Dances With Spiders Crisis Celebrity and Celebration

Dances with Spiders
Copyright © 2008. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Lüdtke, Karen. Dances with Spiders : Crisis, Celebrity and Celebration in Southern Italy, Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2008.
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Series: Epistemologies of Healing
General Editors: David Parkin and Elisabeth Hsu: both are at

ISCA, Oxford
This series in medical anthropology will publish monographs and

collected essays on indigenous (so-called traditional) medical
knowledge and practice, alternative and complementary medicine,
and ethnobiological studies that relate to health and illness. The
emphasis of the series is on the way indigenous epistemologies
inform healing, against a background of comparison with other
practices, and in recognition of the fluidity between them.
Volume 1
Conjuring Hope: Magic and Healing in Contemporary Russia
Galina Lindquist
Volume 2
Precious Pills: Medicine and Social Change among Tibetan Refugees
in India
Audrey Prost
Volume 3
Working with Spirit: Experiencing Izangoma Healing in
Contemporary South Africa
Jo Thobeka Wreford
Volume 4
Dances with Spiders: Crisis, Celebrity and Celebration in
Southern Italy
Karen Lüdtke
Dances with Spiders
Crisis, Celebrity and
Celebration in Southern Italy
Karen Lüdtke
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
54456-LUDTKE-pp272-CMH5.qxd:GALIND-DESIGNS1 10/24/08 11:19 AM Page iv
First published in 2009 by

Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2009 Karen Lüdtke
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages

for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ludtke, Karen.
Dances with spiders : crisis, celebrity and celebration in southern
italy / Karen Ludtke.
p. cm. -- (Epistemologies of healing ; 4)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84545-445-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Tarantella--Italy--Salentina Peninsula. 2. Tarantism--Italy--
Salentina Peninsula. 3. Medical anthropology--Italy--Salentina
Peninsula. 4. Salentina Peninsula (Italy)--Social life and customs. 5.
Salentina Peninsula (Italy)--Folklore. I. Title.
GV1796.T32L84 2008
306.4'6109457--dc22
2008031377
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-1-84545-445-6 hardback
Ad un’amica
The belief in the fluid materiality of the soul
is indispensable to the actor’s craft …
to know that a passion is material …
confers a mastery upon the actor
which makes him equal to a true healer.
Antonin Artaud 1958: 135

Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Preface xvii
Introduction: Tarantula Territory 1

Salentine Tarantulas: Spider Dances and Discourses 2
Tracking Down the Spider: Research Techniques and
Intentions 9
Crisis, Celebrity and Celebration: Contextualizing
Salentine Tarantulas 15
Preview: Summarizing this Book 19
PART I. Past and Present Spider Webs 29

1. Seeking St Paul: Historical and Contemporary
Enactments 31
Dances at Galatina: a Crossroads of Old and New Tarantati 32
Dances on Screen: Invention versus Intention 44
Maria’s 1959 Domestic Ritual: a Historical Performance 44

Ada’s 2001 Dance on TV: a Contemporary Performance 47
2. Webs through Time: Origins and History of Tarantism 55

Possible Origins: Searching for Tarantism’s Roots 57
Historical Interpretations: Explaining the Tarantula’s Cult 61
De Martino’s View: a Key Point of Reference 64
Recent Studies: Continuing the Quest for Answers 67
vii
Contents
PART II. The Spider’s Cult Today 77

3. Curing Myths and Fictive Cures: Views of Believers
and Sceptics 79
Tarantism as Cure: Debates in Favour of the Tarantula 80
St Paul’s Grotto: a Contested Site 87
Spider Poisoning: a Contested Case 90
Tarantism as Fiction: Debates Against the Tarantula 92
4. Ads and Antidotes: Celebrity versus Conservation 101

Taranta-muffin, Techno-pizzica, Tarantavirus:
Hybridizing the Pizzica 103
The Festival of San Rocco: Revitalizing and
Commercializing Traditions 106
La Notte della Taranta: a Music and Media Spectacle 109
La Sagra dei Curli: a Community Festival 113
5. Sensing Identities and Well-being: Personal

Motivations and Experiences 121
The Alla Bua: Music for Healing 122
Tanya’s Story: Dancing Colours 125
Ada’s Story: Retrieving Soundness 130
PART III. From Ritual to Limelight 137

6. SpiderWoMen Transfixed: Negotiating Crisis and Cure 139
Diagnosing Spiders: Identifying Tarantula Cases 140
Views on Venom: Interpreting the Spider’s Bite 146

Tarantula Alternatives: Choosing Treatment Options 151
7. Tarantula Threads and Showbiz Airs: Fine-tuning

Performances 159
Spider Sites: Performance Places 162
Spider Schedules: Performance Times 167
Tarantula Threads: Past Props and Techniques 169
Showbiz Airs: Present Props and Techniques 176
viii
Contents
8. SpiderWoMen Transformed: Celebrating Well-being 189

Magic Circles: Allowing Music to Take Over 190
Rhythmic Intervention: Choosing to Entrain 193
Vibrating the Spider’s Web: Tapping a Source of Vitality 196
Integrating Toxins: Connecting Self and Other 200
Transforming Identities: Evoking a Sense of Belonging 204
PART IV. Conclusion 211

9. Dancing Beyond Spiders 213
Evelina’s Story: Living with the Tarantula 213
Tarantula Rhythms: Reflections on Performance and
Well-being 216
Epilogue 220
Bibliography 221
Filmography 239
Index 241
ix
Fig. 0.1 ‘The tarantula with the method of curing those stung
by it, which is effected by music and dancing’ (Middleton’s
Complete System of Geography, 18th century) (source:
Wellcome Library, London).
List of Illustrations
0.1 ‘The tarantula with the method of curing those stung by

it, which is effected by music and dancing’ (Middleton’s
Complete System of Geography, 18th century)
(source: Wellcome Library, London). x
0.2 The Salentine peninsula and the region of Apulia

(map: Nicki Averill). xvi
0.3 Torre St Emiliano near Porto Badisco on the

Adriatic coast, May 2004 (photo: Regina Schneider). xviii
1.1 The festival of St Peter and Paul, Galatina, 28 June 1999.

The religious procession with the statue of St Paul
and golden bust of St Peter (photo: Karen Lüdtke). 30
1.2 and 1.3 The tarantate in Galatina in the early 1970s,

dancing on the San Pietro piazza and before the altar
inside St Paul’s chapel (photos: Paolo Longo). 30
2.1 From Observations Rares de Médecine, 1758 (reprinted

in Scholes 1964). This work asserts that the insects will
dance rhythmically if a tarantella tune is played to
them (source: Oxford University Press). 54
3.1 Mass at the grotto of St Paul in Giurdignano, June 1998

(photo: Fernando Bevilacqua). 78
3.2 and 3.3 The Giurdignano grotto with the fresco of

St Paul next to the tarantula’s web, September 2007
(photos: Erhard Söhner). 78
xi
List of Illustrations
4.1 Salento ‘Open All Year Round’, 2001

(postcard: Azienda di Promozione Turistica di Lecce,
Martano Editrice and Radici di Pietra; photo:
Fernando Bevilacqua; claim: Nello Wrona). 100
4.2 Poster of ‘La Notte della Taranta’, August 2007

(© Istituto Diego Carpitella). 100
5.1 Ada Metafune and her mother Sabina Romano dancing

the pizzica, Parabita, July 2001 (photo: Karen Lüdtke). 120
6.1, 6.2. and 6.3 Paintings by Tanya Pagliara, Collezione

Arcu Pintu, 1997 (6.3 © Tanya Pagliara. Reproduced
with permission of Daniele Durante). 138
7.1 Graffiti painting of the ‘dancing god’, Porto Badisco,

July 1998 (photo: Karen Lüdtke). 158
7.2 The ‘dancing god’ on stage on a tambourine skin,

during a concert of the group Arakne Mediterranea,
Galatina, 29 June 1999 (photo: Karen Lüdtke). 158
8.1 Concert of the group I Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli,

Galatina, June 1999 (photo: Karen Lüdtke). 188
9.1 The pizzica pizzica, Torrepaduli, 15 August 1999

(photo: Karen Lüdtke). 212
9.2 The scherma, Torrepaduli, 15 August 1999

9.3 A circle of dancers, musicians and spectators at

the festival of St Rocco, Torrepaduli, 15 August 1999
xii
Acknowledgements
This book has come into existence with the help and inspiration of
many who have shared their thoughts and experiences with me over
the past ten years.
In the Salento, my gratitude extends to each and every one who
has contributed to this study. The words and insights of many make
up these pages. The support and kindness of many others, although
intangible, lie at the foundation of this book. Giuseppe Leccese first
told me about the tarantate and with Marta Visca and Enrico
Trevisan accompanied me on my initial visit to the Salento. Ada
Metafune and Biagio Panico of the Associazione Novaracne provided
a first point of contact and have generously shared their experience
ever since. Giorgio Di Lecce and his group Arakne Mediterranea
introduced me to the pizzica, welcoming me to their rehearsals,
performances and tours.
Giuseppe Memmi, Umberto Panico and Luigi Toma provided
important points of reference, as did Roberto Raheli, Edoardo
Winspeare, Fabio Tolledi, Sergio Torsello and Daniele Durante.
Luigi Chiriatti took me to St Paul’s festival in Galatina in 1997
when everything was new to me. Piero Fumarola, Luigi Santoro,
Gianfranco Salvatore, Maurizio Agamennone, Eugenio Imbriani and
Gino Di Mitri provided important academic support at various points

of my research. Maurizio Nocera showed me ‘his’ Salento. Fernando
Bevilacqua was always ready to share his view, his experiences and a
joke. Mariantonietta Colluto and Cosimo Spagnolo introduced me to
Evelina and her family, who welcomed me to their home. Vittorio
Marras and Bengasi Fai gave me the chance to speak to Francesco
Greco, Paolo Zacchino and Luigi Stifani. Rocco Martella contacted
me prior to my arrival in the Salento and liberally shared his time and
experience to introduce me to people and places he knew. Tonino
Asciano spent hours conveying his knowledge about the tambourine’s
world. Tanya Pagliara trusted me with her experiences. Rita Cappello
generously invited me to attend her sessions and courses in the music
xiii
Acknowledgements
and art therapy method, ‘La globalità dei linguaggi’. Marta Porcino
shared many moments of dancing and helped clarify doubts in the
final phases of writing.
In England, David Parkin provided me with his guidance, clarity
and sensitivity to persevere with this project, offering his help even
when I was no longer officially ‘under his wing’. Gina Burrows’s
warmth and friendship have been a constant source of sustenance at
the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Oxford. Murray
Last and Hélène La Rue gave important feedback on an earlier draft.
Elisabeth Hsu provided helpful comments along the way and her
encouragement has always been in the back of my mind. Peregrine
Horden has read and saved chapters of the manuscript, stored boxes
of fieldwork data in his attic and offered his advice and reassuring
sense of humour at crucial points over the years. I also owe the title
of this book to him. Hélène Neveu Kringelbach – together with
Jonathan Skinner, who first suggested I send a proposal to Berghahn
– invited me to participate in the 2004 European Association of
Social Anthropologists’ panel ‘Meaning in Motion: Advancing the
Anthropology of Dance’. Jen Cottrill’s assistance at Berghahn
provided priceless inspiration in the early phases of work on the
manuscript, as did the support of Marion Berghahn, Mark Stanton
and everyone else at Berghahn in the subsequent stages. Susanne
Wessendorf ’s friendship and feedback spurred on my motivation and
reflections, thanks to long discussions about fieldwork in the Salento,
even at summer highs in front of the fan, and her diligence in
commenting on the manuscript. Marina Roseman’s in-depth
comments have been fundamental in weaving this study into the
broader webs of anthropological studies on music and dance.

