Alessandra Belloni Part 1 - Rhythm is the Cure - The Healing Power of the Tarantella Spider Dance

This is a transcript of the podcast appearing on our Podcast Page.
Carolyn: The image of a spider weaving its web means different things to different people. For some, the meaning is sinister, as in ‘weaving a web of lies’. For others, a web evokes connection, support and communication, as in the internet, which we call the World Wide Web.

The spider and its web have been active symbols in the human mind for thousands of years. The concept of a person trapped in the web of society’s rules, unable to free themselves, has been recognized, contemplated and remedied in different ways throughout the ages using myth, literature, music, song and dance. Many times, these remedies were rituals that allowed the affected person an essential outlet for the expression of their trapped emotions. This ritual provided a limited, protected time during which that person could freely express themselves without restraint. It was understood by all that after the ritual, the person would return to society and follow its rules, until those trapped emotions built up once again, and another freeing ritual was needed.

There is an ancient Southern Italian dance called the Tarantella. This is not the Tarantella we usually think of, a tune we often hear at weddings. Instead, this Tarantella is a music and dance ceremony connected to the mythical bite of the tarantula spider. The musical instruments used in the ceremony are violins, mandolins and most notably, the tambourine or frame drum. The dance is a frenzied, wild, spinning expression of repressed emotion.

A person affected by the mythical bite of the spider is called a tarantata. And the condition caused by the bite is called tarantismo.

Alessandra Belloni has devoted her life to the exploration and rejuvenation of this Tarantella. Alessandra is a world-renowned percussionist whose talents include singing, dancing, composing and arranging. She has published a book called Rhythm is the Cure, Southern Italian Tambourine, complete with an instructional DVD, published by Mel Bay. Alessandra is a REMO Signature Series artist who has designed her own line of tambourines, also called frame drums.

Alessandra, let’s talk about the origins of the myth of the spider and how it connects to repression and ultimately, to release. The Greek myth tells the story of Aracne, a talented princess who challenges a goddess.

Alessandra: It starts with the myth of Aracne and how this young princess was such a skilled weaver of ancient Greece. Italy was part of ancient Greece, called Magna Grecia. And how Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom is very jealous of the young princess being such a skilled weaver and all the nymphs admire her. Athena accepts the challenge to the weaving contest and Aracne wins. Athena gets very angry, destroys the linen and Aracne out of humiliation, hangs herself.

Carolyn: But Athena takes pity on Aracne at this point.

Alessandra: Athena transforms her into a spider.

Carolyn: So Aracne continues to weave forever, as a spider. Now, the myth continues with the nymphs, who so admired Aracne. They are heartbroken by the events and sink into a deep depression and begin committing suicide. The people call upon Athena for relief. Athena tells them that the nymphs have been bitten by the spider, causing the depression, and the only cure is a frenzied dance ritual to expel the poison and heal them.

Alessandra: There’s a lot in that myth of young woman-older woman relation, the jealousy, the competition, the web, how we weave our web. And then this fear of not being accepted and then committing suicide. It spoke to me in many different ways. Now that I’m older, I think it’s the archetype of our subconscious mind so we all connect to spiders in different ways. Some of us love them, and some people don’t and they have arachnophobia!

Carolyn: Alessandra, what introduced you to this myth and its meaning?

Alessandra: Back in 1981-82 I met Glen Velez, the drummer who was my first tambourine student. As a gift he gave me this book that I’d been searching for a long time, and at that time it was out of print, called La Terra Del Rimorso, the Land of Rimorse. To me it’s like a bible for who wants to study this, of the myth of the spider. From the myth of Aracne and how they studied the tarantate in the early 60’s, late 50’s. So it gives you all the history behind this form of madness, malady, ritual that was still popular then in Puglia. I studied that book many, many times, I read it over and over again, I almost memorized the book by now. Ernesto di Martino is the author.

Carolyn: One of the messages of the myth is recognition, compassion and restoration of those suffering from various forms of cultural repression.

