LA MUSICA DELLA MAFIA Volume II (PIAS) Rating: NNNN Rating: NNNN
Charmingly subtitled Omertà, Onuri E Sangu (Discretion, Honour And Blood) this second volume of the La Musica Della Mafia series picks up where the superb first instalment left off. Mob-celebrating folk tunes from Italy’s Calabria region about codes of silence, brutal vengeance and knife fights are interspersed with chilling spoken-word interludes about the honourable society. The accompaniment is limited to frantic guitar strumming, but the most unnerving songs here are the a cappella prison laments, in which the locked-up wail mournfully about their situation and promise brutal revenge on those who sent them to jail in the first place. As brutal as 50 Cent but without the posturing, this is the original gangsta rap.