Elsewhere, in wind-still moments, Vincenzo Santiglio showed me
how to make mind maps. Roberta Greco and Carlo Licci helped
reconnect fractured relations. Alessandro De Donno gave untiring
logistical aid. Salvatore Manco helped clear dusty spider webs. Paolo
de Lorenzo brought out the funny side of things. Linda Safran
generously commented on the first draft and final proofs of this book
and her friendship, advice and extensive knowledge of the Salento
have given me vital boosts of inspiration over the years. Damian
Walter liberally shared his thoughts on an earlier draft, as well as
valuable references to related publications. Frank Welte inspired me
with his knowledge and awareness of therapeutic contexts among
xiv
Acknowledgements
the Moroccan Gnawa, and in Germany. Gisela Schmeer told me

about her visits to Galatina in the 1970s, enriching my research with
her material and insights. Stefano Boni, Mary Ciuffitelli, Jason Dent,
James Greer, Luisa Del Giudice, Flavia Laviosa, Michael Palmer and
Dorothy Zinn commented on earlier drafts or parts of these,
providing precious insights. Dorothy Zinn’s English translation of De
Martino’s book, The Land of Remorse, with its valuable footnotes, has
been a key point of reference.
Outside the university world, I have treasured the knowledge and
experience of Maria Viola Refolo, encouraging me to keep looking.
Marcella D’Elia helped me stay where I was and persevere. Jole Lezzi
and Mariantonietta Rizzello shared their insights and ideas. Maria
Teresa Giampaolo has been a flatmate and friend from the very
beginning. Gianni Cacciatore has always been up for a break to swim
in the sea. Susanne Etti provided a home for me in Oxford on
numerous occasions, read through earlier chapters and shared her
enthusiasm and the Salentine world with me. Isha Rubini cheered
me on with her passion for existence. Regina Schneider has always
highlighted the sunny side and yet another perspective. Kam Raval’s
friendship has been a point of consistency throughout many changes.
I am indebted to various individuals and institutions for
permission to publish their material here. Portions of this book have
appeared in my contributions to Music as Medicine (Horden 2000),
Performing Ecstasies (Del Giudice and van Deusen 2005) and Melissi
(Lüdtke 2005b). Finally, the first part of this research was funded by
the Marie Curie Fellowship Scheme of the European Commission
and by the Economic and Social Research Council in Britain. The
writing up was initially made possible by postdoctoral grants from the

Arts and Humanities Research Board and the British Academy. I
thank these institutions warmly.
xv
Fig. 0.2 The Salentine peninsula and the region of Apulia (map: Nicki Averill).
xvi
Preface
A tiny, elderly woman, enveloped in black, leans against a stone pillar

of the gateway leading to her home. Her body is tilted slightly, poised
weightlessly against a wall twice her size, one knee bent in
adjustment, toes touching, side by side. Her shoulder acts as a pivot,
supported by one hand extended across her chest, balancing her
dainty shape against the whitewashed bricks. Lost in her gaze,
piercing and blue underneath a black headscarf taming strands of
beige-white hair, she watches silently.
I look up to check for traffic from behind before turning onto the
main road, and find this image framed in my rear mirror. I want to
pull out my camera to fix this picture in a permanent frame, but
something stops me. Instead, I scan it in my mind and turn to wave,
but the scene remains immobile. Her eyes no longer reach this far.
Yet they seem to see me departing, simultaneously with many others
whom she has accompanied to this gate in farewell, collapsing
decades of her life in a single gaze.
She doesn’t know if I’ll return. I don’t know if I’ll still find her here
again. Over a period of four years (1998–2002), she has promised to
come and visit me in England on condition that I leave her a good
road map. She has also repeatedly offered to find me a husband in

her hometown so I could settle down there. When I return to visit in
August 2005, her offer still stands and she extends it to the female
friend accompanying me. Her incessant jokes and sunny presence
give no hint of the equally strong crises that have marked her life: the
sudden fainting spells; the terrorised screams; the shaking that takes
over her petite but potent body; the rigidity that leaves her muscles
seemingly dead and alive at once.
xvii
Fig. 0.3 Torre St Emiliano near Porto Badisco on the Adriatic coast, May 2004
(photo: Regina Schneider).
xviii
Introduction:
Tarantula Territory
If we do not honour our past

we lose our future.
If we destroy our roots,
we cannot grow.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser1
The Salentine peninsula is an arid, rocky, olive-tree terrain exposed to

two main winds and seas. The Tramontana brings cool air across the
mountain ranges of northern Italy, blowing the waves of the Ionian
Sea onto the sandy shores of the western coast. On the other side,
the Scirocco drives desert air from North Africa onto the largely
rugged and steep cliffs of the eastern Adriatic coast. Throughout
history, these winds and waves have made this far limb of Italian soil
into a cultural crossroads at the heart of the Mediterranean, bringing
crusaders, invaders, travellers and pilgrims in bygone times, and an
influx of refugees and tourists in recent years. It is here, in the heel
of Italy’s boot, at the southernmost tip of Apulia, that the European

black widow, the feared tarantula, reigned in real and mythic terms.
For centuries, the healing cult of tarantism (or tarantolism) was
the only cure for those ‘bitten’ or ‘possessed’ by the tarantula spider.2
Its victims had to dance for days on end to the pizzica (the Apulian
tarantella).3 Only in this way, it was said, could the spider’s poison be
expelled and – often temporary – relief be assured. In the post-war
period, pesticides were said to have largely eradicated the tarantula
from Salentine terrain, and with it, popular belief explains, the
tradition of tarantism and its protagonists, the tarantate (or
tarantolate).4 Subsequent research, bringing socio-economic factors
into relief, has inevitably questioned this popular rationalization.
Dances with Spiders
Officially, but not quite in practice, tarantism became nothing but a

memory, shamefully dismissed or happily relegated to a distant past.
However, in the 1990s, the pizzica resurfaced, turning into a local
craze mesmerizing masses of dance and music enthusiasts.
Reinvented and revitalized, this music has come to attract crowds
and sponsors, fabricating and marketing a unique sense of regional
identity on the basis of its captivating rhythms and powerful mythic
origins.5
This book explores how and why the pizzica has boomed in the
Salento, creating repercussions on a national and international level.
It does so by enquiring whether this current popularity has anything
to do with the historical ritual of tarantism, other than as a source of
rhetorical legitimation for contemporary forms of the tarantula’s
music and dance.6 It asks, more specifically, whether the notion of
recovering well-being – in the sense of vitality, presence and choice
motivating daily life despite perceived physical or other imperfections
– is still of any relevance. A clear picture emerges of the potential of
music and dance both to further conflict and to promote well-being,
with respect to acute questions of identity in an increasingly
globalized world. While conflicts – based on such differences as
gender, age, regional origins or musical execution – may be musically
played out against each other, experiences in which ‘music takes over’
may provide a way of sensing and making sense of everyday life
beyond such clashing views. In the Salento, a vital shift appears:
from the confrontation of life crises to the vibrant promotion and
celebration of a local sense of celebrity and identity.7
Salentine Tarantulas: Spider Dances and

Discourses
The European black widow, alias tarantula, is said to take its name
from the Apulian port of Taranto, perched on the convex bend of the
Ionian Sea where the heel and arch of Italy’s boot meet (Naselli
1951). There is some debate about which spider type was actually
associated with the spider’s cult, with the Latrodectus tredecim
guttatus and Lycosa tarantula being prime candidates (Lewis 1991).8
However, unlike its South American counterparts and horror-movie
favourites, the so-called Italian tarantula or European black widow
Introduction: Tarantula Territory
(Latrodectus tredecim guttatus) is a petite three centimetres in length

and bald, so to speak (Katner 1956). Yet its bite may cause dramatic
general symptoms, including severe muscle cramps and convulsions.9
The region of Apulia, and much of southern Italy, made up its natural
habitat. Importantly, however, most cases of tarantism never featured
an actual spider bite. No real spider was involved. This is where
myth, mystery and symbolism make their powerful entry on stage, a
fact that has intrigued thinkers for centuries.
Publications on tarantism, from earliest fourteenth-century
manuscripts to twenty-first-century research, have focused primarily
on musical, medical, psychological and socio-religious interpretations
(Kircher 1641; Baglivi 1696; Hecker 1865; De Raho 1908; Giordano
1957; De Martino 1961a). Some work has drawn on medical
anthropology (Lanternari 1995, 2000) or theatre and dance studies
(Santoro 1982, 1987; Almiento 1990; Schott-Billmann 1994; Di
Lecce 1998). Recent documents on tarantism and its music (Di Lecce
1994; Chiriatti 1995; Chiriatti et al. 2007; Basile 2000; Carignani
2004; Nocera 2005; Agamennone 2005; Romanazzi 2006; Attanasi
2007; Montinaro 2007) and the current musical scene in the Salento
(De Giorgi 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005; Nacci 2001, 2004; Lamanna
2002; Santoro and Torsello 2002; Durante 2005; Thayer 2005;
Imbriani and Fumarola 2007) provide ethnographic data in Italian
and some valuable theoretical insights. The tarantula has also inspired
the creativity of various fiction writers (Di Ciaula 2001; Schmeer
2001, Bandini 2006, Marino 2007). Complementary studies on
rituals in European and Mediterranean contexts present important
comparative material (Boissevain 1992; Ferrari de Nigris 1997; Tak
2000; Del Giudice and van Deusen 2005). Meanwhile,

