Alessio Mariani, aka Murubutu, a philosophy and history teacher at the Matilde di Canossa High School in Reggio Emilia, offers a reflection that begins with the relationship between music and literature, aiming to explore the latter’s ties to the most popular musical genre among young Italians in recent decades: rap.
Drawing on his experience working with young people, both as a teacher and as an established rapper, Murubutu traces the genesis and evolution of rap in Italy, highlighting its intrinsic and extrinsic literary components, its expressive peculiarities, and its developmental stages from the 1990s to the new linguistic codes of trap. With a discography comprising eight albums entirely dedicated to storytelling (including La vita segreta delle città, released on March 7, 2025; Infernvm, with rapper Claver Gold, an album dedicated to the first of Dante’s three canticles), Murubutu also explores rap’s untapped potential in its relationship with poetry, classical, and contemporary narrative, placing great emphasis on experimentation but, above all, on school education.
