Tarantellas

[Chris Berardi]

Hello,

Everyone knows that Neapolitan Tarantella made famous by the movie The Godfather. But, I am looking for sheet music for tarantellas from other regions. There are a couple in Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes, but not as many as I'd like.

For instance, I'm especially interested in the Tarantella Calabrese, as well as the Tarantella Pugliese and Tarantella Molisiana. I have seen the Molisan tarantella called the Saltarello Abruzzese (which I'm also very interested in getting music for), but I believe they are actually two different pieces.

[brunello97]

Christopher-Sheri Mignano includes a number of tarantellas in her collection 'Mandolin Melodies' which is an extraordinary resource. You can get ahold of her through her Zighi Baci website. Her book has tarantellas from Calabria, Napoli and Sicily.

The link that Martin Jonas posted in a previous thread to a collection of (mostly northern) Italian music includes some tarantellas and saltarellos, including one from Abruzzo.

http://members.yline.com/~zeiler1/abc_eng.html

Jim Garber might have some interesting things in his collection as well. I'm sure he will be by.

If you do find links to more, please consider passing them along. Of course, Calace's tarantella is great fun to play and the music should be widely available. LMK if you don't have it. I love playing this stuff.

Mick

[Jim Garber]

It is getting late but here is a Tarantella Siciliana arranged for 2 mandolins, mandola and guitar and played by Giovanni Giovale.

[Martin Jonas]

Try searching for "tarantella" on ABC Tunefinder. This gives you multiple copies of the "standard" Neapolitan tarantella, but also a whole range of other tarantellas.

Martin

[billkilpatrick]

while you're looking:



... more tunes on their myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/ballatituttiquanti

[brunello97]

Try searching for "tarantella" on ABC Tunefinder. This gives you multiple copies of the "standard" Neapolitan tarantella, but also a whole range of other tarantellas.

Martin

Very nice, Martin, the ABC system is a strange and wonderful marvel to me. The Capriciosa tarantella is new to me and a lovely tune for this morning.

This blog site posts numerous musics and videos from the south:

http://folkitaliano.blogspot.com/

Mick

[man dough nollij]

I can't see what the fascination is. They totally creep me out, though I hear their bite is not really all that poisonous. Eww.

[JeffD]

I can't see what the fascination is. They totally creep me out, though I hear their bite is not really all that poisonous. Eww.

[Chris Berardi]

Try searching for "tarantella" on ABC Tunefinder. This gives you multiple copies of the "standard" Neapolitan tarantella, but also a whole range of other tarantellas.

Martin

That is an interesting site, but the pieces marked as a Calabrese tarantella are in fact Neapolitan.

[Jim Garber]

Interesting documentary about Tarantism. I wish I spoke Italian. For those who want to get to the music, go to 3:50.

[Jill McAuley]

Didn't understand a word of it, but that was awesome to watch!

Cheers,
Jill

[billkilpatrick]

well ... what's going on here is trance and psychosis - temporary; self-induced - brought about by poverty, ignorance, oppression of various kinds, difficult living conditions and "boredom" ... just an ordinary tale of ordinary folks, living an ordinary, backward, rural life in the southern italian provence of puglia - pre-tv.

the figure of st. paul features as a panacea for those distressed. she asks "him" what he's done for her lately and then supplies the answer - "nothing." i think the boy holding the printed-icon is her son.

the second-half of the film shows a catholic mass that's held each year for the benefit of those women in the area who are conveniently afflicted with this condition on the day.

spooky film - notice how the musicians avoided eye contact with the possessed?

there's an earlier thread on this somewhere in the archives. basically, the tarantula's bite was used by women as an excuse to freak-out every now and then without their brothers/husbands/fathers or the church telling them what to do. interesting thing is ... "tarantellismo" occurred in areas where no tarantella spider could possibly live.

... sort of a ladies knees-up with pagan roots ... the church hated it.

[Paul Hostetter]

A few years ago my friend Tony Flores (Sicilian to the bone) and I spent a week playing for dance workshops in Maine with a marvelous woman named Maria Esposito, who had a PhD in, and taught, historical dance at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, in Naples. She said the idea that the tarantella had anything to do with spiders was cute and quaint in the big picture, but that the dance association was actually with the town of Taranto, near Naples, in southern Italy. Tarantella simply associates the dance and the rhythm with that place, not with spiders, even if it makes a good story. In another sense it could also mean "girl from Taranto."

From Wikipedia: Tarantulas comprise a group of hairy and often very large spiders belonging mainly to the family Theraphosidae, of which approximately 900 species have been identified. Historically tarantulas were the bigger genera from the family Lycosidae (like Lycosa tarantula). The colonists of the Americas gave the name to the bigger spiders of the tropic-dwelling families Theraphosidae and Dipluridae (funnel-web tarantulas), and that usage has now supplanted the earlier European one. The name 'tarantula' comes from the town of Taranto in Southern Italy and was originally used for an unrelated species of European wolf spider. The name was borrowed to apply to the theraphosids when Europeans explored areas where these large spiders were common.

