Before starting this musical journey, I'm going to introduce myself.

My name is Frank Valeriani, I'm a graduated musician from the National Conservatory S.Pietro a Majella in Naples ( Italy ), and I play saxophone.

First of all, I'd like to thank the publisher of La Voce, Mr. Dominic Gentile, and the editor, Mr. Anthony Sperduti, for giving me the opportunity to be part of La Voce's crew. Also special thanks to Ms. Barbara Santora (la signora Santora.) She's the one who made it happen!

As we all know, Italy has always been one of the cultural centers of Europe . Here's a short list of names that made Italy great in the past centuries: Galileo (scientist), Leonardo Da Vinci (scientist - painter), Raffaello (painter), Michelangelo (painter - sculptor), Dante Alighieri (poet), Cristoforo Colombo (navigator), Guglielmo Marconi (scientist, he invented the radio), Antonio Meucci (scientist, he invented the telephone), Giacomo Puccini (composer), Giuseppe Verdi (composer), Niccolo' Paganini (violinist), etc. As I said, this is a VERY short list!

Speaking of music now, Italian composers not only played an important role with their great compositions, they also played a lead role in music's evolution being very innovative on musical notation and harmony.

Even though musical notation may have been invented in Frankish monasteries during the time of Charlemagne and its oldest examples are from Regensburg in Germany , the large diffusion of notated manuscripts took place under the guidance of the Roman Popes. It's also worth to mention Guido d'Arezzo (a Tuscan composer), who invented the esagram (six lines) that later became pentagram, consisting of five lines on which notes are still written nowadays.

Italy 's musical high recognition encouraged composers from all over Europe to attend Italian conservatories and academies of music. Handel, Stravinsky, Meyerbeer, Mozart, to mention a few, all attended Italian conservatories. They were profoundly fascinated by the three most distinguished Italian music schools and styles: the Venetian (in north Italy ), the Roman (in central Italy ) and the Neapolitan (in south Italy ).

In the meantime, beside symphonies and operas composed by Puccini, Bellini, Verdi, etc, Italy was also developing multiple regional styles of folk music. The Celtic influence in north as well as the Arabic influence in south offered a wide variety of styles. These styles eventually, since the late 19 th century thru present time, constantly evolved into a more heterogeneous music style in line with international sounds, becoming what's today known as Italian pop music: a unique blend of Mediterranean rhythms and harmonies combined with sentimental melodies.

Neapolitan musicians and composers were the essential key to the creation of a first Italian song form.

Napoli ( Naples ), in fact, has its own anthology of worldwide popular songs: 'O Sole Mio (in English known as It's Now Or Never), Anema e Core (known as Heart And Soul), Torna A Surriento (Come Back To Sorrento), Oi Mari', Funiculi' Funicula', Dicitencello Vuje and many others.

Also musical theory was affected by the strong identity of Neapolitan songs. In fact, there is a scale named after Naples : La Scala Napoletana (The Neapolitan Scale).

If you play an instrument (or have someone do this for you), play the following notes: A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G#, A.

You'll hear the "sound of Naples" right away! It takes just 7 little notes to feel the Mediterranean breeze and the Arabic influence in Neapolitan music.

Singers of all times had at least one Neapolitan song in their repertoire.

Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Prima and more recently Celine Dion, among many others, have sung "It's Now Or Never" , "Oi Mari'," etc.

However, lately I've noticed that while traditional Neapolitan songs are very popular around the world, contemporary Italian pop music is not! Of course, Andrea Bocelli, Eros Ramazzotti and Laura Pausini are the exception to my assertion (I'm not mentioning Pavarotti because I'm focusing on pop music). Unfortunately, the above-mentioned are just a very small portion of what's going on in Italy today. There's much more, and I think the music industry should make bigger efforts in order to promote more Italian artists; many legends and living legends are actually unknown overseas!

I truly believe that with La Voce's great contribution we can start narrowing this gap and get people to know more Italian artists.

Very significant in Italian pop music history has been the “Festival di Sanremo”, a popular Italian 5-day song contest, running since 1951, and annually held in the city of Sanremo. Usually outside Italy referred to as the Sanremo Music Festival, it also inspired the Eurovision Song Contest. Until 1954 it was staged as a radio event, then in 1955 RAI (the Italian National TV) became involved. A turning point in Italian pop music history, the Sanremo Festival was the crib to the birth of an Italian contemporary song form, which nowadays profoundly differs from the traditional Neapolitan song.

A very well known singer-songwriter (in Italian: cantautore) was very determining and innovative in the 1958 edition of the festival: Domenico Modugno, better known overseas as Mister Volare.

On La Voce's next issue we'll go deeper on this character: his life, his songs and his innovations.

Ciao!