Tarantapower

Taranta Power is the underscoring of a creative surge vibrantly taking place in the years before and after 2000.

The Taranta legend liberates energy even today, and spurs new generations to dance, in the south and the north. The Tarantella steps lead musicians, artisans, painters and sculptors to paths never before trodden, where the traces and faces of a thousand year history are found, as well as the vibrations of a present that involves mutual recognition and contact between peoples.

The Taranta then, is an instrument for communication, and it is a characteristically Italian artistic indicator that represents our origins and culture, all over the world.

I named this movement Taranta Power, using a bold juxtaposition of terms, because it provides a vivid contrast with the unfortunately inferior image that the Tarantella has assumed in the collective imagination worldwide, perpetuated by bland folk groups and shallow musical expression, a very long way away from the heady reality of the Taranta ritual.

The Taranta Power project is propagating a new a vital image of Italian musical culture all over the world, and now in Italy it is a reality capable of drawing the public and fans together in concerts, workshops, schools, and festivals, in numbers and on a scale that until a short time ago was the preserve only of the world of rock and popular music. This course has developed spontaneously because of a real need to reclaim a musical standard in which we recognise our roots, outside any xenophile or massifying fashion. I think it is time the institutions appointed to culture intervened to give an appropriate and decisive impetus to the development of this artistic phenomenon.

The first phase of Taranta Power consisted in spreading the music and dance linked to the rhythm of the Taranta, which, like the Flamenco for Spain, is for Italy a spectacular synthesis of elements, representative of our history and our myths. And this progression is now ready to be broadened to include parallels with other neighbouring cultures, and to position Italian popular music at the centre of the Mediterranean region, giving it a driving role and opening it to creative exchange with the rhythms and instruments of all Mediterranean countries, from Morocco to Algeria to Spain to Lebanon to Greece to Turkey.