anthropological research on rituals, trance and spirit possession has
made reference to tarantism in regard to theoretical discussions on
healing and altered states of consciousness (Lewis 1971; Rouget
1986; Lapassade 1994, 1996a, b, 1997, 2001).
This study seeks to develop the existing literature on the basis of
fresh data regarding the personal experiences of past and present
participants in the tarantula’s music and dance, by asking whether
the tarantula still ‘bites to heal’ and what this may reveal about
performance and well-being more generally. Since 1953, Evelina has
been bitten twice. Every May and June, ever since, she has
succumbed to the crises the tarantula evokes: fainting spells, nausea,
Dances with Spiders
stomach pains. She is one of the few tarantate who remain in the
Salento. Now in her eighties, her story is that of a woman transfixed
by taboos. Her life reveals history bodily inscribed, with a complex
cultural code channelling her personal anguish. Her story is
reminiscent of many others, mainly women, who were struck by
traumatic events, harsh living conditions, socially and sexually
repressive roles or unspoken judgements, who exploded emotionally,
venting their anger and desires in ritualized form, so as to (often
temporarily) reinstate a sense of integrity, wholeness, soundness, in
the face of everyday life.
By the turn of the millennium, the spider was officially listed as
exterminated, eradicated from the land, barring a few exceptions.
Evelina is one. Her world is light years away from the current show
business that has brought the tarantula’s music and dance to fame.
Local politicians mingle with pop stars on stage and tourism
promotions feed off the eight-legged creature. Once the spider
tormented the inhabitants of this region; now it symbolizes sultry
summer nights of entertainment and distraction. What is more,
nationally and internationally renowned musicians (Joe Zawinul, Noa,
Stewart Copeland and others) have been invited to play and take the
tarantula on tour. All this has come to make up the so-called world of
neo-tarantism.10
The Salento makes fertile terrain for exploring the tarantula’s music
and dance in past and present contexts. Tarantism is extremely well
documented historically, as the earliest written references to this
phenomenon date back to the fourteenth century (Mina 2000). Similar
traditions existed in Sardinia (Gallini 1967), Calabria (Lombardi
Satriani 1951), Campania (Rossi 1991) and other regions of Italy (Pitré
1894; Zanetti 1978), as well as Spain (Cid 1787; Doménech y Amaya
1792; Schneider 1948; León Sanz 2000, 2008), but literary evidence of
these is comparatively limited. Moreover, cases of tarantism have
persisted, in transmuted forms, into the twenty-first century. Although
today this phenomenon has largely died out, rare cases were observed
until the 1990s, despite modern psychiatric and pharmaceutical
alternatives (Di Lecce 1994; Chiriatti 1995; Nocera 2005). What is
more, with the turn from the twentieth to the twenty-first century,
tarantism has been recast as neo-tarantism. This creates a comparative
advantage for looking at the tarantula’s music and dance in a single
geographical context, both when securely anchored within a strong
cultural belief system and when recomposed and reimposed within a

new temporal and socio-economic context.
Tarantism is, moreover, a key theme in Italian anthropology,
thanks to historian of religion Ernesto De Martino’s (1961a) classic
study on this topic, La terra del rimorso.11 This major point of
reference in research on the tarantula’s cult straddles the two main
strands of anthropological studies in Italy: folklore studies
considering ‘folklore’ as a response to the historical experience of
oppression and as a possible basis of subaltern cultures such as those
of the tarantate (De Martino 1960; Gramsci 1985); and cultural
anthropology, concerned with the ‘value orientations’ of individuals
living in changing social and economic contexts (Tentori 1976;
Tullio-Altan 1976). These emphases much resemble Anglo-American
research in the Mediterranean (Saunders 1984; Herzfeld 1987;
Driessen 2002) with its consideration of the honour and shame
complex (Davis 1969; Peristiany 1965; Schneider and Schneider
1971; Goddard 1987; Giordano 2002), family structures (Banfield
1958; Silverman 1968; Ginsborg 1990), and clientelism and
patronage (Filipucci 1996; Gribaudi 1996). Most importantly, the
so-called ‘Southern Question’, probing attempts to explain
underdevelopment, as well as sociocultural and economic gaps
between Italy’s north and its southern regions, or Mezzogiorno, has
dominated anthropological studies in recent years, providing a
significant contextualization for past and present manifestations of
the tarantula’s cult (Giordano 1992; Schneider 1998).12
In the Salento, the pizzica is generally, simplistically, seen to
characterize the traditional music and dance scene, thereby pushing
a large repertory of music, including work, love and funeral songs,

into the background.13 Moreover, it is commonly, if reductively and
erroneously according to some, divided into three types: the pizzica
tarantata, pizzica de core and pizzica scherma (Di Lecce 2001b).14 All
are performed in a circle of participants (both musicians and
onlookers), known as ronda [see Fig. 9.3], and can be linked by broad
similarities in rhythm and musical execution, but distinguished by
dance steps, rhythmic subtleties and diverging intentions.15 The
pizzica tarantata was the healing dance of the tarantate performed in
a ritual context with the explicit aim of bringing about a greater state
of well-being. The pizzica pizzica, pizzica de core or pizzica di cuore
(literally, ‘pizzica of the heart’) is danced on social occasions to have
Dances with Spiders
fun and to seduce, while the pizzica scherma (literally, fencing

pizzica), or simply scherma, as many in the know insist, is a fighting
dance executed almost exclusively by men.
Controversies regarding terms and neologisms immediately come
into the spotlight. Dance ethnologist Giuseppe Gala warns that the
term pizzica de core, for instance, is a recent invention: in the past,
dances for entertainment were simply known as pizzica pizzica or
tarantella.16 Similarly, the pizzica scherma is often, apparently falsely,
considered to be a synonym of the danza delle spade (sword dance) or
danza dei coltelli (knife dance).17 More recently, the catchphrase
pizzica e taranta has become common currency with the term
‘taranta’ signifying not only the spider but also Salentine music and
dance more generally. This points to a collapsing of these
components in linguistic terms, indicative of the multiple and
fluctuating meanings characterizing this performance context.18 In
this study, I adopt the term pizzica pizzica to denote the courtship
dance, whereas I use the notion of pizzica in the sense of a music and
dance genre (including various types of pizziche) holding a key
position in the repertory of the tarantula’s music and dance,
comprising all musical and choreographic events, past and present,
orbiting around the spider’s image.
Despite the vast quantity of documents on tarantism, limited
information is available on the origins of the pizzica, its links to
tarantism and its relationship to the southern Italian tarantella more
generally (Bragaglia 1949, 1950; Galanti 1950; Costa and Costa
1999; De Giorgi 2002: 53–59). David Gentilcore writes that in the
seventeenth century ‘the style of dance known as tarantella became
widespread throughout the south of Italy’ (2000: 265). Generally,

however, the ritual form of the tarantella is seen to have come first.
‘The ritual dances of tarantism, which we could call “liturgical”,
clearly lay behind this “profane” tarantella. In the mid-eighteenth
century “to dance like a tarantata” [ballare a tarantata] meant to
dance the tarantella’19 (Gentilcore 2000: 265).
Carmelina Naselli (1951) comes to similar conclusions following
her investigation into the etymology of the term tarantella. She cites
Giorgio Baglivi to explain that one specific tune used during
tarantism rituals in the seventeenth century was seen as particularly
efficacious and consequently named tarantella, perhaps because its
fast rhythm recalled the speed and mobility with which the tarantula
spider could move. Yet others asserted that the spider itself moved
rhythmically when a tarantella was played [see Fig. 2.1]. Others link
tarantism to the tarantella, because the symptoms treated involved an
irresistible urge to dance (De Raho 1908: 3). At the same time,
dancing the tarantella was also compared to the convulsions of those
bitten by the tarantula.20 Whatever its precise origins the tarantella
has evolved into diverse regional styles (Neapolitan, Calabrian and
Sicilian, to name just a few) and the Apulian form is generally known
as pizzica or pizzica pizzica. Etymological links to the verb pizzicare,
meaning to ‘bite’, ‘pinch’ or ‘sting’, further evoke the tarantula’s
presence.
The scherma, meanwhile, is said to derive from prison settings,
where dance was a way of settling disputes that could not be voiced
otherwise (Monaco 2006). Antonio Gramsci’s (1965) observations
on these dances are popularly quoted.21 For those in the know,
steps and gestures embody hidden codes. Festive occasions, such as
the festival of San Rocco, where the Rom populations of Apulia
(earning their living from selling livestock and known for their
expertise in dancing) met Salentine farmers (who brought their
tambourines and music to pass time and celebrate), are thought to
have kept this dance alive (Di Lecce 1992; Melchioni 1999;
Tarantino 2001; Chiriatti and Miscuglio 2004; Monaco 2006;
Inguscio 2007).
Although classifications of the pizzica are varied and contested,
the pizzica pizzica, scherma and pizzica tarantata may be clearly
distinguished, despite possibilities of personal variation and change
in each new enactment, on the basis of key features seen to
characterize each of these dances.22 The pizzica pizzica marks

celebrations and is mostly danced by a man and a woman, although
two women (and less frequently two men) may also dance together
[see Fig. 9.1]. In the classic match, the woman dances in small skips
and pirouettes. She lures and coaxes, escaping her partner while
flirting and inviting him to follow with graceful, seductive gestures of
her hands, often waving a handkerchief. The man moves more boldly,
following his partner, arms seeking to delimit the space around her in
a territorial manner, knees slightly bent, assertive and yet almost in
submission (Negro and Sergio 2000).
The scherma, in contrast, is used to settle conflicts, frequently
over women, to clarify who is the strongest, who has the last say [see
Dances with Spiders
Fig. 9.2]. Two dancers take over the circle centre. Right hands
gripped in a tight fist, they turn around the axis of this fulcrum, let
go and face each other. Index and middle fingers imitate knives,
cutting through the air in rotating motions. The aim is to strike the
adversary with force and virility. Tensions run high and electricity
moves in the circle, creating sparks with every successful hit.
Previously this dance was performed exclusively by men and – as
many like to tell and others contest – with actual knives.23
Finally, the tarantate danced the pizzica tarantata in spider-driven
rituals. Despite vast variations in ritual practices, certain dance
phases generally marked these events (De Martino 1961a). At the
outset, the tarantata would lie prostrate on a white sheet stretched
out on the ground until a musical note performed by a small
orchestra of musicians moved her into action, bringing her
desperation to the surface, into her moves, screams, gestures and
grimaces. Her head would beat from side to side and her back arch
upward. She would roll over and over and eventually jump up to
execute elements of the pizzica pizzica in an ever more frantic
manner, before spinning on the spot and collapsing to the ground.
Just a short break would provide some rest before another dance
cycle was resumed with the same dancer.
The crises of the tarantate involved symptoms associated with a
range of physiological rhythms, ranging from the lethargic
(listlessness, drowsiness, paralysis) to the hyperactive (convulsions,
trembling, shaking), all of which may be seen to be out of sync with
‘healthy’ bodily rhythms of the heart, pulse, metabolism or
respiration.24 In the ritual context, the effects of the tarantula’s poison
were summoned up through audio, visual, kinaesthetic and olfactory

stimuli, such as incessant rhythms, rapid movements, colourful
ribbons or wild flowers. The afflicted was stimulated to express and
accentuate her crisis, to become and enact all that which the
tarantula, as an indigenous element of the Salentine fauna, was seen
to embody. Her crisis became an integral part of her cure.25 It was
made tangible, audible, visible and accessible to the senses, providing
scope for the transformation of experiences and self-perceptions, in
individual, social and political terms. A cure was achieved when the
individual treated felt better, when a visceral sense of well-being, of
presence or ‘kinaesthetic attentiveness’ (Desjarlais 1996: 145)
manifested itself through vitality, spontaneity and perceptive
responsiveness.26 How this happened and whether it still does were

the questions that took me to southern Italy.
Tracking Down the Spider: Research

Techniques and Intentions
I first came to the Salento in late August 1996 on a brief holiday. On
the highway to Lecce, the Salentine capital, an Apulian friend assured
me that we were heading for the most beautiful part of Italy. My
unspoken expectations, merging hearsay of tarantism and stereotypes
of southern Italy, grew with his enthusiasm for showing us a region of
which the defects and hardships were skilfully dispersed into jokes,
clearing the windscreen beyond surface appearances to that
considered worthy of identification. In the early evening, we walked
through the streets of Lecce, with their yellow street lights
transforming the baroque frills of white stone buildings and endless
churches into stunning shadows. I was struck by the numerous votive
corners with religious statues, glowing light bulbs and flowers set into
house walls; by crowds promenading the streets in high-street
fashions; by designer stores flanking workshops of artisans, cobblers
or bicycle menders, tucked away in windowless basements below
street level.
We camped for a couple of days near the Baia dei Turchi, the bay
of the Turks, just north of the Adriatic port of Otranto: a major
source of conflict by 2006, between local environmentalists and
entrepreneurs responsible for illegally constructing the foundations
of a summertime bar on this spot.27 The coastline here was a dazzling

