I once spent several weeks travelling around Southern Italy, camping in Puglia and Calabria.
The food and wine were spectacularly good and I was lucky to see in one small coastal town an Italian brass band in full flow. I did not, however, get to see any of Puglia’s pizzica folk music and dance. This month’s Transglobal World Music Chart has fixed that with an album by Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS), Meridiana, which is riding high in the top spot on the chart.
CGS has been around since 1975 and the new album is their 18th. The band, a seven-person ensemble with a dancer have taken Southern Italian pizzica music and dance and added sounds and musicians from outside the region to make the music more contemporary. They are particularly popular at festivals. The…
