With its mandolins and tarantellas, its pathos and humour, and its bel canto melodies, Neapolitan song is an icon of Italian culture all over the world. You're probably familiar with 'O Sole Mio and other classics from the late 1800s or early 1900s, but if you're not as familiar with Neapolitan songs from the 1960s — a time when the genre had its second flourishing — this compilation will come in handy.

"When Naples Sings" brings together tunes from the decade with some of the most popular female Neapolitan singers in Italy, when the Festival della Canzone Napoletana was the biggest song contest in the country. As you will hear, these songs continue traditional motifs and topoi, but also integrate foreign influences, especially jazz, which was brought by American troops at the end of WWII.