Divinae Follie, the 90s and the collective ritual of the night

The frenetic beat of an era, the epic of a family and a generation that, between successes and failures, make the night their kingdom. In the background, the concerts of emerging artists such as Ligabue, Fiorello, Jovanotti, the last young people without cell phones, without internet and without social networks: the new book by Lucio Palazzo, Rai journalist, currently author of Porta a Porta and Cinque Minuti on Rai 1, will be released on June 6, in bookstores and online stories.

The youth of the 90s were the last to live and grow up with the habit of building relationships in real life and not virtual. Physical places had a fundamental role. Between the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s, the ritual of being together to listen to music and dance made a qualitative leap: the first large discos arrived in Italy, following the American and English experience. The man who selected the music was physically placed at the center of the scene, clubs such as Cocoricò, Pascià and others were born on the Riviera Romagnola that hosted complex performances, with the use of costumes and with an often theatrical setting. The DJ became a rock star, the night changed liturgies becoming a sort of secular mass, which purified those who participated from the waste of real life.

In the South there is Divinae Follie, of the Mastrogiacomo family, which was not born in Romagna but in Bisceglie, in a Puglia not accustomed to that show, in a territory that is not the one of today. "Divinae Follie - Storia della generazione che ballava negli anni Novanta" is the first novel set in one of those discos and that talks about that generation, the kids who saw the first house music of Frankie Knuckles arrive from Chicago, and who witnessed the explosion of names like Fiorello and Jovanotti.

In 1987, Vito Mastrogiacomo, a wedding planner from Puglia, flies to London to visit his daughter, discovers the Hippodrome, a historic nightclub near Leicester Square, and decides to return to Italy to open a twin club to the English one in Bisceglie, together with Titti and his other son Leo. A few months after opening, a bomb forces the owners to rebuild the club. Who will win? Will success survive family conflicts, ambitions, betrayals? Because creating a temple of the night, in the South that is changing skin, means challenging everything: morality, institutions, the dangerous shadows of the underworld that move under the radar. But Divinae Follie is not born, it explodes.

Palazzo has already published Negramaro, storia di sei ragazzi, the first biography of the band from Salento (Aliberti Editore, 2007) and I semafori rossi non sono Dio. Colloquio con Gino Paoli (Rai Eri, 2014). He has worked for numerous TV programs as an author, among others, La vita in diretta, Rai 1, Il mondo a 45 giri, on the history of the record label Rca Italiana, Rai 3, Niente di Personale, La 7.