turquoise, alternating cliffs and sandy patches, scarcely dotted with
sunbathers, occasional fishermen and carelessly discarded rubbish.
Like many parts of the Salento, Otranto speaks of a history of foreign
domination28: the fortified city centre, with its castle rendered
famous by Horace Walpole’s (1764) gothic tale, conserves a cathedral
with a millennium-old mosaic floor of intertwined mythical and
biblical figures and a chapel of skulls and bones commemorating the
martyrs of the fifteenth-century Turkish assault.29
One afternoon we drove to Galatina, trade fair town and home to
the chapel of St Paul, patron saint of the tarantula’s victims.30 Thanks
to the apostle’s protection, this municipality has always been ascribed
Dances with Spiders
immunity to the spider’s bite and no cases of tarantism have,

apparently, been registered among its citizens. In August 1996, the
town sign was punctured by two holes recalling bullet shots. The
fields around were burnt black with ashes. Industrial sites marked the
periphery, while the historical town centre appeared abandoned. It
was three o’clock in the afternoon and the heat had driven everyone
but a few phantom strollers off the streets. To our astonishment the
local library was open and the director kindly furnished me with a
number of texts on tarantism. Curiosity threw me into anthropological
mode: hands and feet complementing poor language skills, antennae
stretched to a maximum. We moved to the central piazza stretching
out at the feet of the main church’s elaborate façade.
In my mind, the pavement stones came alive in black and white
moving images: films I had seen of the tarantate, brides of St Paul,
dressed in white, running in wild circles on this very square, driven
by vehement impulses, screaming in high-pitched voices, terrorizing
spectators and attacking those dressed in bright colours [see Fig.
1.2]. A clergyman crossed our tracks and cars circled around us like
a traffic island in the square centre, as the priest’s tales of horse-
drawn carriages bringing desperate men and women to St Paul’s
shrine, mixed with his greetings to passers-by. The tiny chapel
remained closed all year, except for three days at the end of June
when the town patrons were celebrated and numerous pilgrims came
to its threshold. On rare occasions, the doors were opened out of
season to calm those seeking St Paul’s blessing. For us, too, the keys
were sought out and we were taken into the tiny space long since
deconsecrated by the Catholic Church. The air was thick, lacking
ventilation, suggestive of emotional outbursts lived and exorcised

between these walls. In the years to come, I was to return often,
following up old stories, observing new ones.
Yet, beyond the imposing coastline, I failed to see the predicted
beauty of this region. What struck me were the pale, sometimes
lifeless, colours: yellow grass, grey stone-ridden earth, silver olive
groves, a late-summer landscape drained of moisture. No strong
distinctions caught the eye beyond cement structures of unfinished
buildings or abandoned farmhouses, distorted out of focus by the
heat. There was no record of the colourful spectacle springtime
blossoms create each year. Nevertheless, something seduced me to
undertake fieldwork here, in this part of southern Italy.
10
My point of departure to look at the tarantula’s music and dance

was a strong curiosity to find out more about this tradition, exploring
the labels of normality and madness cloaked in varying explanations
of affliction and cure. The tarantate of southern Italy have variously
been branded as mad, hysterical, psychologically unstable,
exhibitionistic; the connotations of ‘not being credible’ associated
with these classificatory tags marked the lives of many. These views,
however, contradict the respect accorded to them by others, who
emphasize their access to unique insights, ‘something like white
magic’, due to their relation to the tarantula.31
This range of opinions and the motivations that lay at their
foundation intrigued me. Often I was asked: ‘Do you believe in the
tarantula?’ My response was that, in some way and over a
considerable time span, tarantism had been seen to work. It would
not have lasted for centuries if its effects had not been considered
and experienced as beneficial. Inevitably, however, the notion of
efficacy depends on the criteria applied. Tarantism has worked both
to liberate and to oppress. It has been a channel of release and
resolution when there was no other perceived way out. In these
terms, it has been safety valve and golden cage all in one.
Nevertheless, for the purposes of anthropological research it is
valuable to accept the belief system of tarantism as one possible
reality, as one possible epistemology of healing. For those afflicted by
the tarantula spider, its poison was real in its effects even in the
absence of an actual bite. Apparent contradictions in empirical terms
dissolved as different notions of reality came into play.
The anthropologist moves between these, not always without risk,
open to various ways of reading the world. At the outset of my

fieldwork a professor in theatre history at the University of Lecce
advised me as follows, touching on the subtle divide between taking
part, in order to understand, and keeping apart, so as not to lose
touch with the ground under one’s feet:
Tarantism is a phenomenon made up of a million folds. If you unfold it,
explain it, it won’t exist any more. It is not a fixed or bounded system.
Instead, it is something dynamic, constantly being translated and
transformed. You must focus on the relations between things. In order to
relate, you have to open up, break and diffuse your own boundaries. If
something does not finish, it can be transformed. You need to consider how
things speak to each other, how objects and people play together. And you
11
Dances with Spiders
too have to be prepared to open up, to engage with others, to break your
own ways of thinking. Our way of seeing the world appears to be the most
efficient for our current lives. But, this does not mean that there are no
other ways of seeing the world.32
This book does not claim to explain the tarantate’s rituals or the
contemporary pizzica scene. Instead, it strives to paint an
impressionistic picture of the manifold facets of everyday life within
which the notes and steps of the tarantula’s music and dance came
and come alive. With this intention, it portrays both unique lives and
dynamic cultural contexts. It can never do justice to the whole –
there are many musicians I have never talked to, many dancers I have
never met, audio-visual recordings and written documents I have not
located – but it can begin to provide a sense of what it meant and
means to live in this part of Italy.
It is important to stress, moreover, that this research may be seen
to address the lives of only a minority of Salentines33 today: by 2006,
the number of (ex)tarantate was estimated to be no more than five or
six, while in 1998 fifteen to twenty were still said to be alive.34
Widespread opinion completely denies their existence, since none
are believed to be practising rituals any longer. What is more, despite
the crowds attracted by pizzica concerts, those linking this music
and dance (still or again) to a therapeutic potential (variously
defined) are limited in number and often contradicted by more
popular views, defining this contemporary boom exclusively in terms
of entertainment, politics, tourism, commercialization and questions
of identity. Finally, there are many who have had enough of all the
buzz around the spider and are likely to roll their eyes when yet
another pizzica is played.

Initially, when I came to the Salento, I did not know whether it
would still be possible to find anyone who had lived through the
ordeals attributed to the tarantula. At the same time, I had no idea
that the music and dance once associated with this healing tradition
were about to boom beyond anyone’s expectations. Before I knew it,
my footnotes on this aspect turned into entire chapters. My research,
in turn, gradually extended over a decade (1996–2008), involving
various periods of long-term residence in the Salento. I was always
based in Lecce, but travelled throughout the surrounding area
pursuing two main tracks of investigation: one focused on
researching the historical healing ritual of tarantism and the other
12
following the spotlight on contemporary performances of the

tarantula’s music and dance.
Tracking down tarantism involved background research on existing
publications in academic writing, local media and literature, as well
as on audio-visual media, Internet resources, films, photographs and
sound recordings. It implied participating at conferences and other
encounters (discussions, book presentations, photographic
exhibitions) organized on this topic by the University of Lecce and
other institutions, as well as cultural associations in the Salento and
elsewhere. Most importantly this fieldwork allowed me to hear the
stories of those who have lived with the tarantula: in their own lives,
families or towns. Almost everybody had an anecdote to tell.
Researching the world of neo-tarantism allowed more scope for
direct involvement. Particularly in the summer months, celebrations
(religious festivals, fairs and concerts) associated with the pizzica
provided the most valuable occasions for gathering insights through
impromptu conversations, observing and participating. I learnt to
dance the pizzica pizzica, but never quite, despite endless generous
demonstrations, caught the hang of the tambourine, virtuoso
instrument in today’s pizzica world. I attended performances of many
of the music groups specializing in the pizzica, followed different
courses aimed at transmitting its steps and rhythms, as well as
rehearsals and tours of the group Arakne Mediterranea, directed by
the late Giorgio Di Lecce, while interviews about the current
Salentine music scene provided more focused information.
Dancing the pizzica and actively participating in concert settings
brought up key lines of enquiry guiding this research. It also evokes
a question ethnomusicologists Gregory Barz and Timothy Cooley

(1997) posit as central to a ‘new ethnography’: ‘What do we see when
we acknowledge the shadows we cast in the field? What do we hear,
smell and taste?’ A focus not only on representing but also on ‘doing’
and ‘knowing’ in fieldwork aims to convey a sense of what it means ‘to
be in the world musically’ and, I would add, ‘to be in the world
choreographically’. As Barz and Cooley (1997: 208) point out:
‘Ethnography in this sense becomes an integral part of the translation
of experience, an extension of the field performance, and ultimately
a form of performance writing.’ It acknowledges the agency of the
ethnographer both in and out of the field as ‘chasing whatever is
hidden behind the shadows he or she casts in the field’ (ibid.: 209).
13
Dances with Spiders
This book too, becomes a dance with shadows, with inevitable

limitations coming to the surface.
Five of these limitations stand out. First and foremost, I myself
have never seen a ritual of tarantism. Instead, I rely on the memories
of others, on what their voices convey, always, inevitably, filtered by
time and their, as well as my own, perceptions. At the same time,
each story can be played against others and cross-checked against the
large quantity of historical documents available, so as to guarantee
the maximum possible reliability of the data presented.
Secondly, the approach taken may be seen to achieve no more
than documenting the last vestiges of tarantism. Such criticism
needs to be taken seriously. The temptation of continuity is highly
seductive, as historian Peregrine Horden (2000, 2003) warns, and it
would be reductive to consider the small number of remaining
tarantate as representative of ‘tarantism’, seeing that not only its
protagonists but also understandings of the term tarantism itself have
undergone and continue to undergo incessant changes.
Thirdly, this study compares the tarantula’s music and dance in
highly different performative contexts, which are difficult to
pigeonhole or define in themselves and, according to some,
completely incomparable. ‘The pizzica today’, as many Salentines
would insist, ‘has nothing to do with tarantism, although a process of
bastardization between the two has taken place.’35 Motivations for
performing may be seen as utterly split between the diverging aims of
healing (in the past) and hedonism, including tourism (today).
Moreover, past and present dances may be differentiated according
to the categories of ritual versus theatre or spectacle, bringing into
relief the manifold problems associated with the use of these

categories.36 Yet the tarantula’s thread weaves through both contexts,
revealing how its meanings change not only in time, but also on a
case by case basis, without, however, implying proof of common
descent.
Fourthly, my data inevitably are conditioned not only by my own
view, but also by the people I have come to know. Generally speaking,
I have had more contact with groups who led the 1990s revitalization
and am less familiar with more recently formed bands.37
Finally, ethical issues emerge, since this study addresses sensitive
material related to affliction and suffering, which risks becoming
sensational and commercial in a context that celebrates the pizzica
14
and has turned research on tarantism into a fashion. This brings to

mind a question guiding anthropologist Valentine Daniel’s (1996: 3)
work on violence: ‘How to give an account of … shocking events,
without giving in to the desire to shock?’ As a consequence, I have
opted to use pseudonyms in a few cases in which I was not given
express consent to use real names, and trust that those who would
have liked to be mentioned by name will empathize with this
decision. It allows this research to be made accessible to those whose
cultural identities are addressed, while at the same time respecting
the individual identity of those who have entrusted me with their
views and experience.38
Crisis, Celebrity and Celebration:

