World Village – Musical Open University | Frizzica

This programme is held in Hungarian.

In Balázs Weyer's popular series World Village – Free University of Music, the theme of this lecture is the musical traditions of Puglia, the heel of Italy's boot. Puglia is home to some of the best-known dances of southern Italy, the pizzica pizzica and the tarantella. The tarantella dance family is generally characterized by a 6/8 beat and the prominent role of the hand-held tambourine, the tammurriata. There is some debate as to whether the pizzica or the tarantella is the head of the family, but this is not important. There are minor differences from village to village, but this is generally more noticeable in the dances. According to a legend supported by more or less ethnographic data, the dance, which was driven to ecstasy, was a remedy against the bite of the tarantula spider – metaphorically, against women considered to be lustful – and if someone was bitten, people would grab their instruments and rush to the house where the spider-bitten person would dance faster and faster to the music until they fell to the floor from dizziness. Our guest will be I Frizzica, the best representative of the genre in Budapest.