The jungle is a treacherous place, where danger lurks behind every tree and under every plant. I am not talking about this kind of jungle; it is definitely unlikely that any of us have actually run in such a place.<\/p>\n
Instead, there is a jungle that we all know very well: it is that of the city where so many are forced to run because they live there and have no alternative. What are the dangers of a city? The cars, the turns after which you don’t know what you’ll find (nothing dangerous except because you might stumble on them), the less safe neighborhoods, the darkness of some places. More generally, the jungle in its urban declension has always been a cherished metaphor in certain literature and especially in much music: that of the ghettos, the forgotten and poor areas, the suburbs.<\/p>\n
It was precisely in these places that very interesting forms of expression were born that, through creativity, crossed borders and often became artistic genres that were appreciated and loved even in the more fortunate areas of those same cities. I’m talking of course about hip hop, which was born in those underprivileged conditions now more than 40 years ago in New York City and then spread all over the world.<\/p>\n
From being a tale of marginalization, hip hop developed by narrating the redemption and rise to power of many rappers who later became successful entrepreneurs like Jay-Z. One could also read the evolution of hip hop as an economic-social history of the last 40 years of urban life in the U.S., both East and West Coast. But that is not what matters here; what is more interesting is that in many songs there is always a character in the background: the city. These stories would never have existed without a city to act as their theater. A city whose difficulties, tragedies but also joys and successes are recounted by the rappers. Of the asphalt and concrete jungles to which they always pay tribute words of love or hate, never of indifference.<\/p>\n
The cities in which we run in Italy hardly remember them, but everyone builds with the place where they were born or where they live a relationship of love and hate or otherwise some tension, positive or negative. When this tension flows into music and art, a miracle happens. To run with.<\/p>\n