall, Amir Issaa opened the evening with a true lesson in music history, citing the role that TV, from Carlo Massarini to MTV, had in bringing this genre to the homes of young Italians. On the stage two different ways of living the microphone were alternated. Adriana, voice of the new Italian scene, transformed the hall into a meeting place, involving the public in a continuous cask and response with its melodic versatility. Dynasty, Queens artist nicknamed “Spit Queen” by DJ Premier, responded with the force of a MC of the New York school: flow tightened, incisive rhymes and texts of strong social commitment. The contrast between the melodic heat of one and the lyric precision of the other lit the evening, confirming the idea at the base of the festival: hip hop is a language capable of crossing each border.
Saturday, October 24, the festival ended with the meeting between the Palermoman Davide Shorty and Skyzoo, rapper of Brooklyn, in a concert in which English and Italian merged into a single musical current.
L’articolo From Dante to rap: the Italian Institute of Culture ends the Italian Language Week in the World proviene da IlNewyorkese.
