As you all know, trapper Tony Effe’s concert, scheduled for the Roman New Year, has been cancelled. The mayor’s decision came following protests from some city councilors (guess which party), who pointed out the sexist and misogynistic nature of the texts. We therefore immediately get to the heart of the first absurdity: a handful of people protest, the concert is cancelled. Why ever? Do we consider it legitimate for a part (even a small one) of the civic body to decide for everyone what is appropriate to listen to?

But of course the real answer lies not here, but in a much deeper and more serious problem: today an accusation of misogyny automatically and inevitably implies condemnation to oblivion. If you are guilty of this sin, forgiveness is impossible: you are evil incarnate, and who would ever dream of defending evil incarnate? I believe that Gualtieri didn’t think twice about canceling the concert: can we imagine the huge disruptions he would have faced? He would have been considered a misogynist too.

This is what happens when you let the moral police (which has taken on the role itself) establish for everyone what is right and what is wrong, and this judgment is unquestionable. The public debate on violence against women has reached such a level of poverty and misery that it is not even possible to define it as such: no one has the courage to present a different thesis, or to do so they have to put a hundred hands forward, because they risk being accused of sexism.

We pretend to want to protect minors, but the effect we obtain is different

I also find it particularly deplorable that this ridiculous battle (which is only the latest in a long series) is disguised as the protection of minors. In fact, the singer’s exclusion is justified with the excuse that his lyrics would be uneducational for the new generations – who in fact will certainly stop listening to Tony Effe because he no longer goes to New Year’s Eve in Rome. In reality, it’s not about protecting kids at all, but simply silencing a voice that we don’t want to hear, because it annoys and offends us. It annoys and offends me too (for completely different reasons which I will explain shortly), but that doesn’t mean I start protesting if the trapper comes to sing in my city.

The second absurdity, in fact, is that this attitude is extremely counterproductive if our goal is to distance teenagers from this type of music, because the more you make it forbidden, the more you make him a martyr to censorship, the more they will be attracted to it. It’s incredible how we haven’t learned anything from past decades, how we don’t understand that it’s precisely the fact that it’s music unwelcome to “grown-ups” that makes it attractive to kids.

In short, these are arguments that have already been heard: punk that makes you violent and anarchic, metal that makes you Satanists, etc. etc. In all these cases, not only was the starting assumption false – that listening to a certain type of music mis-educates children and makes them something-ist – but the opposition was also completely useless. And that the starting assumption is false should really be clear to everyone, unless we consider kids to be complete idiots who don’t understand what a song is, what figurative language is (which they also learn at school).

The real problem lies in the artistic quality

But what’s different between the musical genres I mentioned and trap? The only real difference is that trap, from a qualitative point of view, is underground, it doesn’t tend to have the slightest artistic value. From a musical point of view it is an aberration, because the “artists” are not even capable of singing or rapping; the beats are repetitive, uninventive, without experimentation. As for the lyrics, the problem is certainly not sexism, but total inconsistency: almost identical sentences repeated in vaguely different sauces, without any content.

These are often singers without any musical culture, very different from their hip-hop predecessors. In Italy, there are many names that have made the history of the genre, from Sanguemisto to Frankie Hi-NRG, without forgetting the Roman, Turin and Milanese scenes which have also produced huge names like Noyz Narcos or the Articolo 31 that were. Many of these artists wrote lyrics that today we would define as misogynistic and violent, but the songs were mostly of high quality: quality rhymes, wordplay, intertextual and intratextual quotations, the choice of rhythms and backing tracks. Some songs by Fabri Fibra, extremely desperate and dark, like Not badin which horrible things are said about a woman, are truly beautiful songs: it is very clear, especially by listening to the entire album (which almost always constitutes a single discussion, which is understood if listened to from start to finish), that the point is not hating women, but venting an anger and frustration that any teenager recognizes. Other decidedly more idiotic songs, however, in which absurd sexual exploits are told or inferences are made about other people’s girlfriends, simply fall within the communicative code of the reference genre. Code which among other things dates back millennia ago, given that it is even found in poets such as Catullus and Martial.

The problem is therefore not the text itself, taken in isolation: the text is only a part of the artistic product, which can only be fully understood by taking into account the performance (i.e. how the artist sings, where he places the emphasis, what tone he uses etc.), of the music (which helps to understand the type of text, ironic, desperate, reflective, etc.) and of the genre to which the song belongs, precisely because each genre has its own codes: a metal text will perhaps talk about death, pain, anger, because that’s the universe that kind of musically explores (although it’s about much more than that, and I certainly don’t mean to belittle that immense world).

The problem is, if anything, that in the songs of authors like Tony Effe there isn’t much else besides the lyrics, which are already poor: there is no music, nor expressiveness of the voice, and the genre is just this, the presentation of oneself themselves as if they were winners, with the “cash” and women at their disposal. There is nothing else behind, below and around. This is in fact the real point of the matter: this is not an artistic product, but a product, period. What should sadden us is therefore, if anything, the total lack of musical education in a large part of adolescents, incapable of distinguishing a quality song from a dull disgrace.

Cultural poverty is a problem we continue to ignore

I would therefore almost be tempted to say that the question which has been so much debated in recent days, of the possible educational role of art and therefore the opportunity to censor what we consider dangerous and objectionable, does not arise here at all. And ignoring this decisive aspect means continuing to ignore that the biggest problem is represented by the diffusion of music that is worth nothing, that transmits nothing, that does not produce catharsis, emotion, but which is just an empty pastime, like many television products and films (let’s not talk about books) to which children are exposed.

Warning: my intent here is not to say that kids are ignorant and stupid, which I would never say. It’s not their fault if they were not educated in beauty (in the broad sense) and if they are surrounded by nothing. We must therefore also have respect for their tastes and passions, which are authentic for them; and, as I was saying, there is little use in sanctioning and prohibiting. If anything, it would be necessary to educate, which is a very different and much more difficult thing.

Education and a habit of depth would be needed

Educating, among other things, would also serve to reassure us that children can listen to anything, without becoming emulators of the singers they love. From my point of view, in fact, the ultimate absurdity of this story is that we think that kids are sexist because they listen to trap, instead of asking themselves if it’s because they love trap because they are sexist. But here too we start from baseless assumptions: that kids are as sexist as we demonstrate, exactly? It’s yet another cliché, after those about drugs and satanic rituals. And as always it comes from a superficial observation of reality, from the carcinogenic tendency to label people based on one of the thousand aspects of their identity.

If rather than talking about misogyny (as if it weren’t full of girls who listen to these singers!) we talked about an all-round worrying culture, maybe we could have a more serious discussion. We could ask ourselves what the model of a successful man and woman is for today’s average boy, how much money and aesthetics matter, and how much this can have a negative impact on interpersonal relationships, self-vision and self-esteem. But if we had a discussion of this type, could we really attribute a possible critical situation to trap music? Or shouldn’t we perhaps come to the conclusion that this music is nothing but the expression of the times, and that therefore it is on the times that we should try to act?

But, as always, reasoning is too tiring: deleting is much simpler, and allows us to immediately get rid of the thought, so we can go back to swimming on Instagram between a model who sells lipsticks and a boy who boasts of six-figure earnings.