CLAUDIO MENNA
CLAUDIO MENNA
CLAUDIO MENNA
"LOBOS"
In the last years beheading of several criminal families related to Camorra System brought kids – as sons or grandchildren – taking power to control their business. Hungry to show their value and potential they created small and big group of "soldiers" known by media as "Baby gangs". With no rules and no mercy they always move in packs, often they rob and attack with the only sadistic taste to do it. In the last years in Naples there have been dozens of attacks against teenagers with a ferociy and brutality too similar to that of Roberto Saviano’s TV show “Gomorra”. First of them were sons - or related - to criminal leaders detained for life sentences or decades in prison; in a short while their attitude made a strange trend where kids and teens from difficult areas of the city turned themselves in baby gangsters following those behaviors of violence and anger, although they did not belong to criminal traditions.
On september 2015 during a "stesa" - a criminal attack made by young members of baby gangs which shoot with automatic weapons on air, forcing people to throw spread on ground (litterally "stesi al suolo") the young Gennaro Cesarano - a 16 yo teen from Rione Sanità - was accidentally killed. His death brought between the youngest of neighborhood, his closed friends, a wave of haterd difficult to be curbed. Associations, Ngo's and volunteers started an hard work to avoid a new kind of war, different from those made by Camorra leaders in '80s. A war without any kind of rules, and ethical limits.
Rione Sanità is a popular and historical district of Naples located inside the city belly, known by most for the every day news about criminal organizations, drugs dealing, murders and baby gangs, as almost every popular districts in Naples. Despite its recent emancipation where cultural aggregation points and associations are working hard to take away kids from streets and from a marked path, it’s always an unresolved issue. Total absence of government’s authorities creates for decades inside “Rione Sanità” a parallel world where survival entrusted to common sense often trampled by crime and their way to promise easy money for all neighborhood’s kids, for them indispensable as dealers or sentinels.
After the tv show “Gomorra”, crime and criminals have been projected in common imaginary as “Guest Stars”, stereotypes and model to follow for all those kids without any family support.
"Lobos" is a report started several years ago about last generation of kids and teens born after 2000's inside Rione Sanità, my mother's neighborhood; the main actors of this story are all connected directly or indirectly to what happened few years ago to Gennaro Cesarano, a 16yo teen accidentally mourdered during a criminal attack made by teens of a rival district.
"Lobos" is an anthropological report about the main cause which lead youngest who live in a popular neighborhood as Rione Sanità to take criminal paths. I tried to investigate - diving myself in this reality - how the absence of Government and Municipality affect their lives, made mostly, by family issues, school dropout, bad habits, traditions, religion and paganism, fake myths, smoke sellers and dealers of illusions. (Photo and text © Claudio Menna)
From Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino:
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
CLAUDIO MENNA
"Baby Band,
7 Notes could save us".
At Rione Sanità, one of the most popular and discussed neighborhood of Naples, there are those who have decided to focus on themselves to change their future. Sanitansamble Orchestra is born almost 10 years ago with the goal to include and involve as many street kids as possible, trying to give them a second chance, a distraction from family issues, Knowledge of Music, culture of respect and all those aspects which missed in their lives. This project strongly wanted by a revolutionary priest, father Antonio Loffredo, is inspired by "El Sistema" of the Venezuelan teacher Josè Antonio Abreu. The Orchestra involves a team of 15 teachers, and more than 100 kids and teens.
The project starts from the conviction that the learning of the basic knowledge of the instrumental technique, the care of the instrument and the production of a basic orchestral repertoire, can give positive models to the young musicians, promoting a form of active citizenship. Music then becomes a means to convey, balance and share emotions and moods among the children of the Orchestra. In ten years of activity The Association Sanitansamble has formed part of the children of Rione Sanità, transforming them with commitment and effort in real concert performers, some of whom have managed to access the Real Conservatory of Naples to undertake a new Academic and professional chapter of their life as Nico, nineteen-year-old Cape Verdean born in Naples and linked to the city and to his neighborhood in a visceral way
Children and young people involved in this project participate actively and enthusiastically, internalizing the ability to share and cooperate. The goal of Sanitansamble is also to convey through music a message of hope for all the children of the neighbourhood with difficult stories behind them, and at the same time work on the concepts of tolerance and integration in order to create that Human "Mezcla" in which diversity becomes normality, an added value to which to rely.
At the same time through music it's promoted a relationship of trust and respect between educators and children, and for "osmosis", also get the involvement and collaboration of families.
Fighting the violence and the arrogance they live in everyday life has become especially in recent times really hard, but not impossible. Kids know what's right and what's wrong.
And so, with 7 notes, a young life can change.
Text and photos © Claudio Menna
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