James Senese has died, he was 80 years old. He had been hospitalized for about a month in intensive care in Naples for a lung infection, aggravated by his previous conditions. Saxophonist, composer, voice, symbol: he was the soul of an entire city, a man who made his diversity an art form.
Son of an African-American soldier and a Neapolitan woman, he grew up in the post-war alleys among the barracks of Miano, he was the living embodiment of a mixed-race, painful and proud Naples. His sound, nervous and warm, was a language in itself: jazz, funk, blues, dialect, anger, faith.
With Napoli Centrale, founded in 1975 together with Franco Del Prete, he had invented a genre before he even knew it. The idea of merging the Neapolitan tradition with the groove of jazz and the tension of rock: a Neapolitan Power that would change everything. Songs like Countryside or Don't dream they still remain hymns of freedom and identity today.
In 1977 for the production of Something can't be forgottenhires Pino Daniele, then still unknown on bass. And in the golden years of the movement, Senese was the artistic brother of Pino, Tullio De Piscopo, Joe Amoruso, Tony Esposito: a generation of musicians who wanted to «make modern Naples» and succeeded, transforming the city into a unique musical laboratory: «Those were years in which we played to live, but also to breathe», he remembered.
He played in Black in halfand that sax that opens I'm crazy it's a trademark: the sound of pride and restlessness. After the years of success came other chapters, a solo career, other bands, new experiments. Senese had never stopped playing live, until the last tour: «I am a black man born in Naples who wants to say what he feels», he said. In 2016 he published 'O bloods, perhaps his most intimate album (with the collaboration of Franco Del Prete on the lyrics, it won the Targa Tenco as best album in dialect), and in 2021 James is Backmanifesto of a return that was more spiritual than musical.