Contextualizing Salentine Tarantulas
A focus on process and performativity guides this exploration of
bygone tarantism rituals and today’s pizzica events as cultural forms
of expression for articulating the highs and lows of daily life. It
suggests that, just as in the days of the tarantate, dynamics of
projection and identification continue to mark the worlds of those
engaging with the spider’s image today: whereas the tarantate had to
identify with their afflicting spider in order to evoke its presence and
then pacify or expel it, Salentines today use the music and dance that
once drove out poison to create an identity distinguishing themselves
from others, be these northern Italians, Europeans more generally,
tourists, participants in the ‘world music’ scene or yet others. Some
Salentines speak of having the pizzica in their blood, creating a sense

of community defined on the basis of musical DNA, seen to render
them unique (Gala 2002a, b; Pizza 2002a, b).39
Such a ‘self ’ versus ‘other’ contrast may express more subtle
dynamics characterizing contemporary Western society: fears of
dissolving boundaries, fleeting points of reference, and a gaping
meaninglessness of existence more generally.40 Although such
dissolving boundaries may equally further a sense of community
among humanity at large, well-being may be jeopardized by crises
expressed under new labels today – stress, depression, nervous
breakdown or addictions – or fatalistic and fanatical points of view. In
such situations of distress, the tarantula’s music and dance can (but
15
Dances with Spiders
not necessarily do) intervene, by transforming perceptions of the self,

others and reality at large. Spider dances draw attention, moreover, to
motivations for and experiences of performing beyond explicitly
choreographic or musicological criteria, bringing into focus
ethnomusicological and other literature on the relation between
music and identity (Stokes 1994; Feld 2000; Connell and Gibson
2003).
Identity has been widely defined in opposition to alterity, a
dichotomy that anthropologists have carefully deconstructed, in an
effort to ‘discard any essentialited notion of difference, to eschew any
over emphasis on identity as sameness and to resist any temptation to
moralize about “othering”’ (Gingrich 2004: 15).41 Anthropological
studies have highlighted how any group’s apparently consolidated
identity may involve a cross-boundary struggle for control and
contestations from within the group, challenging the absolute
character of discourses on identity and the existence of defining
boundaries that are not only a matter of degree but also of kind
(Cohen 2000: 1–2). ‘Wherever we look in the world, people are
fighting back in a struggle for identities which they can regard as
more sensitive to themselves, rejecting self-denying generalisation and
subordination to collective categories’ (Cohen 1994: 177). This has
led to sensitive and complex debates on rights to identity, and who
defines such identities, in the face of imposed matrices of perception.
The French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf (2000) stresses how a
widespread habit of thought assumes that we have one major
affiliation defining our identity. This, he warns, is a simplistic recipe
for massacres. He calls for a new concept of identity not based on the
denial of the ‘self ’ versus the denial of the ‘other’, but recognizing
instead that each and everyone’s identity is complex, unique and
irreplaceable – a minority in itself. Current perceptions of phenomena
such as ‘globalization’ inevitably reinforce a need for identity, while at
the same time they potentially hold the key to a new perspective
emphasizing the common identity of humankind.42 Global media play
a key role in this context.
Morley and Robins (1995) have considered the media’s implications
in reimagining a contemporary Europe ‘without frontiers’. Anxieties
provoked by shifting and dissolving boundaries and points of reference,
leading to a sense of disorientation and loss of control, are soothed by
‘calls for the pure (if mythic) certainties of the “old traditions”’ (ibid.: 8).
16
Without discrediting mass migrations in the past, being European (as

well as global citizenship more generally) increasingly demands juggling
continental, national and regional identities in one. It implies
negotiating with and commitment to that which is considered to be
different. It implies a world with increasingly porous boundaries, ‘an
intensification of global interconnectedness’ (Inda and Rosaldo 2002:
2), characterized by multiple understandings and realities of
‘globalization’ with its ‘crisscrossing flows and intersecting systems of
meanings’ (ibid.: 26).
Music, as one of many performance genres, is a further key player
in this context. ‘World music’ – a prime label for the tarantula’s music
and dance – may be seen as ‘today’s dominant signifier of a
triumphant industrialization of global sonic representation’ (Feld
2000: 146).43 Music is more often than not seen to epitomize places,
fostering not only marketing strategies, relying on claims to the
‘traditional’, ‘authentic’ and ‘original’, but also music tourism
(Connell and Gibson 2003). Meanwhile, spatial coordinates assign
credibility and money value to music. Music and place reciprocally
define each other (Stokes 1994). The pizzica, for example, draws its
contemporary power from associations with historical tarantism,
frequently seen to be rooted in Salentine territory. Attempts at
deconstructing such links challenge music’s selling power, its mystic
appeal and spiritual magnetism. Steven Feld (2000: 154) points to
‘world music’, moreover, not only as a discourse, but also as a
fundamental zone of activities and representation involving
‘intersubjective clashes for musicians, recordists, industry players,
journalists and academics’.
The varying intentions of these diverse actors come into play and
conflict, raising accusations of cultural commoditization and theft
reminiscent of those expressed in the face of tourism (Kirtsoglou and
Theodossopoulos 2004), echoed in much of the literature on this
topic. Some stress that ‘the tourist is a kind of contemporary pilgrim,
seeking authenticity in other “times” and other “places” away from
that person’s everyday life’ (Urry 2000: 9). Such views are reinforced
by recent studies on pilgrimage and healing showing how typical
motivations of curing afflictions, whether of a physical or spiritual
nature, are complemented in the animated field of modern-day
pilgrimages with those of quests for identity, for ‘reassembling the
self ’, and interpersonal connection (Badone and Roseman 2004;
17
Dances with Spiders
Basu 2004; Coleman and Eade 2004; Dubisch and Winkelman

2005). Others see tourist aspirations as less enchanted, as thriving on
‘pseudo-events’ (Boorstin 1961) and, more significantly, have
problematized the notion of authenticity as existing not only in
various stages (MacCannell 1999) but also as a negotiable and
constantly changing point of reference (Chambers 1999). This
multifaceted picture provides a backdrop for a look at the
contemporary music and dance scene in the Salento.
Mutations in the tarantula’s music and dance show how
experiences of the self both mould and are moulded by the props,
actions and choices of protagonists. Definitions and diagnoses of
performers reveal culturally specific self-perceptions, including views
of affliction and well-being. Research in medical anthropology and
performance studies (including anthropological approaches) provides
useful guidelines in this respect. Medical anthropologists have
emphasized the cultural specificity of health or illness (Kleinman
1980; Young 1982; Helman 1984) and the socially constructed
nature of the human body (Blacking 1977; Turner 1992; Lock 1993;
Csordas 2002). Work on theatre and performance studies,
meanwhile, has problematized Western notions of ‘theatre’, ‘dance’
and ‘performance’, searching for cross-culturally applicable
categories in order to discover what performance can reveal about
society (Turner 1982; Schechner 1985; Barba and Savarese 1991;
Beeman 1993; Thomas 2003). Studies on dance have turned
attention to embodied cultural practices and individual experience in
performance (Peterson Royce 1977, 2004; Hanna 1979; Spencer
1985; Ness 1992; Reed 1998; Farnell 1999; Buckland 1999, 2006;
Kaeppler 2000; Dils and Cooper Albright 2001), while

ethnomusicologists have fine-tuned our awareness to the importance
of music and soundscapes in diverse cultural settings (Merriam
1964; Blacking 1976; Nettl 1983; Myers 1984; Seeger 1987; Feld
1990; Barz and Cooley 1997; Mackinlay et al. 2005).
These studies, together with research in the ‘anthropology of the
senses’ (Stoller 1989; Howes 1992, 2004; Geurtz 2002; Desjarlais
2003; Classen 2005) have prompted medical anthropologists to
explore the therapeutic impact of dramatic media in performative
contexts (Laderman 1991; Devish 1993; Roseman 1993; Jennings
1995; Laderman and Roseman 1996; Sklar 2001; Sax 2004), as well
as notions of embodiment and experience with respect to the curative
18
process (Desjarlais 1992; Csordas 1994, 2002). Recent publications

addressing the relation between healing, dance and music have made
reference to tarantism, but almost exclusively with regard to its
historical forms (Tomlinson 1994; Gouk 2000; Horden 2000, 2003;
Del Giudice 2003).
In this context, I regard the tarantula’s dance in terms of
performance, on the basis of the premise that ‘performance enters all
domains of human existence in both secular and religious fields; the
“dramas of everyday life”, as well as the “dramas set apart”, i.e.,
theatre and ritual’ (Jennings 1995: 9).44 Performance practices such
as music making and dance viewed in terms of actor training, as a
process rather than an end product, imply that ways of using the
human organism alternative or complementary to those of daily life
are acquired. If the recovery of well-being, meanwhile, is seen in
terms of a negotiative process transforming culturally specific
notions of affliction into those of well-being and vitality, this means
that alternative or complementary ways of perceiving and
experiencing the human organism are learned. Acting theories
(Artaud 1958; Grotowski 1976; Stanislavski 1980a, b, 1981; Brook
1993, 1998; Schechner 2002) may be drawn upon to show how
performance may be used to express the inner experience of a
specific character, including that of affliction, in socially accepted
terms. In this sense, the actor’s experience of theatrical malleability,
the potential of moving among many different roles, may both reflect
and shape sociocultural upbringing. This correlation may underlie
the direct and potentially therapeutic impact of performance
practices on the experience of everyday life, taking into account that
well-being relates both to the microscopic level of individual health

and illness and to the macroscopic level of collective life and social
policy (Jennings 1994; Laderman and Roseman 1996; Lock and
Scheper-Hughes 1996).
Preview: Summarizing this Book