Alessandra: In the Greek times, the young girls were repressed by the male dominated society and they were not allowed to express their sexuality. They became afflicted by this. All I know is that they suffered from a malady that came out as an explosion of euphoria. They said they were possessed by the god Dionysus. If you read Euripides Bacchantes, you read there are all these women, the Maenades, running around wild. And they were allowed to do these crazy things, orgiastic rites and more, even devouring men. Incredible scene of the Bacchante, because they were possessed by the god Dionysus, the god of ecstasy and wine.

Carolyn: So, putting this in its cultural context, marriages were arranged so the women often did not marry the men they loved.

Alessandra: Young women not being allowed to be free and express themselves sexually, psychologically, artistically, everything. The myth of Aracne embodies a lot of things. The web is a big thing, it could be anything, but it’s mainly sexual. Dance comes from that. But I think it embodies other things that are part of that. The suffering that caused people to go crazy and sometimes to commit suicide.

Carolyn: So this kind of wild dance ritual, sanctioned by society, acted as a safety valve to calm depression and prevent suicide?

Alessandra: Exactly. And to not be accused of witchcraft.

Carolyn: Because they could have been killed for witchcraft.

Alessandra: That’s why it’s a healing trance dance. Because the women in the trance danced, and healed themselves. And thru the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, that’s how the dance evolved. And no one accused them of anything because they were bitten by the tarantula. They were free to express who they were, because they were sick; they suffered from the poison of the spider.

Carolyn: This myth and its remedy have taken various forms over the centuries. In the Middle Ages, during the time of the Black Plague and the Crusades, people suffered from the fear of disease and death.

Alessandra: It goes on into the Middle Ages and the meeting with the Islamic world in the time of the crusades. That’s when we first know that the Tarantella evolved as we know it today, with the spinning. I learned by being part of a Sufi community that we have almost the same elements, Christians and Islams have the same things. Yet, we’re in the crusades right now. We feel that we are at the end of the world and it was the same then.

Carolyn: And certain dances during the Renaissance also have their roots in the Tarantella.

Alessandra: In the Renaissance it was a very popular thing and people dressed like that in the streets to do this dance. Where the people danced like devils and danced to exorcise the fear of death and contra malochhio, against the evil eye. The awkward movements using the fingers in the position of the horns. It’s all based on authentic tradition.

Carolyn: So now we fast-forward to more recent history, and we find that areas of Puglia and Calabria have continued this Tarantella ritual, in honor of the Black Madonna. This brings us back full circle to the work of Ernesto di Martino and his book, Land of Rimorse. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, he studied the tarantate and how their families handled the situation.

Alessandra: The ritual of the tarantate happens, after a person was bitten and they found out it was the tarantula, they went into a state of mind. They couldn’t talk or move or do anything unless the musicians came and played the cure. They started spinning and stomping and doing the spider dance on the floor, in their home for 3 days and 3 nights.

And the shamans, who were the musicians, had to find the right melody. And the tambourine had the biggest part of that. Because the tambourine, being the accents released the body and the body started to move, to free the poison, symbolically speaking. Even though for a long time people did believe it was the poison that did that. But the families did know that it was a disease, that it was not the poison. But the excuse was the poison of the spider that bit them during the hot days that they were working in the fields.

So when they were cured after 3 days and 3 nights in their home, all the tarantate gathered on June 29 in this little church called San Paolo di Galentina in Puglia and went completely crazy in the church, screaming, running, seeing the spider. And after that ritual they would come out of the church, healed, for another year, with no memory of what happened to them.

Carolyn: Alessandra continues this ritual in her healing workshops, called Rhythm is the Cure. Her workshops are offered all over the world, for a day, a weekend or a week.

Alessandra: My lifetime research on the myth of the tarantula and how the women are still suffering from what I think is called the tarantismo, the mental disorder that is normally a form of depression or sometimes suicide mania. I think women today, and men sometimes, still have that syndrome and need to cut free from the web of society. So I think that show will always be part of my mission. How can we help, as artists, the people of today identify their web? How can they cut it thru music and dance?

Carolyn: Alessandra holds a Rhythm is the Cure workshop in a gorgeous villa in Tuscany, Italy for a week every August. She uses Southern Italian folk dances and rituals as a joyous form of music and dance therapy. She teaches drumming and ancient Neapolitan chants used for healing and to honor the Black Madonna. She teaches how to release stress, unblock energy, open your heart and throat chakras and achieve deep relaxation.

