Salento is Sun, Sea and Wind…Salento is Summer, Beach and Party!
And when it comes to partying, the thought naturally connects to music and wild dancing.
In summer, for those who come to know the Salento area there are opportunities to learn more about local entertainments: taking part in events that bring music and dance of the place makes the holiday unique and unrepeatable. From this point of view, the heel of Italy offers a myriad of opportunities.
Parties on the beach are quite common especially around Gallipoli: the long sandy beaches at south of the “Beautiful City” are often setting of music sunsets that turn the end of hot summer days into unforgettable moments.
For those who think about Salento as the Jamaica of Italy, some popular Puglia festivals recall properly Caribbean dancehall organised in many different places: by the sea, in the woods, in a small bar in the suburbs or in the countryside next to ancient farms.
The music is reggae and it is proposed in different ways: funny musical “competitions” where young DJs compete for audience participation; selections of old vinyls of “sacred cows” on the international scene in which Bob Marley is the precursor; engaging live music in the festivals, where the guys of the local band “Sud Sound System” are still the masters.
And then there are those who look for typical music: the “pizzica pizzica”, also called Salento pizzica dance or pizzica tarantata.
This is the music of the Taranta nights (from Tarantula), soundtrack of every sagra that take place during the long nights of August. Here the music is marked by the relentless pace of the tambourine; old and new generations come together in the singing of traditional and reworked texts, almost all in Salento dialect and little often in Griko, the ancient language still spoken by the elders of Grecìa Salentina area.
Tourists in summer attend these festivals in the squares of little villages, getting caught by an incessant rhythm in dance and no matter if you do not know how to dance, to court and be courted by the “pinched” beat of this timeless dance.
Then when August ends so do the festivals. Who comes to Puglia during the rest of the year eager to discover something more of our land and its best-known folk phenomenon usually is disappointed.
And it often happens that even having the chance to attend this joyful dance during festivals and celebrations, the desire to really understand what it is danced is not satisfied: was it pizzica, taranta, tarantella or pizzica tarantata? What historical origins has this music? and why does it exist in the Salento music culture?
To satisfy even the curiosity of this type of tourist defined “conscious” for the desire to understand what is happening around him, Dionisiaca Salentina was created!
It’s a show completely new; a dynamic entertainment with live music and videos; a journey through stories, traditions, folk songs, dance and colours; a theatre where everybody participates. The viewers are involved in this frantic environment dancing and playing his symbol instrument: the tambourine.
Dionisiaca Salentina is an unforgettable experience, a cultural and recreational tool at the same time that will reveal some of the magic of Salento: www.dionisiaca.it
Contact us to ask info about the Pizzica folk event in Lecce or around Puglia!
