N Neomelodica: Processes of Heritage Making Inspired by Italian Organized Crime Salvatore Giusto Department of Cultural Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract The term neomelodica defines a musical style blending Neapolitan folk and transnational pop elements. Since the 1990s, neomelodica has enjoyed immense commercial success among the Southern Italian subaltern social classes, while having simultaneously ignited heated interpretative conflicts on its supposedly sub- versive themes and modalities of artistic expression. Many critical voices within the Italian mainstream media, national academia, and broader civil society have levelled accusa- tions against neomelodica, claiming that it propagates apologetic narratives regarding the Camorra, an extremely powerful and violent Neapolitan Mafia-like criminal organization. According to these critics, neomelodic songs would foster symbolic links between the social identities and cultural heritage of the Neapoli- tan poor (and the overall Southern Italian sub- altern, often their primary target audience) and organized crime culture. Other commentators have taken less critical stances toward this controversial music genre. For example, neomelodica has been lauded for providing the Southern Italian social peripheries—that is, some of the most marginalized areas of contemporary Western Europe—with an orig- inal platform for public expression, as well as new counter-hegemonic modalities for affirming otherwise silenced subaltern forms of class-based cultural heritage through artistic means. As such, neomelodica (in tandem with the aesthetic tropes it inspires and its ongoing multimedia influence) would literally “give voice” to the underrepresented socio-political grievances of the lower-class inhabitants of these subaltern social spaces. Keywords Neomelodica · Cultural productions · Organized crime · Civil society · Interpretative conflict · Negative heritage · Governmentality · Social class identity · Music labels · Television · Radio · Social media · Pop music · Folk music · Italian music · Subaltern identity · Class heritage · Camorra · Mafia · Napoli · Sceneggiata · Mezzogiorno · Southern question · Italy Introduction The term neomelodica defines a musical style blending Neapolitan folk and transnational pop elements. Since the 1990s, neomelodica has © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 I. Saloul, B. Baillie (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61493-5_263-1