To learn more, visit www.alessandrabelloni.com.

La Notte della Taranta Orchestra in Staten Island

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

On May 31, 2009, the orchestra of La Notte della Taranta played to an enthusiastic crowd in Snug Harbor, Staten Island. La Notte della Taranta is an annual festival in Puglia, Italy dedicated to the revival of the Tarantella Pizzica, a spinning healing trance dance to expel the poison of the mythical bite of the tarantula. The festival also features other musical genres, including world and rock.



But on May 31st, the orchestra featured the sounds of the Salento region, both ancient and recent compositions. The seven artists, under the direction of world renowned Maestro Mauro Pagani, presented the frenzied percussion, strings and evocative vocals that are the hallmarks of this tradition.

During several renditions of the Pizzica, many of the audience (myself included) couldn't resist the pull of the tarantate and poured into the aisles to dance. Each of us exorcised our personal ethereal poisons through our sweat and joy.

Roberto Benigni Spectacular in Tutto Dante in NYC

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

Roberto Benigni is perhaps best known for the film, La Vita E’ Bella or Life is Beautiful. A friend of mine described the film this way: “In the first part you laugh, and in the second part, you cry.” Benigni uses the same structure in his one man show, Tutto Dante, which played at the Manhattan Center Theater in New York City on May 30, 2009.

Benigni bounded onto the stage amid circus music and moving spotlights, poking fun at his tenuous command of the English language. In fact, his English was delightful even though it required careful listening. He soon launched into his lexicon of Berlusconi scandals, sexual and political. (He claimed to have been willing to poke fun at the Democratic Left, but each time he started writing a joke about them, the party was out of power before he could finish it.)

From this comedic beginning, Benigni deftly moved into the subject of Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy. It soon became clear that if Benigni were not an actor, he would be a professor; the kind who makes material come alive and the kind you never forget. His presentation is testimony to the power of passion. His deep appreciation and connection to The Divine Comedy translates into a mesmerizing presentation of the complexities of life, death, and love as told by Dante.

Benigni took each line from Canto V and laid bare its broiling emotion. Canto V contains some of Dante’s most enduring images: the tail-curling Minos, lustful souls swirling in the terrible winds, and the timeless story of Paolo and Francesca. When Benigni inhabits this tale of torn love, he cries as Paolo cried. And we cry with them.

The final segment and breathtaking highlight of the show is Benigni’s recital of Canto V in ancient Tuscan. The sold-out crowd held its breath during this passionate recital. The final line of the Canto, “E caddi come corpo morto cade (And then I fell as a dead body falls)” pierced us all.

Peppe Butera, Sicilian Abstract Artist, Brings His ‘Cry of Love’ to the United States

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

In April 2009, painter Peppe Butera brought his latest exhibition, Urlo d’Amore (Cry of Love) to The Foundry Gallery in New York City and the Westchester Italian Cultural Center in Tuckahoe, New York. Long enamored with the drip painting style of Jackson Pollock and pop-art sensibility of Mimmo Rotella, Butera fuses these elements with the warmth and earthiness of his native Sicily.

Cry of Love may be as close to heartbreak on canvas as we’re likely to see. Butera painted these works from the agony of a great love’s end. It’s all there: confusion, desolation, isolation, the stubborn denial. And also the love that viscerally endures. To experience these works is to somehow take the journey with him, and leaves no doubt of the power of art to communicate beyond the reach of words.
Butera pours his colors onto the canvas using the drip painting technique. With both both acrylic and oil paint, he mixes them with elements found in Nature, like sand from a Sicilian beach. Even his colors evoke the palette of Sicily: the blues of the Mediterranean, the yellows and golds of the sun, reds of terra firma and black from the ashes of Mount Etna.

