14 Ways to Incorporate Italian Folk Music Into Your Spiritual Life

When the first Italian immigrants arrived in the United States, they didn’t come carrying heavy statues. What they did have, however, was music. Some brought simple instruments like the tamburello. Others sang and danced. In this way, the god of music may have been the first of our ancestors’ spiritual court to arrive in the new world. 

Music has been an integral part of Italian spirituality since the days of Dionysus and Cybele, whose orgiastic rites live on in regional musical traditions such as the tammurriata. These styles of music rely on drumming techniques which are difficult to master. (After two years of study with master folk artist Alessandra Belloni, I am still humbled every time I pick up my tamburello to practice!) Thankfully, you don’t need to be a professional musician to incorporate music into your spiritual life. In this post, we’ll be looking at ways to live and breathe music--no talent required!  

1. Learn about the different styles of Italian folk music. If you are in the New York City area, make sure to like Alessandra Belloni on Facebook to see her class schedule, and come join us sometime! If you don’t live in the NYC area, check out the following free online videos, in which she covers the basics of the tammurriata and pizzica tarantata. Once you understand of what distinguishes these musical styles, you’ll hear a whole new world of sound.  
2. Listen to (and give thanks for) the musicians who paved the way for a modern renaissance of Italian folk music. Starting in the 70s, groups such as Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare and Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino inspired several new generations of folk musicians. And guess what? While their lineups may have evolved over the years, those groups are still going strong. 
3. Watch La Gatta Cenerentola. Based on the Pentamerone by Giambattista Basile, this musical sung in Neapolitan brings traditional folktales to life. You can watch it for free on YouTube. 
4. Explore your voice, even if you think you can’t sing. If you are in the NYC area, I strongly recommend attending Sing a Secret, a vocal workshop unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, with Jon Stancato. Jon inherited his Calabrian grandmother’s gift for healing through sound and song, and combined it with his Roy Hart vocal training to create something truly unique. (Psst—Sing a Secret is absolutely, 100% free!) 
5. Learn the refrain to “O Maria quanto bella sei”. (Full lyrics and video on our post about the Madonna of the Advocate in Maiori.) Here it goes: “Evviva Maria, Maria Evviva”. Think you can handle it? Good! Because if you go to any festa, you’ll have a chance to sing along to this popular Marian hymn. For personal use, it’s also a great way to open or close a session praying the rosary.  
6. Look for a call-and-response style song to your patron saint. These are specifically written so the responses are easy to sing, so you can sing along. For example, I’m a fan of this hymn to San Rocco, which is played every year at his feast day in NYC. The response is simple: “Evviva Santi Rocco! ca int'a Tolve stai”, although sometimes I will personalize it by substituting the name of whatever city I am in for “Tolve”: "Evviva Santi Rocco! ca int'a New York stai”, "Evviva Santi Rocco! ca int'a Boston stai”, etc. 
7. Watch Passione by John Turturro. This documentary about Neapolitan music introduced me to some of my favorite musicians. And it’s conveniently available to stream on Amazon. 
8. Paint a tamburello. If you’re more visually inclined than auditory, this is a great way to attract musical spirits into your home. I’ve had some success decorating cheap drums like this one with acrylic paint. Traditional designs include the Madonna, or a spider, snake, or scorpion. 
9. Watch Dancing on the Drum by Zoe D’Amaro. This documentary is a little bit more challenging to find (I may or may not have written the filmmaker begging her for a copy). But boy, is it worth it. It’s the best way to learn about tammurriata short of booking a trip to Campania! 
10. Shake, shake, shake (your tambourine), signora. So you don’t know how to drum a beat on the tambourine? No problem—those jingly bits are just as important when it comes to calling in spiritual guides. 
11. If you don’t speak Italian, memorize these words: “testo”, “inno a…” and “traduzione”. They mean “lyrics”, “hymn to…”, and “translation”, respectively. These will come in super handy when you’re searching through YouTube and Google for devotional music and lyrics. 
12. Keep a journal of song lyrics. It’s nicer than having to look them up on your phone when doing spiritual work. I like to write mine out so I have the original version and a translation side-by-side. 
13. Use as many musical platforms as you can. Since Italian folk music is something of a long-tail interest, different songs, artists, and albums are available on different platforms. You’ll want to dig through YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music in order to get the full picture of this genre. 
14. As you learn new folk songs, consider both their cultural context and their personal significance to you. In the past, I’ve written about how songs such as "Fimmene, Fimmene" and "Santa Lucia Luntana" took on new meanings for me which eventually led me to use them in unconventional ritual contexts. Music is emotional, personal, and intimate: as you listen to it, observe how it affects you. You’ll start to develop a personal playlist of songs for various uses: going into trance, making offerings, calling upon specific groups of ancestors, etc. 

