Italian Folk Songs

Comprising of a rich musical heritage, Italian folkRegions to the north of Italy have deep Celtic and
music comprises of diverse styles, dance formsSlavic influences. Central Italy has peasant poets
and musical instruments. With the country'sor poeti contadini who sing poems of Homer and
gradual unification, hundreds of music styles fromDante, focusing on the political and social situations
different Italian regions came together quite late inin that specific region. This medieval style of
the 20th century. Italy's folk music has hadpoetry is sometimes competitive in nature while
several regional influences especially from theleaving room for interpretation and improvisations.
south of Europe as well as Celtic, Persian, African,During the 1970's roots revival, roots revivalists
Roma and Arabic. Sardinia's music compared towere greatly influenced by jazz music played
the rest of Italy is distinctive, in that it is bestentirely on acoustic settings.
known for its chanting of the tenores.Ethnic Greeks have been residing in cities like
With pockets of small city states in every region,Calabria and Puglia for a very long time. Traditional
diverse music styles have coexisted for a veryfolk music emerging from this region includes a
long time combining traditions like narrative andreligious piece Passiuna tu Christù, which
ballad singing. American Alan Lomax in 1956narrates and describes the Passion of Christ.
proposed to unify Italy's musical heritage throughSicily's music is more diverse in nature, comprising
a classification system and it has often beenof devotional and religious songs, harvest folk
repeated since. Italian Diego Carpitella, Francosongs and songs of the peasant workforce.
Coggiola and Roberto Leydi carried out variousMusical accompaniments are an important facet
field recordings and captured various folkof Italian folk music. Some of their instruments
traditions.are used only for certain religious occasions or
Italian folk songs talk about important events andrituals like the zampogna bagpipe which is heard
celebrations. They also comprise of ballads,only during Christmas. Their main instruments are
lullabies, serenades, epic songs and children's songs.broken down into three groups - string, percussion
In 1966, Gianni Bosio founded the Istituto Ernestoand wind. Dancing also plays an integral part of
de Martino and from here Italian folk music wasmost folk ritual songs. While there are group
revived and brought once again into the limelightdances, solo and couple dances also co-exist such
on a larger scale. Soon various Italian folk bandsas the courting dance called the duru-duru dance
gained prominence including La Lionetta, La Ciapain Sardinia.
Rusa, Re Niliu, Calicanto, and Baraban.