The passion of his work is best explained by Butera himself: “If I try to tell the reasons of my work, of my life, you won’t hear of much school, rather of the actors of my childhood, my grandfather, my parents, my country. There I was born. I, then, realized, step by step, another way of life, dominated by colors. I began to talk a new alphabet, mine were colored words…There are words coming from your head, these are regular, rational words. They follow time, space, rules. And there are words coming from your heart. They have no time, no space, no rules. They have only colors. They became my voice, my letters, my cry of love and I colored my paintings with them….I have been spending my life to paint for the woman I love. Love is the only reason of my life, the only one able to ‘move the stars’. If you feel something, looking at canvas, you know it depends only on my thought of love.”


I asked him if the act of painting these images calmed the pain in his heart. “A little bit.” he said.

Peppe Butera’s other exhibitions include:
Le Credit Lyonnais, San Tropez (1997)
Omaggio a Pollock, Spazio Cosi’, Vicenza (1998)
Percorsi, Hotel Concordia, Cortina (2002)
La Mia Valle Pirandello e Quasimodo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, Agrigento (2003)
Galleria Maytemuno2, Barcelona (2003)
Per Passione, Ex Ateneo Piazza Duomo, Bergamo (2004)
Cara Amica, Museo Archeologico di Agrigento (2005)

Bitetto, Italy, Hosts Works of American Sculptor Greg Wyatt

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

The beautiful little town of Bitteto, just outside of Bari in Puglia, Italy will host an exhibit of world famous American sculptor Greg Wyatt. Mr. Wyatt is most noted for his cast bronze figures in the style of Spiritual Realism. Just some of the places where his sculptures appear include New York City (Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Columbia University, Gramercy Park), Washington, D.C. (US Department of State, US House of Representatives, Georgetown University), Paris, France and the UK. In Italy, his work has appeared in Florence at the Giardino Bardini, Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Casa di Dante and in Sicily, at the Museo Archeologico Regionale di Agrigento.

The current exhibit in Bitetto, called "Alle Origini", is being held at the Convento Domenicani and the Santuario del Beato Giocamo from April 26 - May 24, 2009. This event is presented by the town of Bitteto and the American Friends of Bitteto Foundation. Bitetto and the Foundation are working together on a series of initiatives showcasing historical and artistic endeavors.

To learn more about Greg Wyatt and see images of his work visit g-wyatt.com.

Announcing the Release of Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes Book and CD Set

This article also appears on our Italian Journal page.

It’s finally here! Mel Bay Publications has released John LaBarbera’s long awaited book teaching the music he’s been perfecting for decades. Here you will find the authentic folk traditions of Campania, Calabria, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia. The music is placed in context with detailed descriptions of the songs and dances, along with historical and technical information about the tarantella and pizzica.

The music is written in standard notation and mandolin tablature with guitar and mandolin chord accompaniment. The CD helps the student better understand the rhythms and picking styles of this rarely heard music and aids in precise practice.

John was the first to notate Southern Italian folk music when he found himself in the midst of its revival in 1970’s Italy. Until that point, the music had never been written down and was passed orally through the generations (to learn more about these experiences, listen to John’s podcast here).

You can purchase Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes here.

To view a slideshow about the history of the mandolin in Italy, click here.

A Troubadour's Journey, Part 2

This is a transcript of the podcast appearing on our Podcast Page.

Carolyn: In Part 1, John made his way from America to Italy to London and back to Italy again. With his guitars and mandolins, he met other street musicians in Florence and they formed the group, 'Pupi e Fresedde' which means Puppets and Bread. Together they became an integral part of the 1970's revival of Southern Italian folk music.

In 1977, Pupi e Fresedde toured in the United States with the Domestic Resurrection Circus of the famous Bread & Puppet Theater, based in Vermont. It's astonishing but, despite the similar name, Bread & Puppet was not affiliated with Pupi e Fresedde.

Bread and Puppet was a politically radical puppet theater, founded in the 1960s. It's signature was 10 to 15 foot high puppets that they used in anti-war and other political demonstrations.

Stefan Brecht, the son of poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, devoted much of his life to documenting the events of Bread & Puppet Theater. John and Stefan's paths would soon cross in a small New York cafe.

John: So then in '76 when we were doing the show at the Washington square church at 4th street. First he wanted me to go to the Chelsea hotel, and I said no, I'm not going there.

Carolyn: (laughter) Are you nuts?

