Italian Traditional Music Puglia Pizzica de Focu

Pizzica is both a rhythm and a dance, it belongs to Salento which is the most southern east part of Italy, in County Puglia. The roots of Tarantella (Pizzica is a style of it) are supposed to be in the greek-roman period in connection with pagan rituals. The time of Pizzica is 6/8, it is played with quick triplets with one strong accent on the first beat of the first triplet. The basic “ensemble“ to play pizzica was Tamburello (Tambourine) Organetto (Diatonic Accordion) and Violino (Violin), but also guitar, mandolin and flute are played. One of the porpoises of this kind of composition was and still is (like other forms of tarantella) healing somebody “from the bite of the Tarantola“ which is a spider, or from a general “sickness of the soul“, the sick person dance hours till he fall down exhausted, the drum player often bleeding from the hand cause the beating on the drum. There are several interesting studies both in medicine and anthropology about that (the picture of this vi