Telling la Notte della Taranta. To tell ten editions of an event that deeply marked the Salento and its culture is not so easy, if anything it is dangerous because it fascinated a lot and still fascinates.In this book we try to give a short run-down on La Notte della Taranta, on what it represented and represents for the Salento and Apulia region, from our point of view and from the one of who experienced it in different capacities and with different responsibilities. From the journalist to the scholar, from the conductors to the musicians. In the first half of the Nineties a group of young administrators of the Grecìa Salentina had for a lucky coincidence government responsibilities each one in his own community. We suddenly realized we had the privilege of deciding and then making the choices able to influence the turn of coming events. We have been squabbling with each other and the first choice we made was to overcome the differences, to try to be an “area”, a territory starting again from itself, from its most ancient identity, from a common language by then out of use and doomed to decline and oblivion. A Grecia Salentina handling the problem of winning the challenge against modernity not trying to be the North, but having a look round and discovering that the fall of the Berlin wall was deeply changing us more than Germany. Winning the challenge against modernity revolving round the main wealth that marks the look and the features of a community and a territory: the deep relationship between the places and their inhabitants. Society placed its main courses no longer in Northern Europe, but here in the Mediterranean, where we were finibus terrae for a long time, extremity of a continent, reservoir of labour that first crossed the oceans and then went through the peninsula, from the mines in France and Belgium to the factories in Northern Europe and Northern Italy. Now due to historical events the Salento was no more as Quasimodo wrote “… a land split by sun and solitude “ but was again a land of transit for people, races, religions, cultures, that landed here escaping from wars, starvation and compulsion to look for “l’Ammerica” (as we had done in the past) allowing them to recover their dignity. This land had been claiming economic development for long, we had pointed out to the establishment our isolation from industrial development that stopped in Taranto with Italsider and in Brindisi with the petrochemical industry.
But that supposed marginality could become our wealth in our ideal development. We didn’t want to share a development that gave us only leftovers. Therefore we pinned our hopes on culture, the extraordinary historical and architectural heritage, an unpolluted environment, traditions on which concentrate to win the challenge. The challenge of growth, progress coming out from our wish of liberation that could make that history, that tradition a mainstay of our project. In this context the Istituto Diego Carpitella first and then La Notte della Taranta were created. Tradition was considered not as a fossilization, a stone round our neck, but “knowledge of the people”, a part of culture able to provide relevant information on the evolution of human history and their places. An extraordinary experience while we were engaged in deciding the development of this territory. Our musical heritage seemed a strong opportunity to express the image of time this land and this part of Italy was living, meeting, dialogue and exchange place. Just dialogue, the comparison between our traditional music and the languages of contemporary music could allow tradition to be alive and vital, and the more interpretations it had the more it was able to refer to a great deal of people. Using our musical heritage, the repertoire of songs and chants, became an extraordinary desire to be at the centre of attention in order to avoid with singing staying on the sidelines of history, because singing is not only synonymous with song , but it is also marginal place, lateral shelter (to stand aside). Our hopes centred on intangibles, an event that followed and changed this territory year from year. It was presented to a wider public opinion, it became a household name in Italy and faced tours in foreign places. From Rome to Florence, from Bologna to Venice, up to China, Jordan, and Germany. It was a tonic, a remedy for the anxieties, crisis and solitude of global citizen, able to unite generations with rhythm, labour and love songs, but also to take on itself the universal need of friendship and knowledge. In these ten years La Notte della Taranta deeply marked this territory, produced wealth drawing here men and women who chose the Salento to rest after the efforts of a year. In the third millenium men will no more be able to build new cathedrals as in the past, new outstanding monuments, brick upon brick. The “cathedrals” of this millenium will be this extraordinary heritage of traditions that passed on by word of mouth, from generation to generation, and must be protected to be experienced and showed, as with the main monuments of the past, to those who want to enjoy their benefits.
La Notte della Taranta is a festival, whose exceptionality lies in the awareness that the audience, listening to the music of the different concerts and the Final event, has of what comes about on the stage. An active audience that owns that extraordinary heritage which is public wealth and never private plunder. Nowadays, after ten years we feel bound to go beyond, to organize not only the places of the events, but those of research, study, exchange, to establish relationships with other festivals taking place in Europe and in the world.
That’s why this tenth Edition will be marked by the meeting with the art directors of other folk festivals coming from France and England, Norway, Morocco and Italy, who discuss examples of artistic policies for territorial development. And then there is La Notte della Taranta Foundation that will be created to organize and make the discussion and the artistic productions permanent, starting from research and debate. To keep and list in a physical place all the material of public and private research at the disposal of scholars and young students.
Now, after ten years, we can easily say that we had in our choices, edition after edition, the heart to risk. We could have made the best of a brief success, above all in the last editions, indulging in the privilege of collaborations with outstanding musicians who paid tribute to the dignity and force of our folk music. But it is just with this ability to avoid being a fixed target, accepting comforting results that La Notte della Taranta will go on living. Ten years ago we would never have dreamt to short-circuit this land so positively. But since we were young we have learned to read Bodini and to ban marginality and we have tried to look the face of that moon to which he often used to talk to “ma tu, luna le incognite finestre illumini del Nord mentre noi parliamo, nel fondo di quest’esule provincia ove di te solo la nuca appare” Let’s try to find the liberation by looking that moon in the face. Good luck, little Salento.

