The myth returns. History recurs. A cycle comes to an end, and promptly a new one begins. Different, but close, innovative and yet hanging on to a unique tradition. The heart of Salento lets hear its beat. The omphalos griko knots and spreads in search for new vibrations. La Notte della Taranta broadens its horizons and directs its attention to East, Balkans and Peloponnese, Mediterranean and Turkey. The feast of a country and people, united and embraced to the dizzily rhythm of tambourines and castanets. A Notte that combines global and local. A feather on Apulia’s buttonhole that associates its past and its future. An enchanting tale that has become a violent love to me. Mystic, captivating, able to get moving thousands of tourists and people fond of folk music who come here to the centre of the Salento to fill the squares, meeting place of history and art. Let the feast start, waiting for this Summer night, the most passionate and longest for each of us.

The universal language of music, the seduction of songs, tambourines, colours, the past, the future combine with the night, evocation of land and sea scents of the Salento and Apulia: the night of the Taranta is a night full of an archaic desire for life, message and proposal of contamination and passing of time. This and even more is held in the event, in its concerts, in its final night and above all in the fierce and passionate research of its roots, history and culture. As from this edition the Notte della Taranta joins the network of great festivals acknowledged by the Agreement among the Ministero dello Spettacolo and the system of Regions and Local Authorities, by virtue of the project presented by Regione Puglia, the Province of Lecce, the Unione dei Comuni della Grecìa Salentina that has been selectioned by the Ministero. This is a new extraordinary and gratifying success that marks this outstanding Festival of different music, culture, tradition, innovation and contamination of languages. The ability of combining in the different stages of past, present and future the almost mythologic history of Salentine pizzica with the multicultural nature of world music enables this event to attract the great and varied public of the “Final Concert”, but also to face the thousand local cultures giving them universality, philological and research precision. The Notte della Taranta started almost “for a dare”, thanks to the courage of a handful of Salentine Municipalities and a group of “explorers”: now it is the object of international awards, cultural and symbolic values, deals with the land of the Deep South and seas, ancient human affairs and future horizons, employs musicians, gives pleasure to the audience, and above all speaks about Apulia, a land once sore and archaic, nowadays adventurous and ready to face development challenges, but who does not forget its own history. We are glad and proud of these results, of this complete success achieved all together, men and women of the institutions, but above all met by the Salento and Apulia people and the artists, in a choral dimension with sounds, colours and values shared by the whole world.

In these last years we have supported the success of La Notte della Taranta, that from Rome to Beijing, from Australia to New York was able to be talked about.
The institutions, that have decided to support the efforts of this festival, have also understood that besides the cultural value of an increasing event out of wordiness and self-satisfaction, La Notte della Taranta represents a socio-economic reource for the whole Salento region. An enormous incentive for our territory which has always regarded himself as marginal, whereas nowadays thanks to a complex and historically, stratified background it is learning to be at the centre of a vital ferment. But it is not enough to recognize whatever has been done till now, because while we are reaping the rewards of all this hard work, we must look ahead to the future, to a short-term future in which La Notte della Taranta, this multiform event, the result of intellectual agreement of local authorities, will grow and will be able to stand on its own two feet.
This moment will directly arrive with the establishment of La Notte della Taranta Foundation, in which the Province of Lecce is actively involved, thus achieving roaring success.

This year the Grecìa Salentina celebrates the tenth anniversary of La Notte della Taranta, an experience originated from the administrative agreement of the Municipalities of the Greek-speaking area of the Salento, that make us feel proud. Whoever used to come to our land, found fragments of our history and tradition, but nowadays knows it by sharing its life in our places and among our people, a mixture of different and similar realities, enclosed in the peninsula between the Ionian and the Adriatic Seas. On this way the heritage of folk music had an instrumental role and the work of those who believed in our origins bore amazing fruit. As language and customs, music too comes from the past experiences of people that here let them pass through, thus increasing their own tradition. For this reason the 2007 event becomes even more relevant. Not only the tenth anniversary of the festival, but also the awareness that soon the Notte della Taranta Foundation will give to the project a new substantialness.

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 afterthe 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 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.

I am very pleased to have the possibility to study very exhaustively, perform and rearrange a great part of Salentine musical tradition. This is a special occasion to me, I am proud and yet conscious of the responsibility that this engagement implies from the personal and professional point of view.
When you are entrusted with such an important and large repertoire, kept alive by the passion of many researchers, performers and composers, you feel you are living sounds and passions so strong to remain undamaged by the passing of centuries and at the same time so fragile to be corrupted by ignorance and neglect. Thankfully I will have precious and motivated companions who help me to carry out my job: first of all the Istituto Carpitella with Sergio Torsello, whose wisdom and friendship were pretious and irreplaceable. Then the great Orchestra della Notte della Taranta, its voices and musicians.
The valuable inheritance of the Conductors who came before me. My main target has been to discover the most authentic origins of musical tradition of Grecìa Salentina. And keep them alive. The beginning of the concert is therefore marked by a long original composition, whose melodies slide through all the main components of this enchanting alchemy, from the pretious complexity of Bizantine culture, to Balkan polyrhythm, from the melodious and rhythmic passion of Turks to the tormenting worries of those who try not to forget. These mingle with the songs of carters, the rhythmic sinuousness of oud and the mysterious sounds of Maghreb. Then the long journey through the sounds of the Salento will start, from traditional pizziche to love songs and polyphonies which are the most relevant part of the musical heritage of this land. This year too the voices and sounds of the Orchestra della Taranta will be enhanced by the presence of many guests, each different for school and origin, all similar for artistic and content affinity. Among the musicians will be on the stage Giovanni Sollima (a cellist of international renown who steadily collaborates with composers such as Ryuichi Sakamoto), Gavino Murgia (a famous and valued soloist, assistant of Abu Khalil and many others) on the sax, flutes and launeddas, Arnaldo Vacca who played his drums in a thousand recordsand concerts and Mario Arcari (already in recording study and on the stage with Fabrizio De Andrè and Ivano Fossati), not only as instrumentalist but also and above all as music direction assistant. Together with them the voices of many other guests who will reinterpret traditional pieces and melodies, looking for connections and affinities with their original repertoire. Thus Giuliano Sangiorgi, leader of Negramaro, who comes to pay the sincerest tribute to the music of his land; Massimo Ranieri, very great performer of Neaopolitan music; Morgan refined and prize-winning singer-songwriter of the new generation; Ginevra Di Marco, well-known vocalist of C.S.I. and precise performer of the most innovative Italian folk music; Badarà Seck, Senegalese singer and griot, an expert of the shamanic tradition of his country, with extraordinary expressive and vocal qualities. And Piero Brega, first of all vocalist of Canzoniere del Lazio and then of Carnascialia, two groups that were of the essence for the growth of new contamination music, and eventually the wonderful voices of Eva Quartet, the centre of the world-famous vocal ensemble called Le mistère des voix bulgares. As this is the tenth edition, I thought I could take stock of this ten years of work above all reminding everybody what a lot of effort and talent were lavished until now. I thought it proper to pay tribute to the Conductors who came before me, with the performance of some of their most relevant arrangements of the past editions. Specifically I chose Ferma zitella, rearranged by Piero Milesi in 2001, La pizzica degli Ucci performed by Stewart Copeland and Vittorio Cosma in 2003 and eventually Sia benedettu ci fice lu mundu realized in 2005 by Ambrogio Sparagna, all wonderful examples of rearrangement that is accurate and at the same time deeply innovative of the great Salentine musical heritage.

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