Tony Esposito (Antonio Esposito) was born in Naples on July 16, 1950, and took up percussion as a teenager. He began working in the early 1970s as a drummer and percussionist on records by the new generation of Italian singer-songwriters. He is credited on drums and percussion on Alan Sorrenti's debut Aria (Harvest, 1972), and again on Sorrenti's Come un vecchio incensiere all'alba di un villaggio deserto (1973), where he plays drums, percussion and cymbals across both sides. Edoardo Bennato's I buoni e i cattivi (Ricordi, 1974) lists him on drums and Lucio Dalla's Automobili (RCA, 1976) on percussion; Wikipedia adds Francesco Guccini, Francesco De Gregori and Roberto Vecchioni to the list of artists he recorded with in those years.

His first record under his own name, Rosso napoletano (Numero Uno, released in December 1974 according to Discogs), came out of that circuit. The producer was Renato Marengo, who also produced his next three albums, and the five-track LP was recorded with the English arranger Paul Buckmaster on synthesizer and piano, Bob Fix on saxophones, Gigi De Rienzo on bass and guitar, Mark Harris on electric piano and Bennato adding vocal effects. Processione sul mare (1976) and Gente distratta (1977) kept the same small circle together, with Esposito credited on drums, percussion, marimba and santoor, De Rienzo as arranger and bassist, Fix on reeds and Ernesto Vitolo on keyboards for the third album. Discogs files all three under jazz-rock. La banda del sole (Philips, 1978) widened the lineup with Eugenio Bennato on mandolin, Karl Potter on congas and Aldo Mercurio on double bass. Italian sources group Esposito with Vitolo, De Rienzo, Fix and Harris as founding names of the Neapolitan "Napoli Power" scene, in which funk, jazz and world rhythms are grafted onto Naples song.

The most direct jazz-side credit of the decade is on the Italian jazz-rock group Perigeo's La valle dei templi (RCA Italiana, 1975), where Esposito plays percussion beside Giovanni Tommaso on bass and synthesizer, Franco D'Andrea on piano and synthesizers, Claudio Fasoli on saxophones, Bruno Biriaco on drums and the guitarist Tony Sidney. Italian Wikipedia says that La banda del sole led to his appearing at the Montreux Jazz Festival with Perigeo, and that he returned to Montreux in 1980 as a guest with his own Tony Esposito Group.

In 1981 he played percussion on four tracks of Pino Daniele's Vai mò (EMI), the album that Italian Wikipedia cites as the high point of the "blues metropolitano" sound, a term that Esposito, Tullio De Piscopo, James Senese, Joe Amoruso, Rino Zurzolo and Fabio Forte are said to have helped coin; Discogs lists it as jazz, rock and blues. Wikipedia also records his later work on Daniele's 2007 and 2008 albums.

Around 1982 his career turned toward pop. With the co-writer Remo Licastro he produced the Pagaia theme for the RAI program Domenica in and the album Tamburo (Bubble, 1982), and from there he became a chart act. "Kalimba de Luna," on Il grande esploratore (Bubble, 1984), won the Un disco per l'estate festival in 1984, charted in Italy and Switzerland, and was covered at almost the same time by Boney M, whose version reached No. 17 in Germany; Italian Wikipedia puts the song at more than five million copies worldwide, a figure given there without a source. He won the same festival again in 1985 with "As tu às." "Papa Chico" reached No. 2 in the Netherlands, where it held the position for five weeks, and No. 3 in Belgium. In 1986 he received a Nastro d'argento for the score of Lina Wertmüller's Camorra (Italian title Un complicato intrigo di donne, vicoli e delitti). He entered the Sanremo Festival in 1987 with "Sinuè," in 1990 beside Eugenio Bennato with "Novecento aufwiedersehen," and in 1993 with the group Ladri di Biciclette with "Cambiamo musica." He also invented and patented the tamborder, a hybrid electronic percussion instrument, which Discogs credits to him on As tu às.

His later releases are Il villaggio globale (1990), Tropico (1996), the soundtrack Storie d'amore con i crampi (1996), Viaggio tribale (2003), Sentirai (2011) and Tam Tam Bass (2013), the last made with the orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and released on Sony Classical. In 2014 he received the DiscoDays award, with a citation that praised the combination of world music, ethnic rhythms, funk and jazz in his playing. A single with Luca Maris, "Luna e sole," followed in 2016 and another, "Inès," in 2022.

Esposito is a percussionist first, and the records show it: the early albums are built on drum kit, percussion, marimba and santoor, with saxophone, electric piano and De Rienzo's bass carrying the tunes. The sound blends Neapolitan melody with African, Latin American and Mediterranean rhythm, which is why the first four albums sit between jazz-rock and what Italians call world or ethnic music. A Debaser review of La banda del sole describes it as instrumental progressive jazz-rock with Latin, Afro and Mediterranean color.

This is a crossover profile, and the pop side is the larger part of his public story. From 1982 the records turn to dance and radio formats: "Kalimba de Luna," "Papa Chico" and "As tu às" are electronic pop with tribal percussion. The jazz-side evidence is concentrated in 1972 to 1981: the four early albums, the Perigeo credit, the Montreux appearances and the sessions for Pino Daniele. He is best understood as a Neapolitan rhythm specialist whose fusion years fed both the "Napoli Power" scene and a later career of world-pop hits.