Research as Vocality

Although the presence of Africans in the city of Naples has been well documented since at least the 15th century, personal and collective stories related to such a presence have been neglected or forgotten. As a consequence, African-Italian individuals and communities are still perceived as “other.” Issues of representation and citizenship within the Italian society have become even more complex as the stream of migration of the last decades unfolded.
Artists and activists have confronted and challenged such perceptions while using their voices for artistic creations, political statements, and research-based analyses. The international movement that emerged in 2020 following the #BlackLivesMatter protests made their positions prominent, albeit for a limited period of time. The project “Research as Vocality” highlights the physical, relational, political and expressive power of their voices, both their singing voices and their spoken voices, while bringing artists and activists at the forefront. From the political point of view, the main impact of the project is to center the historical and geographical relationships between Naples and Africa in order to build a new and more permanent understanding of contemporary issues of mobility, nationality, divides across race and gender, access to rights and opportunities.
The anthropological research of the project is both participative and archival oriented. It draws from the framework of “Black Vocality,” that Gianpaolo Chiriacò developed at the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago and that is based on dialogical and performative gatherings in which artists and researchers analyze and question historical documentations. 

Naples is a notable case study within an arts-based research focusing on vocality for i) African slaves appear in Neapolitan musical repertoires as early as the 16th century; ii) Naples hosted in 1940 the main exhibition of Italian colonialism; iii) the city is internationally renowned for its vocal arts. The cooperative research into vocal expressions (songs, rap, spoken word, sermons, etc.) related to the African diaspora in Naples overturns the difference between artists-as-observed-participants and researchers-as-inquirers. It rather focuses on the work of artists/researchers who contribute on an equal basis to the collective discussion.
The work has been based on three phases. First, we organized open and dedicated workshops, in order to get to know and support the Neapolitan community of black artists. Then, we created and performed the Neapolitan version of Napoleon Maddox’s “Twice the First Time,” a production that brings on the stage history as well as personal narratives. Workshops and performance created the group of participants, who then went on their own to design and develop their own projects of research and art.

In this website you will enjoy the visual and audiovisual documentation of the workshops. You can appreciate the level of engagement of the group of artists performing within the powerful conference of June 2^nd 2023 (in which “Twice the First Time” was presented). You will finally discover the astonishing results that come from the work of the Neapolitan participants.

(Gianpaolo Chiriacò)