These pages don't mean to be any complete or too accurate treat upon the Folk Dances of Southern Italy.

What I have done here has been to collect lots of sparse personal notes, mostly handwritten at workshops, adding historical/technical information I took out from some books and articles.

I have tried to give an order to this material and translated it in English, to give it a wider diffusion. Where I know, I say the source of consulting, and/or quote where I report entire periods.

With this I also hope to answer to the request of more info I got from some of the dancers of the Mediterranean Dances mailing List (med-dance), whose interest for these dances makes me feel glad and honored.

We speak of the Ancient Time, and also have a a more close view of some of these dances today. Have a nice lecture!

("And Venus in the woods united the bodies of the lovers")

The studies of the great German ethno-musicologist Marius Schneider show some parallel lines among the various European cultures by means of the analysis of the folk musics and dances.

For example there exists a relation between the Tarantella, typical ancient folk dance of South Italy (but there exist a Spanish Tarantella too), and the Celtic "Dance of the Swords".

Schneider underlines the analogies between the two dances: both have a therapeutic aim, in the true sense of the term terapeutic, because originally they were finalized to heal illnesses by means of the sounds of determinate instruments and with specific movements associated to THAT music.

Here some words of Marius Schneider. My notes or additions are in round or square brackets.

"More than of Celtic influence in Italy, it is more correct to speak of Romanization of the Celts operated by the Italics. These barbarian people infact refined their customs thanks to the contacts with the Romans. Yet they left an own original cultural mark in the Mediterranean area.

The relations between Gaelics and Italics were generally not so pacific, but after the Gaelic War (IV Century b.c.) not all the barbarians returned to the North: a part of them descended the Italian peninsula and put themsleves at the service of the powerful ex-Greek Colonies of Magna Graecia. Dionysus The First, Tyrann of Syracuse [Eastern Sicily], hired many Celts among his mercenaries... creating also stable camps in Apulia [peninsula] and in Salento [in Apulia, South-East Italy, where the Tarantella originates from].

It's also out of any doubt that the Celts were in contact with the region Campania and in particular with its main city, Naples [the city of Vesuvius, and the zone where the Tammuriata originates from].

"The dance of the swords is a folk dance anciently diffused in Spain, Germany, England, Scotland, but also in the Balcans, in the Basque provinces and in some extraeuropean countries. A recurrent element is the disposition of the dancers in a way to form geometric figures: concentric circles, spirals, bridges and vaults formed with the swords. In Scotland at the end of each "figure" the swords were crossed to form a star of 5 or 6 or 8 points and the dance ended with the death by decapitation [head cutting] of the "joker" [or you say the player? Giullare in Italian). The musical instruments used were drums, flutes, pipers (in Southern Italy there's a typical folk instrument that looks and sounds much like the piper). Each instrument owns symbolic meanings that are connected to extremely ancient and even primordial cultures. The most meanigful example of this seems to be the Tamburello (hand drum)".

(Source: Dance of the Swords and Tarantella, by Marius Schneider, in Spanish).

In South Italy the dance of the swords (or knives) still exist, also if it is not danced anymore with real knives.

"The rythmic phrasing of the tamburello has the meaning of a dual crossing of complimentary opposites. The alternance of binary and ternary rythms generates the so-called RITUAL AMBIGUITY and represents the conflictual dimension of the fight.

Also from the structural point of view, the tamburello symbolizes the DUALITY: the low tones of the skin and the high tones of [the sides and of] the metal diskettes on the sides are a polarity enclosed in the unity of the circle.

The tamburello seems to join two different ancient cultures: the Mediterranean one, with the figure of Dionysus God of the Opposites (simultaneous co-presence of the opposites); and the Germanic/Celtic one, with the symbol of the Celtic Cross". (source: Dance of the Swords and Tarantella by Marius Schneider, in Spanish).

Here I will add something.

The Dionysiac Cults, aka Orgies aka Bacchanals, were diffused in classical Greece and its great colonies of Magna Graecia (i.e. Sicily and South Italy mainly!). Bacchus was the Greek name, Dionysus the Latin name.

The tragedy of Euripides called Le Baccanti (Bacchants) speaks of these orgies (or Bacchanals) out of the city, as unrefrained and sensual rhites done from women in the woods...

In the version I saw in the ancient amphytheater of Segesta (Western Sicily) last Summer, the Bacchants were impersonated by fascinating young women dressed as bellydancers and infact they did some belly dance, what they could (I added some dark photos I managed to take).

Another concept that I want to point out is the concept of Duality associated to the castagnette, which I learned from direct (verbal and book) sources. I will expand it hereunder.

