“Senza pietà vien ‘e me faje nnammura'” – “Without mercy, you come and make me fall in love.”
Excerpt from “LA NIÑA – MAMMAMA'”
In the Italian music scene, La Niña has established herself as one of the most intense and magnetic voices of the new singer-songwriter movement. Her new album, Furèsta, released today, March 21 under BMG, is a sonic journey that weaves tradition and experimentation, exploring Neapolitan roots through a contemporary language. A choral album, rich in pathos and baroque suggestions, it finds its deepest dimension in the fusion of folk music with modern sensibilities.
The genesis of the album stems from a profound and transformative process. La Niña went through a creative and identity crisis regarding music, coming to perceive it as performance rather than expression. To overcome this crisis, she immersed herself in the study and exploration of ancestral vibrations, delving into 15th and 16th-century music and rediscovering the origins of folklore. This journey reignited her creative spark and gave her the courage to start anew.
From this crisis came the song Tremm’(with KUKII), which in Neapolitan means “earthquake.” The song develops on a percussive sound structure, using frame drums played even with hair and every part of the body. This experience marked a turning point for La Niña, who found a new realm of expression that could embrace more complex elements.
With Furèsta, La Niña does not merely pay homage to the music of the Campania region but reinterprets it with a visionary approach. The album serves as a bridge between past and present, between the echoes of villanellas and electronic beats, between baroque melodies and contemporary expressions. Through her voice, the primary instrument of evocation and transformation, La Niña creates a universe in which the stories of her land intertwine with more intimate and universal narratives.
La Niña’s research is deeply rooted in the territory. The sound seeps into the very titles of the tracks, many of which are onomatopoeic in nature, and the poetic exercise becomes a form of infinite creative power. The ability to manipulate Neapolitan becomes a conscious and visionary artistic practice.
Furèsta is a folk album, but in a broader sense: folk is not understood as a genre, but as an authentic connection with the people and the land. There is no urban reference, as La Niña’s musical search delves into the countryside more than into urban dimensions. Her investigation crosses the sounds of the Mediterranean, deepening elements of Neapolitan tradition, even recalling figures such as playwright Roberto De Simone and the ancient “chiagnazzare”—the ancient Roman mourners, who, during funeral processions, would walk behind the torchbearers, singing lamentations for the deceased and being paid to cry.
The album touches on profound and complex themes, including the glamourization of crime, abuse, violence, childhood, and the earthquake. The creative process was, for La Niña, a form of musical philanthropy: the desire to cancel individualism and egocentrism to embrace a collective dimension.
The musical exploration also extends in unexpected directions: the Scala Lidia, used in Italian musical tradition, meets the Scala del Pomeriggio —Thaat “Kafi”—from India, creating new connections between seemingly distant sound worlds. Niña affirms, “It’s mathematics; the musical scales were the same, and there were no ways for the two peoples to communicate. Music is also mysticism, it’s also mystery, and I accept that.”
The video for the first single from Furèsta is a visual love letter to the city of Naples, its rural countryside, its folklore, and its layered aesthetic. Through dense and symbolic images, La Niña takes us on a journey that blends sacredness and everyday life, between narrow alleys, baroque palaces, ritual dances—such as “tammurriata” in Campania and “pizzica” in Salento — and details that capture the complexity of a city suspended between past and future.
The direction plays with light and shadow, overlaying images that evoke a realm between reality and dreamlike vision. La Niña’s body and voice become the focal point of a narrative that transcends the traditional music video, transforming into a visceral, almost initiatory story, immersing us in the album’s deepest dimension.
More than just an album, Furèsta is a sensory and conceptual experience that invites a careful and immersive listen.
With this new work, La Niña reaffirms herself as an artist capable of reworking the roots of her land into a new and visceral language, offering the Italian music scene a work that resonates as an ancestral song projected into the future.