La Musica Della Mafia: Il Canto Di Malavita (2002)

You don't have to be an NPR deejay to see that La Musica Della Mafia: Il Canto Di Malavita yearns to be this year's ''Buena Vista Social Club'' -- another album of exotic world music that sheds light on an arcane culture. The tunes are steeped in the fluttery acoustic guitars and caressed accordions of Mediterranean folk; the Italian vocalists are as supple as balladeers and as emotive as amateur opera singers. Even if you're alone, you'll feel so much like you're in a European café that you'll be tempted to call out for wine and antipasto.

The crucial difference from the Cuban-music phenomenon lies in the album's title (translation: ''Music of the Mafia: Songs of a Life of Crime'') and the words to its songs. First released in Europe two years ago, where it was praised and condemned, the disc compiles centuries-old songs about the gangsters of Italy's Calabria region. The somewhat mysterious recordings are undated, and one of the singers is said to have been killed in 1971 for romancing a don's love. In straightforward fashion, the tracks spell out the basics of Mob life: honoring the brotherhood, opting for jail instead of ratting on your friends, and hunting down stoolies who've disobeyed those rules (''First, traitor, I'll slash your face and watch you die,'' sings one Fred Scotti in ''Tarantella guappa''). The tracks aren't denunciations but blunt warnings: If you betray, you pay.

In that regard, it's difficult to kick back and enjoy the music à la ''Buena Vista Social Club'' -- and not simply because the nearly two dozen songs grow repetitive rather quickly. The producers claim the disc doesn't romanticize the pre-''Godfather'' Mafia, even with lyrics like ''the sawn-off shotgun sings,'' but the music is so lilting and pleasant that the album starts to feel like a collection of ancient Italian courtship ballads. ''La Musica Della Mafia'' puts a disturbingly sensitive face on old-school mobsters; here, they're just a bunch of smooth criminals.