Claver Gold (Emidio Daycol Orsini, Ascoli Piceno, 1986 – ) and Murubutu (Alessio Mariani, Reggio Emilia, 1975 – ) are two Italian rappers who collaborated to produce an album entirely inspired by Dante’s Inferno. The album is titled Infernvum and was released in 2020, but in 2021 a second edition was made with three more songs.

Infernvum, by Claver Gold & Murubutu, Glory Hole Records, 2020.

Francesco Ciabattoni, Georgetown University (Review published in Italian Quarterly, LVIII, Nos. 229-230 Summer-Fall 2021, pp. 285-287)

The seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death has invited not just academic conferences and civic celebrations, but also disparate revisitations of the Divine Comedy within the various arts. A number of Italian rock and pop musicians have, for at least fifty years, included references to Dante or his work in their songs. Italian rappers Claver Gold and Murubutu have surpassed these previous works by releasing an entire album in 2020, whose eleven tracks are all named after characters or parts of the Commedia and feature collaborations with established artists from the hip-hop, rap, and trap scene, such as James Logan (Jel), Davide Shorty and Dj Fastcut (the latter’s interest in literature featured prominently in his 2016 album Dead Poets). Only a few of the “classical” Italian singer-songwriters have referenced the Florentine poet in their lyrics: Fabrizio De André (“Al ballo mascherato,” 1973), Roberto Vecchioni (“Alighieri,” 1975), and Antonello Venditti (“Compagno di scuola,” 1975). Angelo Branduardi set to music the eleventh canto of the Paradiso, as part of a concept album on the figure of Saint Francis (L’Infinitamente Piccolo, 2000), but did not change or elaborate on Dante’s verses. In 2007 Gianna Nannini set to music and sang lyrics by writer Pia Pera, completing an entire album (Pia come la canto io) dedicated to Dante’s hapless figure, Pia de’ Tolomei, and Vinicio Capossela wrote a song based on Inferno 26 (“Nostos,” 2019), and titled his 2021 tour Bestiale Commedia. In the field of hip-hop, the most recent releases of works referencing Dante include Achille Lauro (Lauro, 2021), and Tedua (Vita Vera, 2020). Thus Infernvm by Claver Gold (Emidio Daycol Orsini, born in Ascoli Piceno in 1986) & Murubutu (Alessio Mariani, born in Reggio Emilia in 1975) is part of a trending interest among hip-hop artists.

The pilgrim Dante, the focal point of many earlier treatments, is absent from the songs of Infernvm, and is replaced by a collective “we.” One can easily follow Infernvm’s narrative progression by looking at the titles of the tracks, which retrace the poem’s first cantica: “Selva Oscura,” “Antinferno,” “Caronte,” “Minosse,” “Paolo e Francesca,” “Pier,” “Malebranche,” “Ulisse,” “Taide,” “Lucifero,” and “Chiaro Mondo.” The last title is not a promise of the ascent to purgatory or paradise, as it might seem, but rather a recap of the entire infernal journey spoken to a disquieting soundtrack dominated by a violin. The album’s songs mix memorable quotes from various passages of Dante’s Inferno (3.82–84; 34:20–21; 26.118–120; 3.109–111; 5.4–6; 13.72; 13.37–39), into a new narrative collage, as is particularly the case with the opening track, “Selva oscura,” and the last, “Chiaro Mondo,” perhaps as a way of beginning and ending with the poet’s own words.

Within Claver Gold and Murubutu’s gallery of portraits, the artists often cast themselves in the shoes of the pilgrim, without ever mentioning the name of Dante: in “Minosse,” Claver Gold wonders to which circle of hell he would be assigned; “Malebranche” likens the infernal topography to an inner city neighborhood (“Sti barattieri che ora lo fanno per moda / Mi parlano dei quartieri, mi parlano della droga / Nel lusso di quei piaceri dove la foga li affoga / Noi siamo scesi sinceri scortati da Malacoda” [“These grifters who cheat because it’s fashionable / They talk to me about the streets, talk about drugs / In the luxury of those pleasures where the heat drowns them / We descended earnestly, escorted by Malacoda”]). The rappers’ lyric writing includes direct quotations from the Inferno along with original lines, and proves to be quite refined and inventive: for example, “Paolo e Francesca,” a song released as a teaser in 2020 and featuring singer-songwriter Giuliano Palma, gives voice to the traditionally silent member of the adulterous pair. Paolo expresses regret for his own sin and for his role in damning Francesca, who to him remains “il migliore tra i peccati” (“the best of all sins”). In “Taide,” the flatterer from Dante’s Inferno 18 is presented as a woman who struggles to have a normal life, fighting against the stigma of prostitution weighing on her. “Pier” contemporizes Dante’s story about the suicide of Frederick II’s chancellor by casting Pier delle Vigne as a teenager who kills himself after being bullied. Concerning their writing technique, Murubutu declared in a recent interview that “it is impossible to reproduce Dante’s hendecasyllables or tercets, constructed to repeat infinitely. We work in hip-hop tempo, in 4/4. We therefore worked on collecting the quotations and passages and relocating them in another metric structure.”[1]  The style of these songs combines Murubutu’s storytelling and Claver Gold’s conscious rap, focused on social and political issues.
            Claver Gold’s ringing spoken-word voice and Murubutu’s hoarse streetwise tone (his first collective was named La Kattiveria) combine nicely with the musical arrangements featuring orchestral instruments and hip-hop rhythms. The success of Infernvm, which has received the critical attention of essayists and journalists, is confirmed by the release, in 2021, of Infernvm Deluxe, a second edition which adds three original tracks (“Beatrice,” “I giganti,” and “Lucifero RMX”) to the collection, and has inspired an illustrated book (Dante a tempo di rap, BeccoGiallo, 2021) as a way of further popularizing the songs and Dante’s poem.

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[1] “Non è possibile riproporre gli endecasillabi o le terzine di Dante, costruite per andare all’infinito. Noi lavoriamo sul tempo dell’hip-hop, sul 4/4. Abbiamo quindi lavorato — spiega Murubutu — sul cogliere le citazioni e i passaggi e sul ricollocarli in un’altra struttura metrica.” Silvia Morosi, “La Divina Commedia al tempo del rap: Claver Gold e Murubutu rileggono Dante in ‘Infernum,’” Il corriere della Sera, 18 March 2021, www.corriere.it/tecnologia/milano-digital-week-2021-diretta-streaming-news/notizie/divina-commedia-tempo-rap-claver-gold-murubutu-riscrivono-dante-infernum-ee672ec8-8829-11eb-b36f-34a1dcf4e6aa.shtml