John: I'm busy, I'm going to be down at the cafe. across from the church, come and visit me there. So then he said, "OK, OK, I'll be there." So we sit at a table at Caffe Vittorio, La Lanterna on McDougal Street and he starts asking me, so what about this music, what does it mean? I didn't know what he was doing. He said he was doing research.

Fast forward to 1986 when John, now living in New York, visits his old friends at the Bread & Puppet Theater.

John: So about 10 years later I was up in Vermont at the Bread and Puppet Theater and there were all these books out. And Stefan Brecht, had been writting an anthology, he's got 2 thick volumes of almost every single day in the life of Bread and Puppet. It's his lifelong work. So I see this book and I start looking thru it. Then I start seeing photographs of when we were in Vermont.

Carolyn: Not only were John's photos in the book, but an entire chapter was devoted to the conversation he had with Stefan 10 years earlier, at Cafe Vittorio, about Southern Italian folk music.

Rewind to 1977. After the U.S. tour, John, along with Pupi e Fresedde, returned to Italy. As they performed throughout Northern Italy, the rhythms and lyrics of Southern Italian Folk Music were heard in many places, for the very first time. John lived this dream for years, but then things started to get complicated.

John: from the early 70's to 79. I would come back to NY and as soon as I came back to NY they would call me, to do like the Biennale in Venice, or something. And I was so torn. I wanted to go back but at the same time my father had a heart attack and then I felt, you know, I wanted to be close my family, it was hard, it was getting hard. Now I had met Alessandra. I met her one of the occasions when I came back to visit my family, I met her in 1975-76.

Carolyn: Alessandra is Alessandra Belloni, who would become a singer, composer, and world renowned percussionist. But no one knew that at the time.

John: She came to visit me in Italy and met me and the group, Pupi e Fresedde.

Carolyn: So she got to see what you guys were doing?

John: And by that time the revival was really pretty strong.

Carolyn: Had the two of you been talking about this revival of Southern Italian music?

John: No, we just liked it and then she wound up writing to me and said you know, if you come back to NY, I want to start a group and I think we can do something like this in NY. and I said well, I don't know. I didn't think it was going to be the same because I was used to being in Italy, playing in the piazzas and playing these beautiful places and how could I recreate that again? So she kind of like convinced me. She said she met this actor, Claudio Saponi, and he does all these different characters. He does Arlechinno, he does Pulchinello. So then when I came back I met with him. So this is around 1980. So I decided to stay in New York.

I would supply all the music, I had guitar and mandolin. In italy we had violins, frame drums, and then all these different voices, and all we had was just me playing the music and Alessandra singing and I said, this is not enough. But we started to do some stuff, and we would go to the Italian communities like in Brooklyn, out to LI. The older people, they remembered this kind of stuff, but the younger people didn't know what we were doing. They never heard this kind of music before.

Carolyn: And they weren't part of the revival, certainly.

John: No, that never touched them, because American-Italian immigration was totally on a different path. Unless someone's grandparents remembered it, from before they left Italy, maybe 50-60 years ago. So we had a lot to do. We have to teach these people about their culture, about this music because it got lost and they're not going to know about it. And I really loved it. So we felt like we wanted to bring it into the Italian communities and maybe the younger people would start listening to it and liking it and let it grow. Because for me, I didn't know it existed. I went there and had to learn it and be exposed to it and fell in love with it and I felt like I need to bring it back here. At that time after playing with Pupi E Fresedde all those years, I had started to transcribe all the music.

Carolyn: So it was written down?

John: I wrote it down.

Carolyn: For the first time, maybe?

John: Yeah, I started collecting it. I had suitcases full of this music.

Carolyn: So this is music that even back in the 50's hadn't been written?

John: No. Nobody would write that down.

Carolyn: John, Alessandra and Claudio continued to try to get their music heard. It wasn't an easy road, and at times it was quite discouraging. Overall, John's experiences performing in America were not what he was accustomed to in Italy.

John: Coming back to New York, with me in my little Volkswagon, traveling to Brooklyn with costumes, props. We tried to recreate it with just the 3 of us. Here I was coming from a whole big troupe and traveling all over Europe and here we are my little Volkswagen trying to bring Italian music.

