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The songs in the green island

Ischia is also in the firmament of the Neapolitan song. Certainly it does not have a front row seat compared to Capri and Sorrento perhaps because in the mass tourism arrived later. "Come back to Sorrento" known and sung all over the world and performed by great singers of all time was written in 1902 by the Ernesto and Giambattista De Curtis brothers to entice Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli to return to Sorrento and do something to improve the city.

“Luna Caprese” was written in 1953 by Augusto Cesareo and music by Luigi Ricciardi and since then it has sung all over the world especially after the revival in the 1960s, with a very particular style, Peppino di Capri.
"Luna Caprese" never fails in the repertoire of the concerts of Peppino di Capri which is known to have played in a long career of 55 years, an infinite number of songs that cannot reproduce all in his concerts but "Luna Caprese" is inevitable. On the outside wall of the headquarters of Tourism Company in Capri, which is located on the harbor, the beautiful words of Cesareo are placed on a bronze plaque to synthesize almost better than any other written emotions that every visitor feels in a night on Capri.
Ischia has not had a great song like "torna a Surriento and “Luna Caprese” but also his songs.
The most famous is the one who wrote Toto, prince Antonio de Curtis, in 1952 during his stay on the island and the simply titled it “Ischia mia”. Performed by the "gentlemen" of Ischia in the twenty years - 1950 - 1970 - when they were invented especially on the right bank of the port “taverns”, the song of Toto was also known as ‘Ischia, Paraviso e gioventù’ from the first verse of the song. The text with the pentagram was placed from entrepreneur Bruno Basentini all entry of Hotel Terme di Augusto in Lacco Ameno on display in the pottery of Ischia.
There is also other song of Ischia and is fairly well known "Ischia si tu" and was written by singer and guitarist Umberto Boselli at the end of the 1960s and dear Umberto, who died very young in the early 1970s, the always re-proposed during his recital in Ischia that he loved very much.
Ischia so it was no stranger to the extraordinary creative period of Neapolitan songs in the 1950s but in those years the then president of the Organisation for the Exploitation of the island of Ischia, Giacono Deuringer, wanted to do more in 1957 and instituted a song "marine" festival that had only three editions (1957, 1959, 1961), but it was reintroduced in 2011 every two years on the initiative of prof. Giovanni D'Amico, Master Carlo Missaglia and Enrico Deuringer, RAI journalist, editor in chief of "Ischianews & Events" especially in memory of his father. The artistic director of the festival is entrusted to Maestro Carlo Missaglia, one of the best experts on the history of Neapolitan songs of all time.
“The festival's aim is mainly to value young songwriters and is a competition where the sea is the main theme of the new songs and wants to recreate that fabulous atmosphere of the 1960s which is now in the history of the island of Ischia”, explains prof.Giovanni D'Amico, managing director of the Festival. In the "fabulous years 1960s" also the island of Ischia had its musical ensembles of young musicians in the wake of the success of the singers by night as Don Marino Barreto, Marino Marini, Bruno Martino, Peppino di Capri and Fred Bongusto.. The night club was the local cult of those years without the help of high-tech music. The night club - there were at least a dozen from Ischia Porto to Forio - had a complex base of 4-5 elements then was during the high season the "attraction" of the great Italian or foreign singer. These bands, in one of these was a young Lucio Battisti, also suffered the revolution of the music of the Beatles and adapted themselves to the new fashion and survived until the mid-1970s and that is when the night turned into a disco. To stop time to the 1960s Emiddio Calise has created next to his prestigious Coffee, Restaurant, Pizzeria in Piazza degli eroi the night "'O Spasso" for fans of jazz and buna music.
Among the complex of Ischia there was also that one of "Franco from Ischia and its fishermen" who recorded for the Radio Vis, the small record company in Naples, in 1965 "aufwiedersehen" with some success in sales. The complex of Franco from Ischia was short-lived and disbanded soon. The same singer emigrated to Germany and renounced his artistic career. The disc - nowhere to be found today - it's a sign of the times: "goodbye" in German for the new tourism that was establishing characterized by beautiful German girls, the style of Umberto Bindi and Peppino di Capri with the guitar as player.
But if Ischia appears little in the lyrics of some Neapolitan songs "eternal" in Naples were written here. In Ischia singer guitarist Ugo Calise (1921-1994), authentic Ischian but randomly born in Oratino, a village in the province of Campobasso, where his father, Aniello, a physician and poet, was the medical officer, wrote “na’ voce na’ chitarra e’ o poco e’ luna” and in 1958 when he led the night "O 'Rangio felon”, he wrote, “Nun e’ peccato” that Peppino di Capri recorded between his early 45 rpm record and that - always repeated statement by Peppino - the song was crucial to its success. Ugo Calise had a fluctuating career because after the success of the 60s had to undergo the gigantic wave of musical revolution of the Beatles in a museum that relegated the "gentlemen" and the romantic Neapolitan song but Ugo had time to record a CD that precious called "la mia Napoli", where in 12 songs - from “Voce ‘e notte” to “Uè, uè che femmena” through “‘Na voce, na chitarra e o’ poco ‘e luna” - leaves his artistic testament. ‘In the twelve songs there is no “Ti regalo la luna”, the one with which he won the third edition in 1961 in his island Festival of Song to fascinate and wowed the select audience of Cinema Excelsior’ as mentioned by Maestro Carlo Missaglia .
On Tuesday, October 29th at the Cinema Excelsior there will be the fifth edition of the Festival of Song Marinara with 12 singers and 12 unreleased songs .
Ugo Calise, from the corner of paradise for artists, sees the show along with Toto and many other men and women of the show. Ugo will be happy to be remembered in his island where “stu’ mare ‘e sempre blu”, (this sea is always blue).