Castagnette (plural of castagnetta) are used always in the Tammuriata, and in some Tarantella. They can be of olive wood, or lemon wood, or orange wood. All typical trees of our South (and of the Med area in general).

Now to the castagnette it is somehow bound a concept of hermaphroditism. This term derives from the contraction of Hermes and Aphrodite, to mean male and female, respectively. Hermaphrodite was infact the mythical being generated by the union of the two said Gods.

Given a pair of castagnette, it is said infact that the castagnetta the dancer has in the right hand is a male castagnetta, the one in the left hand is a female castagnetta. We could btw also note that the left part (and thus hand) of the body is controlled by the right emisphere of the brain, and viceversa. In other words to wearing the castagnette is associated the magic property to acquire for a moment both the male and the female principles. Ying/Yang.

Thus castagnette symbolize, beyond passion (fire that blasts), the completeness of the One-Being, an effort of catarsis and a yearn of completeness for who wears them.

The castagnette owned by a dancer are often personalized from her/him, with symbols carved inside the internal concave part of them: for example, to mention a typical one, the Sun on the right one and the Moon on the left one.

The Salentine Tamburello and other mystic symbols show how survivals of ancient beliefs and religious practises, far in the time such as the Orphic-Dyonisiac Mysteres and the Megalithic Cults.

Come to us across the millennia, the Tamburello signifies an extraordinary power: its beat is the pulsing of the Vital Force itself, the Cosmic Primordial Vibration, that force that along the Ancient Cultures generates the Life.

When it assumes periodic pulsations, it has both a beneficial effect and a aesthetic effect.

The fundamental vibration of the Universe, that is the Life in the most wide sense of the term, has been considered from many Eastern and Western Civilizations as composed bt two fundamental forces: the Masculine and the Feminine, the Physical and the Metaphysical, the Night and the Day... and so on with the Opposites.

Like and more than other similar instruments the Tamburello expresses in a net way this conception of the Universe: it owns the Complimentary Opposites of the acute and the bass. In the village of Torre Paduli its duality is expressed also from the most ancient way to play this instrument: lifting it and lowering it rythmically, making coincide the fundamental sound (the bass) when it reaches the low point, and the high sound when it's high.

The historical references of this is with high probability rooted in two sources:

a) the Magna Graecia Civilization and the people directly influenced from it, the Messapi and thus the Orphic-Pytagoric predication.

b) far deeper back in the time, the Megalithic Salentine Civilization and its related religion of Magna Mater (Great Mother).

With its round form, the Tamburello is another expression of the universal magic symbolism of the Circle: the Unity of the Complimentary Opposites: Life and Death, Illness and Healing.

Its use can give back harmony, that balance of the opposites that allows the daily surviving. To heal means to re-generate onseself. In particular, the healing is seen as a re-birth, as a renaissance. The Italian term is the same for both words: Rinascita.

The Rinascita starts from its complimentary opposite: the Death.

No wonder that the Tamburello is a main instrument in the so-called curative music (iatromusic), as in Tarantism, the Pain of the Melancholy generated in whom is bitten from the Tarantula spider.

Like in many dances of all the planet, and in special the Dances of the Swords, the dance on the tamburello expresses the contact of this world and the other world, Earth and Sky, Life and Death, Health and Illness. In the Dance of the Swords, the two male dancers (today with nude hands, imitating to hold knive or little sword) represent the two Opposite Forces, and he who wins is the Health over the Illness, the Life triumph over the Death. The ceremony takes place in a Circle done by the drummers and teh audience, that again represents unity of the two opposite poles.

This magic/ritual Circle is locally called Ronda.

The dance proceeds eliminating time by time the dancer that represent the Negativity, the Illness.

In the Pizzica, the Salentine form of Tarantella, the Ritual Incubatio takes place as practised in the Arcaic Religions: the tarantata (tarantato if male) normally starts laid completely on the floor, generally dressed in black, barefoot, inside the circle, before starting her agitation and the Pizzica dance. The ill-one can also be sitting, or kneeling, or standing inside a religious building or just ouside of it.

The Therapy has as well a meaning of Catarsis (Purification), since in the past the Illness was believed to be determined by some (personal) Guilt.

All these procedures, indeed Pagan, do nonetheless not crash against Christianity, into which they transferred in a painless fusion.

And the highest Christian symbol, the Cross and its Sign, is ALSO an expression of the Unity of the Complimentary Opposites, described infact by a vertical and a horizontal trait crossing one another.

The name Tarantella comes from the Latin name Tarantula. This was a mythical poisonous spider. Tarantato or Tarantata is he or (more commonly) she who has been bitten by the tarantula. Btw one of the main cities of Southern Italy is Taranto, on the omonymous great Gulf on the Ionian Sea.

