The sound of James Senese

In “Pino Daniele“, Pino Daniele’s second studio album, released in 1979, is a moment considered in fact a watershed – one of many – in the career of the Mascalzone Latino who took the Neapolitan melody and brought it to the world, or vice versa. It arrives relatively early, listening to the 40 minutes and 51 seconds that make up the overall duration of the album, released two years after his debut with “Terra mia”. The second track of the album, “Who holds the sea“, opens with a very powerful and poignant sax solo. It is played by James Senese and the solo marks the official debut of the saxophonist, who passed away during the night in Naples, after more than a month of hospitalization due to pneumonia, in a record recorded by Pino Daniele: nothing would ever be the same for the sound of the Neapolitan singer-songwriterat least until 1981, the year in which after completing a magnificent trilogy with “Vai mo’” Daniele will take other paths (for the record: none other than Wayne Shorter will arrive to replace Senese in the subsequent “Bella ‘mbriana”).

In 1979 James Senese was anything but an unknown, and not just in Naples. From 1967 to 1974 he was part of the Showmena group that performed in the basements of Naples in those years mixing beat and rhythm and blues: with him there were, among others, the singer and bassist Mario Musella and the drummer and percussionist Franco Del Prete. And together with the latter, once the Showmen experience was over, in 1975 Senese founded the Central Naplesa sort of superband that brought together the greatest talents of the new Neapolitan music scene of those years, in which at a certain point Pino Daniele himself also found himself playing. Senese was left out of the group of musicians with whom Daniele recorded “Terra mia” in 1977, his first album: after all, that ellepì was still very much linked to a traditional dimension and very little funk (even if pieces like “’Na tazzulella ‘e Cafè” and “Maronna mia” already represented the first attempts to expand the boundaries of Neapolitan song). The real revolution the voice of “Napule è” would have started with “Pino Daniele”. And that revolution would have had James Senese’s sax as its protagonist.

Born on 6 January 1945 in Naples, among the rubble of the Second World War, from the union between a Neapolitan girl and a African-American soldier of the 92nd Infantry Division who returned to the USA when he was only two years old (“I never met him, all I have left of him are the records he brought home and a photograph”, he said), it was by listening John Coltrane that Gaetano Senese – his real name – had discovered his love for the sax: «I was born black and I was born in Miano, I play tenor and soprano sax, I play it halfway between Naples and the Bronx, I study John Coltrane from morning to night, I am in love with Miles Davis, Weather Report and moreover I have always created instinctively, trying to find my own personal language, never copying from anyone. My sax bears the scars of life’s joy and pain», he would tell in the book Je sto ccà…, in 2005. Growing up between Capodimonte and Secondigliano, Senese soon found a universal language in music. Without his sax, perhaps songs like “Je so ‘Pazzo”, “Musica musica” and “Chi tene ‘o mare” itself would not have been the same: with his music, James Senese embodied the cultural and sound mixes that would later become the heart of Pino Daniele’s project, which peppered Neapolitan music, which in the 1960s had found itself mired in clichés and clichés, with rock, blues, soul and jazz.

With that rough, visceral and highly emotional sax sound, James Senese became, among the champions who made up Pino Daniele’s band of those years (Rino Zurzolo and Gigi De Rienzo on bass, Ernesto Vitolo on keyboards, Agostino Marangolo on drums, Rosario Jermano on percussion, and later also Tullio De Piscopo and Tony Esposito), a key element of that sonic research. Sienese he brought the warmth of jazz and African-American soul into the Neapolitan melodic tradition. His sax, moreover, was not a decorative, “outline” instrument: it was a “speaking” instrument, or rather, a singer, which dialogued – as if it were a second voice – with the voice of Pino Daniele.

Senese’s funk and jazz fusion influences made “Pino Daniele” (1979), “Nero a mezzo” (1980) and “Vai mo’” (1981) much more sophisticated works compared to the Neapolitan musical tradition. With his solos, he brought together the phrasing and improvisation of jazz, the emotional intensity of soul and the melancholy of Neapolitan melody: «I have always been perceived as an irregular. One outside the norm. I’m with Napoli Centrale like Maurice White is with Earth, Wind & Fire. I’m proud of it», he said.

In 1982 he played himself in a film now considered a cult, “No thanks, coffee makes me nervous“, with Lello Arena and Massimo Troisi. In one scene, Lello Arena improvised as a journalist and tried to interview him: a wonderful exchange came out, which looking at it today, in addition to getting a few laughs, says a lot about the great artist that James Senese was.