A Tarantellas Mix

Featuring Antonio Forcione . Tarantella . Tarantella Dance . Zekley Family Band . Slow Tarantella . Draga Matkovic . Calabria Mia Band . Paisellu Miu . L’Arpeggiata . Atanasius kircher . La Tarantella Napuletana . Tarantella Calabrese . Gianni Manti . Masi . SuperTarantella

Italiansrus : Legend states that between the 15th and 17th centuries an epidemic of tarantism swept through the town of Taranto in southern Italy. This was as a result of being bit by the poisonous tarantula spider. The victim, which is referred to as the tarantata, was almost always a woman but never a high ranking lady or one of an aristocratic upbringing.

Podictionary : The folklore evidently doesn’t tell us if the people (a couple I guess) gyrated because of the spider’s poison, or as some sources would have it, because physicians of the day claimed that dancing was a kind of antivenin to the spider bite.

StreetSwing.com : The Third story is of the town’s named Toranto and Tarentum , its supposed origin. Women working in the fields, who would be bit by the Tarantula spider would dance off the venom. It is said that having been found that profuse perspiration, which seemed to force the poison out through the pores of the body, was the only remedy for the bite of this venomous spider, and as exercise was their chief means of inducing perspiration.

Accordone : The rediscovery of the very rich popular tradition of Southern Italy, dating back to those very years (the early 1980s), fired Marco Beasley with enthusiasm and contributed to the development of his very special artistic personality.

Khaossia on MySpace : The Ethno Ensemble Khaossia was born in 2005 in Cremona on demand of some Public Organizations and some aeger people, who love the folk music of the South Italy, to have even in the Lombard city a band which could perform Salento and its musical traditions. The band is formed by specialized musicians in different genres, for example the ethnic one, in particolar focused on the Salento’s ancient music.

Wrasse Records. : In 2001, Enzo Avitabile began work on a brand new musical project. The highly original sound of the album is as a result of Enzo merging his sound with the tradition of the “Bottari”, whose origins date back to the 14th Century and involves using barrels as percussion instruments in ancient rhythms.

Carlo Muratori : The stylised “tarantellas” and the popular songs in dialect became in some way a part of the tradition how had happened ion the IXX Century with the Sicilian arias and romances, that from the houses of the middle class had gone down to the country “trazzere” and in the courtyards of the popular urban districts (a typical example is the song “Mi votu e mi rivotu”, whose musical transcription was put by Giuseppe Pitrè in Folk Sicilian songs, Palermo 1871).

Mad Manoush : Egon Egemann, Mad Manoush’s inventor, violinist and frontman was born near Graz with the roots of a hungarian, gypsy grandfather. In his early years he was already influenced by the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli whom he met personally in New York during his stay in US in the seventies.