Carolyn: From the sublime to the ridiculous!

John: Yeah. But Alessandra had a vision to pursue. I couldn't feel that same enthusiasm because I was still nostalgic for being in Italy and doing it there on a grand scale and then starting all over again, playing in the small little school yard, or a school gym, I was like, oh, this is so depressing!

And you know, in Italy, we would go to the town and they would give us the town wine and the food, and it was like, where is this all? What's wrong? But then we kept pursuing it. One time we had to play for this agent, they didn't know where to place us. So one time they said, "Oh, we have a tour for you guys and we want you to play in the A&P in the Italian Deli department"

Carolyn: Where? In New York?

John: In Long Island. We would go from one A&P to the next, playing in front of the Italian Deli section.

Carolyn: Oh my gosh, here you're playing piazzas, palazzos and concert halls in Europe and you're here and you're playing the deli section!

John: And people would say, "Excuse me, I've got to get my rolls!"

Carolyn: In those moments, you had to have doubted, you had to have been thinking...

John: I know, what am I doing here? I felt like we were this tiny little melody trying to survive in the rash of noise.

Carolyn: So how did it develop? Was is just a series of small steps or was there..?

John: Yeah, a series of small steps. I got a job working in Brooklyn at a senior citizen's center, they were all retired Italian musicians there, that were like the string virtuosi from the '20's. I had to get them together to do a concert every Wednesday for the dance.

Carolyn: So there was a dance at the Center?

John: Yes, and they were all these mandolinists, retired mandolin players. And I would put together groups with them. So I got to know the people in the Italian community and there was a church there and this Irish priest, Fr. Kelly.

Carolyn: That's ironic.

John: I know. He loved us. He'd always bring us back, really be pushing us to do things in St. Finbar's in Brooklyn. So we wound up doing a lot of things in Brooklyn, for senior citizens. They thought, it was entertaining for them. They knew Pulchinella, so we'd do a lot of comedy skits and stuff.

Carolyn: So it sounds like in this phase you're rekindling these traditions with this group of people who knew them when they were children, and here it is again.

John: Yeah, that's how it all started. So I knew that the music needed to have more musicians and more arrangements to it. Then the people that I met from Bread and Puppet, they were living on 9th street. They loved the music because they remembered Pupi E Fresedde, and they loved the music and they wanted to be part of it somehow.

Carolyn: So how did you go from this to the more polished group that you have now with Alessandra? Were you calling yourselves Giulliari di Piazza at the time?

John: Yeah. And then I started to do more polished arrangements with the music, writing out parts, making it as easy for the musicians as possible and yet letting them hear the style. We've had so many musicians working with us over the years, people who never heard it before. Most of them weren't even Italian; they just liked the music. So then we started to get a grant. But what really helped us to really keep it going was the fact that we had a friend from New York University, who was the chairman of the Italian Department, Luigi Ballerini, who saw a lot of potential in us and he supported us a lot and gave us the space at NYU. Because where were we going to meet, in the cafe? We couldn't put anything together there. As we went on we tried to do more elaborate productions, and then I think our first opera was, we did the Cantata dei Pastori.

We stuck to it all these years. And then I wanted to write more for film and theater. I didn't know it was going to go from classical guitar to writing for theater and film, but how things evolve. But all thru this music, which is what kept leading me, throughout my whole life, in this direction.

Carolyn: The performance troupe that John founded with Alessandra Belloni, called I Giulliari di Piazza or the Jesters of the Square, is still performing the folk music of Southern Italy. John composed, arranged and performed this music with Alessandra and the troupe for theater productions of Dance of the Ancient Spider and Techno Tarantella, as well as various CDs they recorded together.

On his own, John arranges and composes music for stage and screen. From off Broadway productions with John Turturo to the soundtrack of the award winning documentary, Sacco and Vanzetti, to writing a book called Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes, published by Mel Bay, John continues his troubadour's journey. No one knows where he'll turn up next.

To learn more about John, go to his website, www.johntlabarbera.com.

To download some of John's music, go here.

To learn more about the musical program in Siena, founded by Joseph Del Principe, go to www.sienamusic.org.