ANTONELLO PALIOTTI QUARTET (ITALY)

Performers:

Antonello Paliotti (kitara, battente guitar)

Michele De Martino (mandolin, mandola)

Giovanni Negro (violoncello)

Raffaele Filaci (percussion)

The tarantella is a typical dance from Southern Italy. It is a possession dance and some see it as having therapeutic and thaumaturgic qualities, connected with the tarantula's bite. It was executed by a violin and a ‘colascione’ playing the bass. These two instruments would usually accompany one or more couples of dancers. If the woman took off her shoes after the dance, this was a clear sign that she was available.

The 19th century has reduced the tarantella to a kind of folk entertainment, depriving it of its magic and ritual connotations. Therefore the Antonello Paliotti Trio found it necessary to break totally from the 19th century, and to recover the real flavour of this music, exalting and going deeper in its peculiar aspects, asymmetrical and apparently illogical, to the detriment of those over-polished and puritan of a bourgeois mentality.

The result is a record with pure Mediterranean sound, a delightful album, ironically entitled Tarantella storta and played with great feeling and gusto. After all what we have here is a trio of highly gifted and inspired musicians, able to forge a dazzling acoustic sound which strikes the right balance between interpretative rigour and the typical passion of the sounds of Southern Italy.

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