Napoli Segreta, four records pulled out of flea markets

Napoli Segreta is a compilation series collecting Neapolitan disco and funk from the seventies and eighties: records that came out in small runs, often on local labels, and then vanished.

They are put together by Lorenzo Sannino, who signs as Famiglia Discocristiana, Gianpaolo Della Noce, who signs as DNApoli, and Nu Guinea, with their labels NG Records and Early Sounds.

The first volume came out on 20 June 2018, the second on 14 February 2020. The criterion is not the taste of whoever is digging: it is what can be traced and legally released, and those two things almost never coincide.

Donatella Viggiano, “Napule Canta E More”

It sits on the first volume and opens the record after the preview track.

It runs two minutes and fifty-four seconds, which for a dance record of those years is very short indeed.

Listen while you read

Giancarlo D’Auria, “Follia”

Also from the first volume, four minutes forty-seven.

Under the compilation’s page, among the comments from people who bought it, someone names this as their favourite track. That is the small side effect of a collection like this one: you get attached to a name you had never heard.

Tony Iglio, “Luci A New York”

It closes the second volume. Three minutes twenty-six.

Iglio is one of the names the compilers list when they talk about the session players who circulate through these records, along with Moxedano, Visco, Esposito, Fasciano, Donniacuo and Vessicchio. The same people play across half of the Neapolitan discography of those years, under different sleeves.

Maria Kelly, “Dimme”

Second volume as well, four minutes forty-three.

The work behind the selection

In the Vice interview the compilers explain how a collection like this gets made, and the interesting part is the part you cannot hear on the record.

Some tracks took ten years to identify. Others were dropped for three different reasons: the licence could not be obtained, or they sounded bad, or it proved impossible to trace the artists involved.

The method is the old one: days spent in record shops and markets, and cassettes taped off DJ sets between 1992 and 1998.

The first volume has nine tracks and covers the period from 1977 to 1982. Nine pieces somebody had to find first, then identify, then persuade someone else to allow back into print.

We passed them around for a week before noticing the obvious thing: we are not listening to the Neapolitan scene of those years. We are listening to the part of that scene for which a contract could be signed.