This dance has kept itself alive in South Italy and Spain, but it finds a North-European relative dance in the Ball of St.Vitus (since child I always heard to talk of the Ballo di San Vito when talking about agitated persons, who can't stop moving all the time).

The musical instruments they believed good to heal the tarantato/a are the guitar, the violin (for its acute penetrating sound), the piper, and the flute.

From the observations of the scientists J.Sarrate' and A.Kirchner (XVII-XVIII century) it results that the music produced from this instruments provocates the same reactions on all the subjects hit by this poison.

The words of Kirchner are:

"This poison produces on the man, for a certain similitude with the nature, the same effect that it has on the insect itself [the spider]: like infact the poison, stimulated by the music, pushes the human to jump for a continuos contraction of the muscles, the same happens for the tarantulae themselves".

On his side J.Sarrate' describes the event of a tarantula closed in a vase, who -at the sound of that specific music- starts to jump.

The subjects undergoing this ancient musical therapy entered a sort of trance, under which they believed to be kings or soldiers [I suppose queens if women, uh] or shepherds; they also felt a sense of idrophobia (adversion for the water), and while dancing they asked to have swords, with which they simulated a fight. These elements are btw also present in the Celtic Dance of the Swords.

Pizzica belongs to the tarantelle family, and it's the typical Tarantella of Salento (sub-region of the Apulian peninsula, in Italy SouthEast). The Rythm is a 6/8.

Depending upon the context it has the following meanings:

The musicians were considered just doctors. Well paid from the family of the suffering person (tarantata) they played for days and days, in real exorcistic practises, making the tarantata to dance non-stop. Only in this way she could extinguish the burning fire of her suffering, neutralizing the poison of the mythical tarantula, which kidnapped her soul and made her crazy...

Danced during Pagan celebrations it was an unrefrained liberatory, passional, sensual dance.

Dating Dance In love dance.

Duel Dance Danced between men with knives.

The name Tammuriata is a short and dialect for Ballo sul Tamburo (Ball upon the Drum). It is Not a Tarantella.

In the area where it originates the dialect word for Tamburo is Tammurro.

The geographic origin of this dance is in the countrysides of the Southern Italian sea cities Naples, Salerno, Caserta.

The historical origin is found to be in the Ancient Rhites in honor of Ceres (the Greek Demetra), Goddess of Fertility, Harvest, Seasons.

Out of the historical evidence, in more ancient and mythical time, it reconnects quite surely to analogous Goddesses of Eastern Mediterranean: the Egyptian Isis, the Babylonian/Sumerian Ishtar, the Cananaaic Astarte, the Phoenician Astaroth, the Akkadic Inanna, and more. In other terms to the cult of the Great Mother (Magna Mater said the Romans).

See also section Before Demetra there was Isis (in construction).

Rich of magic symbologies, this dance was also bound to Dyonisiac Cults, in the woods, dealing with joy of life, wine, sensuality.

The gestuality of this dance expresses deepest pulsions of the human soul.

Tammuriata was danced from country people, typically in the horseshoe-shaped factories of the masserie.

The dance lasted as long as 24 hours, with the drummers changing at intervals, and the dancers alternating inside the circle.

This Ritual Dance is driven from the deep and wrapping sound of the tammurro (hand drum), from the singer (man or woman) who can be the drummer theirself. To this add the never-ceasing beat of the castagnette in the fingers of the dancers. It's a blast.

The rythm, a 4/4 unlike the tarantella, reminds more of North Africa than of Europe.

The constant, slow, monotonous drumming, the ever repeating sung melody, allows dancing for long time, and can induce a sense of Trance.

With the advent of Christianism the figure of the Magna Mater was passed to Maria Vergine. In Southern Italy (and with less extent in all Italy) the cult of the Madonna is very intense and I can say that Maria is the Christian figure really more venerated and prayed.

To Maria are dedicated the pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the village feasts in occasion of which today this dance continues to live, keeping the traditions alive.

It's a dance of pair, traditionally danced from pairs of the same sex (male with male, female with female).

This is not specially followed anymore, and probably today it's more danced in heterosexual pair.

In a return in "fashion" of this dance, a good degree of urbanization is noticed in the last years. City and pleasure for the "spectacular" inevitably tend to add to the dance sensuous moves, torso and hip accents, backbends, floorwork, which are not traditional (but we never know of the ancient times, after all).

The Circle is always present: the audience in circle has a active participation, all are involved, with zagharid, rythmic clapping, new immissions and substitutions from the circle perimeter to the dancing space, etc.