Tarantella Pizzica – Music and dance spun from myth and psychic energy
Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta, 2005. Documentary film by Paolo Pisanelli. Reviewed by Dominic Ambrose.
Most people know the Tarantella as the iconic popular music form of rural southern Italy, but it’s so much more than that. It is the manifestation of a tradition rich in mythology and social significance, some of which have never been fully explored. Tarantella is said to have originated as a cure for people affected by tarantula bites. Now, this historical form, the taranta pizzica (the bite dance) is the subject of Paolo Pisanelli’s documentary, Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta (the long hiss of the spider). Pisanelli goes to the heart of tarantella culture, to Puglia, and sees the phenomenon in the Salento area, the southernmost part of the heel of the Italian boot.
The bite of the local tarantula is not a mere physical event, but a psychic eruption, a mystery shrouded in legend, a secret of the soul. It is not so important if these spiders actually bit women in the past (and then mysteriously stopped), what is much more significant is what role these bites and their cleansing rituals had in southern Italian society. The film begins by investigating the history of Tarantism, using documentary film from the 1960s. It explores the cultural legacy that Tarantism has left for today’s inhabitants. In the old film we see women twisting and turning wildly in their humble homes, while the town musicians played music and blood. These ritual healings often lasted all night and ended with the affected women making a pilgrimage to the church of Saint Paul “of the Spiders” in Melpignano. The words of anthropologist Ernesto De Martino are used to explain the psychological power of these rituals to cleanse women of the effects of an oppressive social structure. This fascinating historical study is progressively interspersed with images of the people of the region today, infecting the film with its healthy optimism about life in this arid and impoverished region of Italy. At the same time, the film advances through the perspective of a popular music festival to be held in the city of Melpignano, celebrating the traditions of pizzica (bite) music.
Eventually, the theme of the next music festival takes over. We see the preparations, the auditions, the instructions given by Maestro Ambrogio Sparagno to the performers, who will become part of a new ensemble, the Orquesta Popolare La Notte della Taranta. We see the townspeople getting excited in spite of themselves by the arrival of 50, 60 or 70,000 people for this all-night musical festival in August. The mayor of the town gives an interview in which he talks about the importance of preserving traditional culture for this region, drained by emigration for more than a century. For him and many others, the concert has become a symbol of healing this open wound in rural society. That it is also an economic rush for this isolated province is not bad either.
The auditions are wonderful to watch, the clear and brilliant voices of the singers, mostly women, who show up to sing the ancient, melismatic and mesmerizing sounds of the pizzica, adding a glorious new dimension to the story. The beauty of their dark Mediterranean faces, the grace of their movements and the quicksilver flow of their song is magical. Finally, the night of the concert arrives, “La Notte della Taranta”. Tens of thousands of people have materialized, mostly young people bursting with enthusiasm, dancing on the grass at the open-air concert, and jumping up and down in a sea of tarantism. The village elders, who had been seen earlier in the film doubtfully debating the upcoming festival, are shown watching on televisions in their huge living rooms. At first they sit skeptically on the edge of the upholstery, then they begin to clap softly, and finally they rise to their feet to dance around the room with the irrepressible joy of seeing their longtime culture finally vindicated by the television cameras. . For a people who have lived their culture for decades working under darkness and prejudice, it is a liberating moment.
Il Sibilo Lungo della Taranta is a complex and multi-layered documentary that brings to life a world that is important as a repository of ancient culture and knowledge that have been all but forgotten in our mad rush towards modernity. It’s a treat to watch for any lover of Mediterranean culture, and especially for those interested in the culture of Magna Graecia, the southern Italian lands that were an important part of Greek civilization before the rise of Rome. These are the lands where the synthesis of Greek and Roman culture first occurred, forming the basis of our Western world. For those of us who are children of the vast southern Italian diaspora in Europe and the Americas, it can also have another great meaning, as an opportunity to see how our ancestral lands can continue to develop and be relevant to our lives. We have forgotten too much because our grandparents spoke with a voice we could never understand. We finally get the chance to hear them speak with the voices of our contemporaries and it’s a glorious revelation.
The Documentary is a Big Sur production in collaboration with local entities in the Province of Lecce. Paolo Pisanelli is a filmmaker with several well-received documentaries to his credit, including films about Don Vitaliano, the activist priest, and another about Enrico Berlinguer, the late PCI leader.