Part I, Past and Present Spider Webs, sets the scene, showing how
the tarantula’s cult continues, as it has for centuries, to intrigue
Salentines and others alike. On 29 June, St Paul, patron saint of the
tarantate, is revered and celebrated. Chapter 1, ‘Seeking St Paul’,
19
Dances with Spiders
takes a look at festivities in the town of Galatina, pilgrimage site of

his devotees, displaying the contradictory and complex ways in which
the tarantula’s myth and music have been both preserved and
reinvented. Chapter 2, ‘Webs through Time’, places this first-hand
scenario in historical perspective. A review of the rich and varied
literature on tarantism and its origins shows how this ritual tradition
not only represents but also disputes specific conceptions of human
nature, society and reality dominating various stages of European
history.
Part II, The Spider’s Cult Today, provides ethnographic detail,
revealing how the spider remains a common denominator while its
meanings vary greatly. In the contemporary Salento, tarantism and
neo-tarantism exist side by side. Chapter 3, ‘Curing Myths and
Fictive Cures’, reveals how in its traditional, curative form, the
tarantula’s dance has died out with rare exceptions carefully
concealed from the public eye. For a very few elderly Salentines
devotion to the tarantula and St Paul continues to be the only way
out of their misery. However, according to the majority of the
Salento’s inhabitants, tarantism has, thankfully, been eradicated and
remains nothing but a myth of the past, of which only the music and
dance are worth preserving. In its novel, reformulated sense, the
spider’s cult is gaining new fans daily, while its concerts are attracting
crowds in the thousands, as Chapter 4, ‘Ads and Antidotes’, confirms.
The myth, music and dance of tarantism inevitably serve
contemporary purposes: some seek experiences of ‘magic’ (variously
described), or expressive forms accentuating personal virtuosity. Yet
others desire a cultural source of identity and orientation, often
reflected in tourist ads and media hype. At the same time, spider
dances have become a means through which to take a position and
demand change, be it political, ecological or other. Varying degrees of
conflict emerge from looking at the motives that drive participants to
perform and applaud the pizzica today. Chapter 5, ‘Sensing Identities
and Well-being’, moves on to look at personal stories behind the buzz
continuing to bring alive discourses of recovering well-being.
Part III, From Ritual to Limelight, involves an analysis of
ambiguities and contradictions that bring to the fore subtle social
dynamics and power structures impeding or fostering well-being.
‘Dances with spiders’ in the Salento implies both performances
addressing life crises and festive entertainments shimmering in the
20
limelight. Chapter 6, ‘SpiderWoMen Transfixed’, explores what

criteria characterize the perceptions and afflictions of old and new
tarantati, and questions how these relate to views of human nature
and reality, as well as treatment choices more generally. Chapter 7,
‘Tarantula Threads and Showbiz Airs’, takes a look at places, times,
props and techniques making up the complex choreographies of past
and present spider dances. In the past, no cure was possible unless
the tarantula’s thread, that stimulus which persuaded the tarantate to
dance, was found. Today, a concert’s success depends on detecting
the appropriate air or music compelling bystanders to take part and
applaud. Beyond financial backing, networking and good
technological resources, this requires not merely technical virtuosity,
but above all the mutual interaction of performers and their
willingness to surrender to the music. Chapter 8, ‘SpiderWoMen
Transformed’, focuses on personal experiences of the tarantula’s
music and dance in the context of performance circles ascribed
‘magic’ qualities. It considers how rhythmic interaction can sensitize
performers’ abilities to access vitality and choices promoting well-
being, thereby providing a playground to move beyond the afflicted
victim role to that of a creative ‘choreographer’.
The Conclusion, Chapter 9, ‘Dancing Beyond Spiders’, draws
together the key threads of this study. Considerations of tarantism
and its modern developments suggest that afflictions associated with
the tarantula’s cult in the past persist under new labels today. It
emphasizes the need for a greater sensitivity towards the potential
value of certain human conditions, which may be pathologized
according to Western psychiatric categories, while being inherently
transformative and therapeutic if safeguarded by a network of social

support and meaning. What is more, the Salento today reveals how
performance arts, such as the pizzica, can effect changes in the
perception of ourselves, others and reality at large. This
transformative capacity has the potential not only to distress and
divide but also to heal and unite.
21
Dances with Spiders
Notes
1. Hundertwasser Haus, Vienna.
2. The two terms ‘tarantism’ and ‘tarantolism’ may be used interchangeably,
although the former is more frequently heard in the Salento and hence also
adopted in this study. The notion of cult is used here in a broad sense to
indicate both a body of organized cultural practices and beliefs shared by a
group of people (tarantism in its traditional forms), and a phenomenon that
is popular or fashionable among a devoted group of enthusiasts (the
contemporary revitalization of the tarantula’s music and dance).
3. The tarantella dance characteristic of southern Italy is known for its
skipping steps and lively 3/8 or 6/8 rhythms, often in accelerating tempo.
There are many regional variations, including the Apulian pizzica or pizzica
pizzica, which is today largely associated with the Salento. Interestingly, the
term tarantella is rarely used by Salentines to refer to the pizzica, but
features in other well-known contexts: as concert pieces, such as Chopin’s
opus 43; as a theatrical prop in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; and, more
recently, as a tarantallegra jinx in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets (1998).
4. I use the feminine singular and plural forms of these two synonyms to talk
about the victims of the tarantula in the past. Although this goes against the
conventions of Italian grammar, particularly when speaking about plural forms
which also include men, this choice is motivated by the fact that most of those
afflicted were women. Generally speaking, both terms (tarantata/tarantato or
tarantolata/tarantolato) and both feminine and masculine plural forms
(tarantate or tarantati) are used interchangeably, depending on the sex of the
victim referred to or the preferences of the speaker. When talking about the
contemporary context, I choose the term modern or new (nuovi) tarantati, to
refer to those engaging with the symbol of the tarantula today, as both men and
women are involved.

5. I use the terms ‘revitalized’ or ‘revitalization’ in this study, following Tak
(2000: 209), to avoid the term ‘revival’, which may be misread as a return to
a previously existing situation, discounting the impact of changes in the
political economy.
6. I use the expression ‘tarantula’s music and dance’ to refer to Salentine
music, including especially but not exclusively the pizzica, associated both
with past rituals of tarantism and the contemporary revitalization
movement. Although this expression risks conflating past and present
performances, furthering assumptions of continuity, the notion of ‘tarantula’
is taken here as a multi-purpose denominator shaped by and shaping
diverse, eclectic and potentially contradictory choices, intentions and
performances. The pizzica is commonly described as musica popolare in the
22
Salento, a term indicating traditional musical genres that are orally

transmitted within a specific ethnic region or group, not to be confused with
‘pop music’ or commercial genres of music with a widespread and often
short-term appeal characterizing Westernized and modernized societies.
The term ‘folk music’ is avoided so as to focus on the specificity of Salentine
music, while at the same time acknowledging the vast and varied repertoires
characterizing the music and dance scene of the Salento.
7. In this study, the geographical range of the Salento is largely taken to be the
Provincia di Lecce – reaching from a few towns just north of the capital to
the very southern tip of the peninsula – although the Salento is generally
seen to comprise the three provinces of Lecce, Brindisi and Taranto. This
choice is based on the fact that the area around Lecce has been most
strongly (but not exclusively) exposed to the revitalization of the pizzica and
thus is also largely where I undertook my research.
8. The Latrodectus tredecim guttatus, also known as Mediterranean black
widow, malmignatte or karakurt spider, is found throughout the
Mediterranean region. It is characterized by thirteen red spots on its
otherwise black dorsal abdomen (hence its Latin name for ‘thirteen spots’).
Its bite is venomous to humans unlike that of the Lycosa tarantula, or wolf
spider, which is essentially harmless. See also, Chapter 6, ‘Diagnosing
Spiders: Identifying Tarantula Cases’.
9. ‘Bites by widow spiders often are initially painful, but sometimes are not felt.
The local dermal reaction is minimal, usually consisting of little more than
an area of erythema (redness) around the bite site, which disappears within
several hours; no tissue necrosis occurs following bites by widow spiders. A
potent neurotoxin in the venom induces the disease state latrodectism, which
manifests itself with severe muscle cramping and spasms; the cramping
usually begins in the large muscle masses of the legs, or the abdomen. The
abdomen can exhibit a board-like rigidity, and the pain has been compared to
that of acute appendicitis, and to childbirth. Some widow bite victims

experience anxiety, profuse sweating, nausea, piloerection (hair standing on
end), increased blood pressure, and other unpleasant manifestations.
Paralysis, stupor and convulsions, as well as psychological abnormalities may
occur in severe cases. Death can occur in a small percentage of cases,
particularly when the victim is a small child or elderly person.’ Retrieved on
30 September 2007 from http://www.srv.net/~dkv/ hobospider/widows.html.
10. The origin of this term remains, to my knowledge, unclear. I first came
across it in conversations with informants on my arrival in the Salento in
April 1997. US scholar Luisa Del Giudice writes: ‘I believe I coined this
term in 1996 to refer, in conversation and in interviews, to the folk revival
movement which had as its point of reference historic tarantismo. I note
23
Dances with Spiders
with the passing of the years that it has become a term with a certain
currency’ (Del Giudice 2005: 219). Others attribute this notion to the
French academic George Lapassade, who undertook research in the Salento
during the 1980s, or associate it with the sociologist Anna Nacci, author of
the books Tarantismo e neotarantismo (2001) and Neotarantismo (2004).
11. For translations, see De Martino (1966, 1999, 2005). For reviews in English,
French and German, see Anon. (1967); Cassin (1962); De Martino (1961b).
In this book, general considerations regarding De Martino’s work on tarantism
refer to his original 1961 study in Italian (1961a). Specific references to and
quotations from this work refer to Dorothy Zinn’s 2005 translation.
12. Economic underdevelopment and unemployment are widespread in the
Salento, as in much of southern Italy. In the 1960s and 1970s, severe poverty
led a large proportion of the working population to emigrate to northern
Italy or northern Europe. Many jobs continue to be characterized by
unreliable incomes and little, if any, social security, despite modernization in
terms of technology, communication, transport and, especially, tourism.
13. This fact is reminiscent of ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger’s (1987:
25–51) admonition regarding ‘categories of orality’, including both song
and speech forms, highlighting the importance of looking at both music and
dance in relation to other art forms, as ‘everything is always partly defined
by what it is not’ (ibid.: 25). Various types of pizzica songs exist in parallel to
religious songs (funeral laments, hymns, Christmas and Lent songs), songs
of work and protest, lullabies and rhymes, as well as narrative songs. Dances
of the pizzica, moreover, exist today in a context in which village squares
host events with musicians and dancers singing and stepping to all kinds of
rhythms, particularly during summer nights: from mazurka, polka or waltz,
to synchronized group dances and Latin American styles or the less
prescribed motions and words of rap and rave fans, not to mention the
overflowing open-air discos with their multiple and varied dance floors,
dominated by techno and house beats.

