I was on the Cumana quay, in Pozzuoli, waiting for the train that connects Naples to the Campi Flegrei. With me a gentleman, in his seventies with a floral shirt well matched with knee-length trousers, who walked back and forth, as if to pass the time, with a guitar on his shoulder. He also had with him a trolley on which he carried an amplifier box. I immediately assumed he could be a street artist. Once on the vehicle I find myself right in front of him and so I ask him straight away if he is going to play somewhere.
He smilingly answers me yes and we start talking about musical instruments, songs and precious street corners for listening to music. I discover that he is even a music teacher. From the way he speaks he enchants me and involves me. I talk to him about how much I believe that the street artist is undeniably generous, he replies that there is a priceless pleasure in being able to make music for others. Twenty minutes of pleasant journey and then at the terminus we say goodbye with my promise that walking through the center I would look for him, curious and then surely pleased to hear some pieces performed by him. In the following days, walking through the streets of the Decumani, I stopped to listen to the magnificent trumpet player, the girl with the super good harp and the boy who adapted some bins of various shapes and sizes as a percussion instrument. They often meet them close to home and every time it is a pleasure. Since I have lived in the center of the city, I can stop and listen to those who play outdoors and I gladly give a contribution, while always considering it too little for the beauty that I have just received as a gift.
Of my new "friend" still no trace! Until one afternoon I see him from afar, and I go to meet him, and he pointing to me says to me: "The lady of Cumana!" . "I promised her that I would stop and ... here I am!". "What would you like to hear?". "You do it, God forbid, you are the teacher!". His repertoire is mainly of Neapolitan songs and I'm happy about it. I always love to listen to “Era di Maggio” or “Indifferently” and moreover, each artist then performs them in her own way, so it can always be like a first time. The teacher begins to play and sing and in the meantime the crowd of passers-by grows, who first look out and then stop. We begin to follow him in singing. In the group of spectators there are also four young foreigners. Two French girls and two Spanish boys, who begin to film it with their mobile phones, to “take” it away with them, to their country, to make it known to their other friends.
I realize that there are even more young people around the Master. Next to me another gentleman with a guitar on his shoulder and his wife by the hand. Anyone who makes music recognizes the talent of a colleague even earlier. And then others and still others. Those who did not stop, going further, however, hinted at two stanzas or a few dance steps. I was at least 40 minutes in that improvised company where everyone, straining to listen to the beauty that came out of that guitar, was happy and smiling. Indeed, between one song and another I was personally asked, as if between me and the teacher there was an acquaintance, a complicity born much earlier, to be able to translate the text of a particular song to the four foreign boys. And it didn't take long for me, who am not ashamed to "put on a show", then found myself teaching some popular dance steps. Arms on your hips and off there to sway from left to right at the right pace, like a tarantella. A small spontaneous party, where music reaffirmed the immense power it has to unite complete strangers, giving them the impression of being among friends. Where human beings are not afraid of each other. Too bad I had to go home, heartily grateful to the Maestro, whose name unfortunately I don't remember but certainly his generosity yes.
The drawings inside the article are from Eleonora Albanese.