Let's forget the spider association, it's not even good folklore.

[billkilpatrick]

agreed - unfortunately it's pervading folklore. they were dancing the tarantella in germany on account of our hairy, not so little friend!

in "a tale of two cities" dickens mentions a wild dance the revolutionaries do (mme. lafarge, et al) very similar to the tarantella. somewhere, on a dance related site, i read about medieval communities who danced for days - till they dropped from exhaustion. it's a poverty, oppression ... hard times related reaction to a short and no doubt very boring existence.

now ... the tarantella is danced for fun: everyone having a great time, leaping around the piazza to hypnotic rhythms without a tut-tuting priest in sight!

[Jim Garber]

Not entirely clear that there was never any association with spiders. From a book on Medical and Veterinary Entomology. I am not sure how much of even this passage is based on folklore.

[Paul Hostetter]

That's an interesting read, Jim, thanks. It at least explains tarantism and debunks the spider connection, while it acknowledges the folklore. Wikipedia has another piece that dovetails with it here.



Note the erupting volcano in background.

[billkilpatrick]

in my loose translation of the film, i neglected to say that the people featured are tobacco farmers - most likely "mezzadri" (share-croppers) at that.

with that in mind - and a vague recollection of the misery contained in the erskine caldwell book of the same name - this might be a more familiar soundtrack to the film:



... twitching remains the same - even today in a german suburb - not a spider in sight.

here's the dance site i mentioned that refers to medieval dance "marathons":

http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3tartla.htm

[nickgeo]

For recent interpreters of the Tarantella phenom, don't forget Allessandra Belloni. Most or all(?) of the mandolin, chitarra battente, etc. on her CDs is played by John LaBarbara, the author ot the recent "Southern Italian Folksongs" collection from Mel Bay mentioned by the original poster. URLs are below. Belloni's interpretation is that the tarantella is a dance of sexual healing for mostly women, sometimes men. YMMV.

The "Godfather's Waltz"/"Valser del Padrone" from the first Godfather movie may have a Neapolitan tune at its center (though obviously it should be Sicilian instead: Puzo took the family name Corleone from the Sicilian town of that name, which is, in fact, a traditional mafia stronghold). I don't know. But the waltz was written by Nino Rota (lived 1911-1979, born in Milan). He was one of Italy's great musical prodigies of the 20th Century, a young protoge of Toscanini, studied under Fritz Reiner in the US, returned to Italy and wrote many famous film scores for Fellini and others including Coppola.

http://www.alessandrabelloni.com/
http://www.johntlabarbera.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota

[Mandophile]

here's the Calabrese. I added a mando 2 part. Enjoy! Sheri

[Paul Hostetter]

Oh yes!

[Mandophile]

no eye contact because of the 'malocchio' the evil eye in the possessed. God, this sent shivers! not because it was so bizarre but because it was so familiar to me as I grew up in Sicilian ghetto in San Jose. My grandparents converted from that Sicilian form of Pagan-Catholicism to the Evangelical Amy MacPherson-Elmer Gantry--style of Christianity. Pentecostal assemblies had 'upper rooms' where people would writhe, twist, shout, shreik, moan, and basically enter into epileptic seizures as the Holy Ghost entered them and glossolalia took over. --scared the #### out of me--I want to thank Jim for posting this--for the first time I think I finally do understand why these conversions happened so easily. What was happening in CA in the 20-30s had been going on in Sicily for centuries--so it was a natural way to sustain the medieval mindset. thank goodness, I survived that stuff--and I think I'm sort of normal but what a way to grow up. Of course, I was introduced the wild dances too! So that was great!

[brunello97]

Here is a link to an interview and video by Alessandra Belloni who plays frame drums from the southern Italian tradition. She and John La Barbera are long time collaborators as I understand. I believe she has her own instructional book out from MelBay as well.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0...erious-spaces/

Mick

Mick

[Mandopolis]

A (very) quick reply, as it's quite late here, but we had a few years ago Mimmo Epifani and the Epifani Barbers in our Mandopolis Festival, they are playing the "pizzicca", which is a kind of tarantella of the Puglia...
You can easily find videos / records / website !

Celine

[brunello97]

Yes, Celine, I am a fan of I Barbieri. I listen to their disc Marannui often. Highly energized.

Mick

[Pete Hicks]

Thanks for the tarantella music, guys. I learned Tarantellas Siciliana and Calbrese over the weekend. Great stuff! A little tricky.