14. Dance ethnologist Giuseppe Gala has also coined new labels to speak about
the contemporary neopizzica or emopizzica as he calls it: slow-pizzica,
trance-pizzica, energico-pizzica, techno-pizzica (Gala 2002a: 109–53).
Maurizio Nocera, meanwhile, speaks of the pizzica di sofferenza, the pizzica
of suffering, a term he heard various tarantate use to describe their healing
dances (Lecce, 1 April 2006).
15. Daniele Vigna explains, for example, that while in the pizzica pizzica the
‘triplet is characteristic, in the scherma circle it is the strong beat which
provides the base’ (Monaco 2006: 89).
16. See Gala’s website: www.taranta.it/pizzica.html. Gala also emphasizes that
other dances need to be kept in mind, such as the scotis or quadriglia
(Galatina, Estadanza, July 2002).
24
17. The north Italian region of Piedmont, for example, is known for its sword
dances in San Giorio, Limone, Giaglione and Venaus (Val di Susa). See
Galanti (1950: 7).
18. This confusion in terminology has raised criticism among those who view it
as a misrepresentation of historical facts and a repercussion of the
widespread popularity of large-scale media events such as the annual Night
of the Tarantula concert.
19. Archivio della Curia Arcivescovile, Lecce, Giudicati matrimoniali, ‘Tra
Francesco Ardito e Catarina Russo’, no. 891.
20. Interestingly, to this day, someone who cannot stay still may be described in
Italian as a person who has the tarantula (ha la tarantola) (Naselli 1951:
222).
21. In his Lettere dal carcere, Letters from Prison, dated 11 April 1927, Gramsci
(1965) describes the scherma in the barracks of Castellammare.
22. For television and cinematographic features (both documentary and fiction)
on the pizzica pizzica, see Stegmueller and Koeplin (1992); Bevilacqua
(1995); Canizzaro (2001, 2003) Daudy (2001); Marengo (2005); Pisanelli
(2005); Colopi and Giagnotti (2008). For a feature on the scherma, see
Fersini (2005). For features on the pizzica tarantata, see Carpitella (1960);
Miscuglio et al. (1981); Mingozzi (1982); Durante (1989); Winspeare
(1989, 1994, 2000); Santoro and Durante (1993); Gallone (2006). This list
cannot claim to be complete, nor does it account for numerous videos and
DVDs produced on this topic.
23. Links emerge between the pizzica di cuore and other dances of lure, coax and
escape, such as the Cuban and Puerto Rican guagnanco, an Afro-Cuban form
of rumba (Friedman 1978). Inevitable connections to the flamenco come to
mind: another seductive dance in the Mediterranean context on the cusp of
Europe, on the silk trade route, connected with North and West Africa
through trade and conquest and with Gypsies on the move between Eastern
and Western Europe, thereby combining Muslim, Gypsy, Indian and African
influences (Comerford Peters and Schreiner 1990; Washabaugh 1996).
Likewise, the tango with its embodiment of sensuality, eroticism and
competition provides further parallels (Savigliano 1995; Taylor 1998; Archetti
1999). Meanwhile, the scherma brings to mind associations with various
martial arts (Zarrilli 2000; Jones 2002), as well as the Brazilian capoeira
(Lowell Lewis 1992; Downey 2005), which presents another combat dance
and channel of expression for grievances that could not be expressed
otherwise. Although essentially unarmed, dancers to this day use knives and
machetes (as well as the more recent urban addition of razors) in their
exhibitions (Lowell Lewis 1992: 41).
24. Beyond the possible (but atypical) local effects of actual bites, visible as red
and swollen punctures on the skin, the tarantate revealed a series of general
reactions: vomiting, sweating, stomach, muscular and heart pains, nausea,
25
Dances with Spiders
vertigo, fainting, headaches, hyperventilation, cyanosis, dyspnoea, weak

pulse, fever, extreme cold, numbness, delirium, loss of appetite, sleepiness,
insomnia, fatigue, paralysis, convulsions and trembling (Russell 1979:
410–11). Extremes of bodily and rhythmic mobility or immobility stood out.
Behavioural symptoms were equally varied, including depression, a strong
sense of fear and anguish, weeping, laughing, permissive sexual conduct, as
well as jumping, dancing and singing as symptoms overlapped with
treatment techniques.
25. See Kleinman (1980), Helman (1984), Sargent and Johnson (1996),
Nichter and Lock (2002) for debates in medical anthropology on the use of
terminology associated with affliction and cure. See Mathews and Izquierdo
(2008) for anthropological perspectives on well-being.
26. Elements of the tarantate’s rituals may be reminiscent of Robert Desjarlais’s
(1996: 160) description of the healing performances of Yolmo shamans in
Nepal as rejuvenating a spiritless body: ‘By adding to what a person tastes,
sees, touches, hears and imagines, a Yolmo healer jump-starts a physiology.’
27. See www.baiadeiturchi.ilcannochiale.it.
28. If we may reduce 2500 years of local history to a snapshot, the region known
as the Salento was inhabited in Antiquity by a variety of peoples: the
Messapians, Iapygians, Bruttii and Sallentini. These people remained partly
independent of the strong Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, but both the
Greeks and the earlier inhabitants fell to the Romans during their expansion
in the third century BC. Parts of this Roman-held territory were held by the
late Roman and Byzantine rulers while the rest was taken by the Longobards
from the north. Brief periods of Arab rule in some sites were followed by
Byzantine rule in the ninth century, succeeded by a Norman conquest in the
late eleventh century. These were followed by Swabian, Angevin, Aragonese,
Spanish, Austrian Hapsburg and Bourbon rulers, with a brief Ottoman
Turkish presence in the fifteenth century. The overlapping conquests, with
their attendant changes of language, faith, costume and music, helped define
the Salento prior to the Unification of Italy in 1861 (see Carducci 1993).
29. In 1480, an Ottoman fleet commanded by general Gedik Ahmed Pasha
captured the port city of Otranto. Eight hundred citizens refusing to give up
their Christian faith were ruthlessly decapitated. Officially recognized as
martyrs by the Church, their remains are exhibited to this day in seven large
built-in display cabinets in the city’s cathedral.
30. See Rouget (1986), Lapassade (1994, 2001) and De Martino (2005) for a
contextualization of tarantism in relation to other cults that have become
syncretized with Catholicism, such as the Cuban santéria, Brazilian
candomblé and umbanda or Haitian vodou.
31. Parabita, 6 August 2001.
32. Melendugno, 25 October 1997.
26
33. I use the notion ‘Salentines’ here to refer to the inhabitants of the Salento.
However, it is vital to note that this geographically defined group includes
highly diverse members in historical, cultural and ethnic terms.
34. Maurizio Nocera, Lecce, 1 April 2006, and Luigi Chiriatti, Lecce, 2
February 1998.
35. Vittorio Marras, Nardò, 9 May 2006.
36. See Beattie (1977), Turner (1982, 1989), Schechner (1985) and Beeman
(1993) for discussions on the notions of ritual and theatre.
37. In his book Opillopillopìopillopillopà: viaggio nella musica popolare
salentina 1970–1998, Luigi Chiriatti (1998) lists the following groups: Aia
Noa, Alla Bua, Arakne Mediterranea, Aramirè, Argalìo, Astèria, Avleddha,
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, Compagnia delle Arti Xanti Jaca,
Ghetonìa, I Coreuti, Le Striare, Mascarimirì, Menamenamò, Officina Zoë,
Pierpaolo de Giorgi e I Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli, Terra de Menzu,
Traudia. By 2007, a number of these groups no longer existed. For most
there has been a turnover of group members. Others, such as Gli Ucci, are
not mentioned. Meanwhile, other groups have emerged. These include:
Acchiatùra, Aioresis, Ajara, Antonio Amato Ensemble, Aria Antica, Aria
Corte, Aria Frisca, Arsura, Artenoscia, Athanaton, Briganti di Terra
d’Otranto, Conserva Mara, Cotulapete, Criamu, Erva, Gli amici della
Taranta, I Calanti, I Figli di Rocco/Manekà, (ex Figli di Rocco), I Scianari,
Kalime te Scirocco, Kamafei (ex Kumenei), Kumenei, L’Ardiche, La
Taricata, La ‘zzamara, Lu Rusciu Nosciu, Macaria, Mays, Nidi d’Arak, Niuri
te Sule, Oce te jentu, Original Salento Tarantae, Quista è la strada delle
donne belle, Salentorkestra, Salentotò, Santu Pietru cu tutte le chiai,
Scazzaca Tarante, Tammurria, Terreneure, Zimbaria. This list does not
claim to be comprehensive, as groups may form and break up, nor does it
give a sense of respective media coverage and popularity. See also
h t t p : / / w w w. d m o z . o r g / Wo r l d / I t a l i a n o / A r t e / M u s i c a /
Generi/Etnica_e_Popolare/ Salentina/Artisti/ for a list of group websites.

38. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own and I take full
responsibility for any misunderstandings. The quotations cited draw from
my field notes, transcribed tape recordings and conversations retrieved from
memory or elaborated from memos taken during interviews. Where longer
interviews are cited, I have at times eliminated the question-answer format
and edited the conversation, while aiming to convey the speaker’s account
with as much immediacy as possible, despite the inevitable limitations of
translating from Italian or the Salentine dialect.
39. For anthropological considerations of ‘community’ in the context of
contemporary experiences of social affiliation and solidarity, see Amit
(2002); Rapport and Amit (2002).
40. See Cohen (1994); Morris (1994) and Gingrich (2004) for discussions on
the notions of ‘self ’ and ‘other’ on anthropology. See Gupta and Ferguson
27
Dances with Spiders
(1997) and Rapport (2003) for discussions on the power to define and
transform the ‘self ’ in social and cultural contexts that cannot be spatially
localized.
41. Gingrich (2004: 14) outlines successive stages in anthropological debates
on identity beginning with the 1940s studies on culture and personality,
1960s neo-Marxist approaches, the turn towards self-reflexivity
characterizing research in the 1980s, and the 1990s criticism of identity as
a notion conceptualized on the basis of static or fixed notions.
42. For a problematization of the notion of globalization, see Inda and Rosaldo
(2002).
43. Steven Feld (2000: 146–51) traces the emergence of world music within the
global music industry in relation to broader processes of globalization.
44. For a discussion of key problems entailed in the notion of performance, see
Schieffelin (1996: 59–84).
28
Part I
Past and Present
Spider Webs
For centuries, the tarantula ruled the lives and thoughts of many
inhabitants of the Salentine peninsula. In present-day Salento, it has
woven its way onto the stage. The initial chapter, ‘Seeking St Paul’,
sets the scene, throwing the spotlight on Galatina, trophy town of the
spider cult, ever since the interception of the Catholic Church
brought the wild dances of the tarantate under the rule of their
patron saint St Paul. On 29 June his feast day is celebrated and in
2001 the pilgrimages of old and new tarantati converged here,
bringing to the fore contradictions and complexities that have
puzzled thinkers for at least seven centuries. Chapter 2, ‘Webs
through Time’, spins this first-hand account into the vicissitudes of
European history, unravelling the dynamic links between views of
human nature, society and reality at large.
29
Dances with Spiders
Fig. 1.1 The Festival of St Peter and Paul, Galatina, 28 June 1999. The
religious procession with the statue of St Paul and golden bust of St Peter
(photo: Karen Lüdtke).
Figs 1.2 and 1.3 The tarantate

in Galatina in the early 1970s,
dancing on the San Pietro piazza
and before the altar inside St
Paul’s chapel (photos: Paolo
Longo).
30
Chapter 1
Seeking St Paul:
Historical and Contemporary
Enactments
My Saint Paul of the tarantulas,

you who have stung all the girls.
My Saint Paul of Galatina,
give me, and all the others, grace.1
I follow Evelina and her family into the main church on the city’s
central square, San Pietro piazza, to attend the first mass of this
festival day, as I have ever since we first met in 1998, on the eve of
St Paul’s feast day. It takes a little while to get there: on the square,
Evelina’s son and his wife explain that Evelina had been fine this
morning, but had gone through her ‘troubles’ earlier in the year.2 As
we stand and listen, others gather around to ask a question or two.
Evelina’s family speaks openly about this without much ado. In April
and especially in May, they had come to Galatina, to St Paul’s chapel,

