pizzica

A forgotten brand of homegrown folk music known as the pizzica has turned the Italian region of Puglia into one of the most fashionable summer festival destinations in Europe.

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

Much of the material the group performs is intended for a traditional courtship dance from the region called the pizzica, or, sometimes, the taranta.

The New Yorker NewYorker.com 2011

Taranta music, also known as pizzica, is the hot sound sweeping across Italy and this music is real deal.

World Music Central TJNelson 2010

When Copeland met the last of the great old pizzica players, Uccio Aloisi, they created a spark that was new but also traditional," said Blasi."

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

Copeland said pizzica was thriving because no one considered it an old man's folk music.

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

The rhythm is distinctive and the melodies are like nursery rhymes – singable and really effective," said Copeland, who now tours Europe every summer with an Italian pizzica group."

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

Metallica could play it and it would still be pizzica.

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

The resurgence of pizzica has matched Puglia's rise as a magnet for filmmakers and the hot holiday destination for Italy's cultural elite, not to mention a hang-out for celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Willem Dafoe – who had pizzica tunes played at his wedding in Puglia – and Helen Mirren, who has bought one of the elegant old masserie, or farmhouses, dotting the fertile landscape between stunning towns such as Ostuni and Gallipoli.

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

The only fear for organisers now is that the pizzica phenomenon will outgrow the small town piazzas that nourished it and lose its cultish charm.

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

This year's pizzica festival attracted nearly 200,000 revellers to Puglia.

Record numbers flock to Puglia festival to dance to Italy's dervish beat 2011

Birthed in village squares and olive groves, right at the heel of the Italian boot, pizzica acted for centuries as the region’s daily soundtrack, its frenzied dances solace for Castrignanò’s forebears as they loved and worked and prayed.

Pizzica: the centuries-old Italian folk music still whipping up a frenzy Andrea Valentino 2023

Like other tarantelle, a family of related south Italian dances, legend has it that dancing the pizzica could cure women bitten by tarantulas.

Pizzica: the centuries-old Italian folk music still whipping up a frenzy Andrea Valentino 2023