Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino performs during globalFEST at New York City's Webster Hall on Jan. 8.
January 10, 2012 Hear traditional sounds from southern Italy that had a live audience hopping — literally.
By Anastasia Tsioulcas
Traditional folk music isn't all gentleness and light — just ask this band from southern Italy's Puglia region. Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino specializes in the frenzied traditional pizzica tarantata, a dance that's said to cure the mortal wound of a tarantula's bite.
Joined by a scarf-wielding dancer (as well as a surprise guest artist, the Lebanese-French trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf), this band of vocalists, percussion, recorder and accordion wields a tremendous, earthy energy that had the room hopping — literally.
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