Introduction to the book "LA NOTTE DELLA TARANTA 1998-2007" (short history by texts and pictures of the ten years that “revolutionized” Salentine folk music)

The Notte della Taranta is the greatest musical festival dedicated to the revival of Salentine pizzica and to its combination with other music genres, from world music to rock, from jazz to symphonic music.
The festival was born in 1998 on Unione dei Comuni della Grecìa Salentina and Istituto Diego Carpitella’s initiative. Year by year it has acquired cultural prestige thanks to the intervention of the Province of Lecce, which in 2001 became one of the authorities that promote and organize the Notte della Taranta and thanks to Regione Puglia that joined in 2005 edition.

The "pizzica" is the music that marked the ancient healing ritual against the bite of tarantula, the dangerous poisonous spider. According to tradition in order to drive out the demon thought to have taken possession of the victim, generally a woman, tambourines should be beaten incessantly. The dizzily rhythmic sound of the tambourine combined with a frenzied hypnotic dance healed of the poison. Other types of “pizzica tarantata” are the courtship dance between man and woman and the “dance of the swords” also called “pizzica a scherma”.
The obsessive rythm in music and dance is still alive and is performed by some Salentine musicians who, gathered in the Ensemble La Notte della Taranta, meet the major performers of international music directed by several conductors: Daniele Sepe in the first edition of 1998, Piero Milesi who directed two editions of the festival, in 1999 and in 2001, Joe Zawinul in 2000, Vittorio Cosma in 2002, Stewart Copeland in 2003, Ambrogio Sparagna in 2004, 2005 and 2006.
Under the direction of Ambrogio Sparagna in 2004 was founded the Orchestra Popolare La Notte della Taranta, that took over the Ensemble acquiring all the instrument sections of an orchestra. The musician Mauro Pagani will direct in 2007 the Orchestra Notte della Taranta and look after the art direction of the Final Concert.

Every year the festival presents travelling concerts in the Municipalities of the Grecìa Salentina (Calimera, Carpignano Salentino, Castrignano dei Greci, Corigliano d’Otranto, Cutrofiano, Martano, Martignano, Melpignano, Sternatia, Soleto, Zollino) plus the Municipalities of Cursi, Galatina and Alessano, in which perform the major bands of Salentine traditional panorama and international world. In 2007 one stage of the festival calls at the Municipalities of Andrano e Otranto. The festival will be concluded by the “final concert”, the “notte” (night) after which the whole event is named, an original production with a conductor who must review the repertorie of Salentine tradition and must conceive an original project, different year by year.
This logic generated new combinations such as the one between popular tradition and highbrow music through the meeting of 'Ensemble La Notte della Taranta with Symphony Orchestra of the Province of Lecce (directed by Piero Milesi in 2001 edition), the one between the Israeli vocalist Noa and the grika language in 2002 edition or still that between rock sonorities of former Police Stewart Copeland, drummer, and incessant beating of taranta. Extraordinay emotions that have been repeating in the succeeding editions, of which a brief summary is given as follows.

This experience of ten years is arousing the increasing and extraordinary media’s interest. The Final Concert is covered by all the main national newspapers, magazines, Tv and radio stations, that advertise a wide-ranging project even on international scale. All Rai news dedicate a long report to the festival the day after the Final Concert.
More than 100.000 estimated people in the square of the Augustinian Monastery of Melpignano for the Final Concert. The same people spread during the festival. This ten years demonstrate an extraordinary maturity that make the Festival and its musical contents the most important means of promotion of the Salento region and the Grecìa Salentina.

The publication “La Notte della Taranta 1998-2007 - breve storia per testi ed immagini dei dieci anni che hanno rivoluzionato la musica popolare salentina", (La Notte della Taranta 1998 – 2007, a brief history by texts and pictures of the ten years that revolutionized the Salentine popular music) edited by Salentine journalist Dario Quarta.

Read the the book review and see how you can buy it in Production page.

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