Many years ago, when I was rootling through my father's library, I discovered a book, yellowed by time, that turned out to be a topography of the city of Naples published in 1775. I remember that I began to leaf vaguely through it and then almost immediately put it back on the shelf, intimidated by those strange printed characters, the Fs looking like Ss, the Us like Vs, and by prose that was difficult and obscure, and pages that were too fragile. I was living at the time in a Naples of young people, of white shirts overhanging jeans, a Naples where people met in academic gatherings, where immense love affairs erupted from the sound of a guitar or from fleeting glance. Naples was a city of smells and songs, a place where you could get lost in a labyrinth of backstreets and yet be certain of finding your way again. For, in Naples, you are never alone. There is always someone to help you with a word, a gesture, a coffee. At the time I was unaware that this little book had followed the same steps, the same path. It mentioned the streets and squares of a city build of lava and tuff that had been moulded in the boiling inferno of the underground 'caldare'*. A city of mythological gateways with its lake of Avernus, a city that clings to a silent volcano, that is a stern judge of many destinies but also a lover wanting to give its bounty to the immensely fertile and generous land. Naples has paid the price of its beauty from time immemorial, and ancient plague together with modern cholera are the ransom of so many neglected loves. It may be that in order to love it truly, you have to keep your distance from it. Today, after so many years, this little book lives with me. And it is also from reading this book more attentively than before that this disc came about, a homage to that city and to two beings, my parents, who, out of love for me, have offered me the possibility of singing the sounds, the colours and - why not? - the smells of a familiar Naples. * volcanic cauldrons Marco Beasley Genoa, 17 July 2006
