Taranta Power
Drowning in the belly of the South at the sunset of the brat summer, while my mind crumbles in the banality of some mundane appucundria (melancholy), whipped by scraps of sun and biting wind, this white Salentine stone becomes the perfect cradle for the dismissal of my body: to leave it there, discarded like a delirious mannequin, emptied, exhausted by the year that has been, imploded by the overloads that, despite myself, between one heartbreak and another, I made it fall into.
So let this Pizzica be, its glory chant, let it be a living, frantic, empty body and nothing more. In the ancient turmoil of Melpignano, the taranta is also this. Let it be, for one night, nothing but ecstasy. We are so late that it’s beyond late; with the car speeding towards the cacti a bit a comm ven’ (however it comes), we poorly navigate the town's narrow streets, chasing the lights of drones and the hieratic hiss of tambourines and tammorre. We zigzag through people in the center, jumping onto the medieval sidewalks. We cast fleeting glances around to vaguely understand where we are.
An enchanting and bastardized place. Dusty, carved stone buildings that almost resemble sandcastles, swallowed by festival stands and stalls where the very concept of Southern Italy seems to be for sale. But just when my boring indignation as an unrepentant victim of hyper-tourism is about to explode, suddenly, the wonder appears.
We stop for a moment to regroup, and just before we start staggering through the village again, my sleepy eyes begin to dart wildly. Jesus Christ, everyone is playing and singing here. This is living flesh; I see my peers in various hues, from chiattillo (the high society guy) to malamente (the bad guy), singing popular songs by heart, and I see the hands of unsuspecting faces performing impeccable percussion on their tambourines. I smile from ear to ear. No. Tonight, the Instagram trend hasn’t a fuck to do with everything; no one can play a drum and hold their “tele-screen” at the same time. This becomes even truer when we reach the stage in the central square.
A tumult of bodies, there must have been twenty thousand, pressed together in a common orgiastic dance. There are middle-aged people with children in tow, elderly virtuosos, balding and gray-mustached, dancing with my peers. Moving from group to group in some sort of evangelical mission. Circles of young people dancing and writhing around backpacks filled with wine covered by towels. Everyone dances as their body desires, some waving traditional handkerchiefs, others tormenting their hands on tambourines. They are all there for the same reason, to lose themselves in the pizzica, to get lost in the grand bacchanal. The guests on stage, especially the main ones, Geolier, Angelina Mango, and Gaia, are merely a residual corollary to sweeten the Rai broadcast, but pizzica is the main character.
Special mention goes to the exceptional Tammorriata Nera by Ste, an emerging black Neapolitan musician (but not that emerging), who, perhaps due to her Neapolitan roots or my latent local pride, grabbed my arms and body, moving them as she pleased like a puppet. But in the end, that’s the essence of Notte Taranta, to keep alive and experience a tradition, wearing it and letting it permeate you like an old pair of leather gloves.
Everything else is a bit of speculation - including polemics - a bit of showbiz urge to glorify with promotions and personalities something that, in itself, is immensely more alive, wild, and ancient than the industry itself. What remains is the music, primal and visceral, a collective and pervasive voodoo that somehow manages to lift even me and those burdened by their trivial grievances, fulfilling its only authentic purpose beyond any tedious monetization: to Liberate.
Here I am then, also wild and stray at the end of my folk/brat season. Somehow, a little lighter than yesterday. It’s the power of beautiful things, honey.