Tammurriata

Above: A mosaic from Pompeii which appears to depict the tammurriata being played and danced in Antiquity. 

"The arms are held in front of the body with the elbows outward, and the movements that they make are basically two, inspired by agricultural activities. The first is a downwards gesture of sowing. The second is an upwards gesture that resembles the movements made when collecting fruit from trees. The steps of the tammurriata follow the rhythm of the drums and are characterized by mirrored movement of the feet, side-to-side, back and forth, or toe-to-heel of the two dancers. All in all, the dancers move in circles." - Arianna Sacco

Dancing as Life

"Life causes motion, and motion can give evidence of life. This becomes: 'Life causes motion, hence motion is evidence of life.' Humans can see that the motions of work have a direct purpose, but motion for motion's sake is something else--'dance' broadly taken. (In the languages of eastern Europe, the same word often means both 'dance' and 'play,' and other nondirect motions like swinging, tickling, and laughing may fall in this basket. Medieval western Europeans, too, called the nocturnal dancing and feasting of the spirits the game, its goal being an abundance of crops called luck.) Supernatural powers, of course, need not work to survive; hence divine life simply 'dances' and in this very act of dancing is thought to create life. ... "The spirits that villagers sought to influence were the spirits of the dead. But different categories of dead existed, with different powers and different connections to the living.

"First, one's dead ancestors. Since they had begotten the living, one could reasonably appeal to them to help their offspring survive. And because these ancestors had been buried in the ground (where their spirits were assumed to pass much of their time), presumably they could help the seeds down there--the newly sown crops--to germinate and grow. Basic to this belief is the notion of resurrection: the seed seems dead, it is buried, it rises to produce new seed. The eternal cycle of life.

"Second were the spirits of the dead of other villages. These were particularly dangerous because they would be busy sequestering all the existing abundance for their offspring. So ritual dancers, from the Balkans to Britain, marked out territories and fought intruding bands, to the death if necessary.

"Finally, there existed a very special group: young women born into the clan who had died before having any children--hence not ancestors of the living but still belonging to the community. Most important, they had not used their natural store of fertility. So, people reasoned, if we're especially nice to them, they might bestow that unused fertility on us. Because unmarried girls in the living community spent much of their time singing and dancing together, people inferred by analogy that the spirits of dead girls would likewise band together and spend their time singing, dancing, swimming, laughing, and so on. These Dancing Goddesses inhabited the wilds, controlling the rain and other waters, creating fertility and healing powers people needed. The challenge was to lead, cajole, trap, or entice them into the cultivated areas to shed their fertility here, and one way to do this was to do what they did: dance."

Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance, pp. 3-4.

Tarantism: The Ritual Setting

"From a description that dates back to the first half of the eighteenth century, we learn that the choreutic-musical-chromatic exorcism could be held at home or outdoors, in either case with the ceremonial observance of several distinct particulars and sometimes even the artificial preparation of the surroundings in the manner of a real 'sacred space'. Here is a description by Nicola Caputo, a doctor and scholar from Lecce:

They customarily adorn the bedroom dedicated to the dance of the tarantati with verdant branches outfitted with numerous ribbons and silken sashes in gaudy colors. They place similar drapery throughout the room; sometimes they prepare a sort of cauldron or tub full of water, decorated with vine leaves and green fronds from other trees; or they make pretty fountains of limpid water spout, capable of lifting the spirits, and it is near these that the tarantati perform the dance, seeming to draw the greatest delight from them, as well as the rest of the setting. They contemplate the drapes, the fronds, and the artificial rivulets, and they wet their hands and heads at the fountain. They also remove damp bands of vine leaves from the cauldron and strew them all over their bodies, or--when the vessel is large enough--they plunge themselves inside, and in this way they can more easily bear the fatigue of the dance. It often happens that those who go dancing through the towns and hamlets accompanied by the usual music are brought to an orchard, where, in the shade of a tree, near a pond or brook offered by nature or prepared through craft, they abandon themselves to the dance with the greatest delight, while groups of youths in search of pleasure and pranks gather near. Among the latter mingle more than a few who are approaching old age and who, contemplating with serious curiosity the melodic frolicking, seem to exhort the youths with unspoken admonishment..."

Ernesto de Martino, The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism, p. 87.