on several occasions, sometimes even at night. They had been
extremely concerned, fearing Evelina might die, as she would faint
for up to two hours. This was at a time when her grandson was due
to leave to work in the north of Italy and they wondered if her
condition was linked to his coming departure. They had consulted
the family doctor and village priest, but both had advised them to
simply wait, knowing that her pilgrimage to St Paul’s chapel in
Galatina would bring relief. It appeared to offer the only source of
alleviation.
It was only 4.30 a.m. when I arrived in Galatina, city of St Peter
and Paul, on 29 June 2001. Festivities mark this feast day and the
cult of St Paul, offshoot of the tarantula’s cult, is taking its modern
31
Dances with Spiders
course, both unique in this cultural context and yet similar to

pilgrimages elsewhere (Dubisch and Winkelman 2005). I begin here
with an account of what happened in Galatina in the early hours of
St Peter and Paul’s feast day in 2001. It was the fifth time I had
witnessed this event. Never before, however, had I felt so many
diverse strands of the tarantula’s world come together on one
occasion. As old and new tarantati mingled with onlookers and
devotees, tensions between what was seen as real or fake emerged, as
did the defensiveness and desperation of some appropriating this site
for the expression of their personal crises. This occasion brought to
the fore key actors and key dynamics composing the worlds of
tarantism and neo-tarantism today. The following description of what
happened on Galatina’s main square on 29 June 2001 makes
reference to film footage shot on this very town square in preceding
decades, aiming to paint a picture of what has been and is a central
stage of the tarantula’s cult [see Fig 1.2].
Dances at Galatina: a Crossroads of Old

and New Tarantati
Ever since the Catholic Church began to clamp down on dance rituals
in the eighteenth century, Paul, protector against poisonous animals,
spouse and saviour of the tarantate, has attracted the tarantula’s
victims to Galatina in their attempts to gain relief. The chapel of St
Paul at Galatina has proven to be their most resilient public
performance platform. Paul’s followers draw their faith from the
Bible’s account in the New Testament (Acts 28: 3–5), which

documents his immunity to a snakebite following a shipwreck on
Malta (Montinaro 1996; Ligori et al. 2001). In his travels Paul is said
to have passed through Galatina. Nicola Caputo (1741) describes:
the local belief according to which St Paul landed on the Otranto peninsula
and went to the town of Galatina to visit some of its Christians. While
there, he bestowed upon a local Christian and his descendants the power
to heal those bitten by poisonous animals, by making the sign of the cross
over the wound and having the victim drink water from … the well attached
to the house known as casa di San Paolo. (Gentilcore 2000: 267)
Only in the eighteenth century was a chapel built inside this house
on Via Garibaldi and dedicated to the apostle. Its well was believed to
32
Seeking St Paul
hold healing water, making it a gathering point for the tarantate.3 By

1959, the well was closed for hygienic reasons and the chapel itself
was deconsecrated a few years later. Nevertheless, Paul is the reason
behind the small crowd scattered in front of the chapel entrance.
Architecturally, little hints at the significance of this doorway. It is
identical to the other front portal of the building in which the chapel
is set.4 And yet this inconspicuous site has attracted innumerable
pilgrims since its consecration and, what is more, continues to do so.
As I walk into the chapel, I see a starved, strained body crouched
on the altar steps below the tapestry of St Paul. It is impossible to
identify who this is, but the tense muscles and cramped posture
speak for themselves. A man enters the chapel with a guitar, kneels
by the shrine and begins to play softly. The sounds are directed
towards the distraught body, which collapses onto its left side,
moving away from the guitar and indicating for the music to stop.
The musician rises and exits, leaving the inert devotee stretched out
in front of the altar. Only after some twenty minutes does this young
man come to his feet, against what appears to be an enormous weight
pulling him down. It is Matteo. I had never seen him before. He
leaves the chapel with heavy, tormented strides, as if immune to
those around and seemingly not quite present.
Now there is a small group with tambourines and other
instruments just outside the chapel restlessly playing pieces of
Salentine music. Voices ring out, repeating one of the well-known
hymns of the tarantate: ‘Santu Paulu meu de le tarante’. Their songs
evoke the tarantula, St Paul and Galatina, but are mostly cut short, as
if in nervous anticipation of an interruption they would rather pre-
empt. There is Annalù Sabetta, known by some as la striara, the witch.

In her role as ‘astrologist, singer, guitar and accordion player, assistant
to the tarantate’ (Collu 2005: 123), she is – almost imperceptibly –
directing the goings-on at the chapel. She calls out to the musicians:
‘I’ll grant you three, four more minutes.’ It is she who has left a
bouquet of dried flowers and peacock feathers wrapped in red crêpe
paper on the altar. With it, on a white note, there is a dedication: ‘For
Luigi Stifani’. Annalù explains that she had been in Galatina on this
precise day last year, the day that Stifani, famous musician of the
tarantate, had died (Stifani 2000; Inchingolo 2003). ‘It is significant’,
she adds, ‘that he died on this very day!’ This final passage of his life,
too, is seen as marked by a link to the tarantula. Annalù is not the only
33
Dances with Spiders
one to identify omens in significant coincidences: in the past, the

diagnoses of the tarantate, too, were often based on haphazard
encounters with poisonous animals or St Paul, seen to be causative
incidents for their afflictions.
A young man approaches Annalù: ‘You’re a witch, aren’t you?’ She
responds with a laugh, theatrically mocking herself without giving a
clear reply: ‘Ooooh, yes, I fly!’ and her arms swoop up and down in
winged motions. Then, she steps out of the chapel and from its
threshold, stretches up both arms, directing her attention to the
group of young musicians and repeatedly closing her hands into fists.
They oblige her gesture and, reluctantly, stop playing.
It begins to rain. Not so distant lightning and thunder set the
scene. I stand sheltered under the eaves talking to photographer
Fernando Bevilacqua, in his fifties and fervent supporter of local
musicians and artists. I’m not surprised to see him here. As we talk,
Matteo, moving uneasily around the square, approaches Fernando,
interrupting our conversation: ‘Even the skies have heard my plea!’
Fernando seconds his interpretation: ‘If somebody wants something
strongly enough, things happen.’ Matteo welcomes the rain, the
water, while Fernando draws a connection beyond coincidence,
perhaps evoking the purifying and cooling qualities of these drops.
Apart from the hum of some thirty people and various video
cameras hovering around the chapel entrance, the streets of Galatina
are only just beginning to wake up. A rubbish van or two empty
dustbins. Cleaners sweep around market stalls, scooping up the dirty
traces of the previous night’s celebrations. The first vendors, having
spent the night behind their stands closed in by canvas blinds, begin
to stretch and surface for a coffee in a nearby bar, open early for
festive profits. The street lights still throw shadows onto the piazza
and the zone carved out by those who have come for St Paul’s sake is
randomly criss-crossed by others who are oblivious to this space or
simply tolerant of it. Cars pass by the chapel, some with partygoers
returning home from the previous night’s disco, unaware of the hush
their passing sends through the small crowd. Will their car stop in
front of the chapel doorway? Someone is clearly being expected.
To the citizens of Galatina, this occasion must appear mild and
harmless in comparison to not so long ago. Many tell vivid accounts
of what happened here in their lifetimes, in the twentieth century.
Some tarantate, I was told, came to Galatina on foot, many by
34
Seeking St Paul
carriage and, in later years, by bus or car. Their symptoms often

worsened in anticipation of this journey. Some fell into a crisis on
departure from their homes. Others saw their crises reappear as they
crossed the gates of Galatina. Some stopped here to urinate,
expelling bodily fluids as they drew closer to the abode of their
celestial husband, St Paul: perhaps a way of providing release from
the agitation of coming once again face to face with their fate?
Other tarantate collapsed as they arrived at the chapel of St Paul.
Some eyewitnesses report that it was as if the venue itself and the
presence of other tarantate created a contagious reaction, which
caused the crises of the newly arrived to re-emerge. ‘I’ve been
terrified at times to come here,’ says Evelina’s daughter-in-law. ‘Other
tarantate seemed to go crazy, shrieking about and jumping around on
the altar.’5 Many performed frantic rounds on San Pietro piazza in
front of the small chapel, at times attacking the crowds, infuriated by
photographers and cameramen, many of whom took refuge on
strategic rooftops and balconies. Everyone who grew up in Galatina
knew better than to wear bright clothes or shiny objects on the days
the tarantate came to town. Too many had fallen victim to their
assaults. Today, these are stories people love to tell. Often it was a
bright shirt or dress, red or yellow in particular, or a watch catching
the sunlight, which attracted the tarantate’s vexed attention and left
the terrified owners escaping for their lives, so as not to be left
standing on the square, as had happened to others, watchless or,
worse still, stripped naked.6 Intriguingly enough, red is also the
colour marking the dorsal abdomen of the European black widow,
one of the spider types held responsible for the tarantate’s plight.
Verbal assaults still mark the morning of 29 June 2001. ‘Andate

via! Andate via borghesi!’ (Go away! Go away, bourgeois!) The angry
shouts of Matteo ring out from where he is sitting between two young
women in hippy attire on a doorstep opposite the chapel.
Interestingly, his antagonism evokes a prevailing image of southern
Italy as defined by what it historically lacked in relation to an ideal
model of northern Italian cities: namely, a bourgeoisie, among other
factors (Gribaudi 1996). Matteo’s voice is directed towards a small
group, among whom I recognize the face of a university professor
who is also studying the contemporary buzz around the tarantula. A
debate is going on about whether anybody would still come to pay
their respects to St Paul or whether all were here in vain, wishfully
35
Dances with Spiders
thinking things were still going to happen. ‘Get lost! Go away!’ Again
and again Matteo defends this site, appropriated this year for his
own needs, echoing through his own proprietary manner the middle-
class bullying he is attacking, while, perhaps, distancing himself from
his own – possibly middle-class – upbringing. Annalù moves over to
him, conveying some restraining words in passing.
Inside the chapel, meanwhile, the altar carries the traces of other
devotees. There is a bottle of milk. It was left by one devotee, a young
woman in her thirties, well-known for her striking voice. There is also
a piece of round bread, left by a middle-aged man, with ragged hair,
torn trousers, bare feet and a strong smell of alcohol, who is now
distributing pieces of another loaf to everyone present.
An elderly lady dressed all in black (perhaps an ex-tarantata?)
appears on the chapel threshold. A man is by her side. Their manner
radically distinguishes them from those who have come so far. The
woman walks reluctantly, trailing a little behind her companion,
clearly disturbed and unsettled. Is it the crowd looking on? Is it the
memories this site stirs up? Is it the fear of what it might bring alive?
She kneels a few steps away from the altar, keeping a little behind her
companion’s legs as if to shield herself, while making the sign of the
cross. Her lips move in prayer.
After no more than a minute or two, both leave in restrained haste.
An air of relief moves through the small room. Everyone starts to
breathe again, moving joints gone stiff. For a moment, our attention had
been completely captivated and I am left in awe: a split-second sense of
the deep-seated, possibly apprehensive, devotion that has brought so
many to this shrine, stage of the last public performances of tarantism.7
This perception evokes images of the tarantate in my mind, footage

shot by Gianfranco Mingozzi in Galatina in the early 1960s.8
A tarantata all dressed in white drags her feet to the chapel entrance, leaning
heavily on two supporters. Another is carried over the threshold. Her limbs
drop loosely and heavily. Inside the chapel the light is dim. Flames, brought
here as signs of devotion, flicker through the red plastic of cylindrical wax
containers. An old lady lies on the only available bench. Her fingers clasp the
hand of a man sitting by her petrified face. A hooded figure squats on the altar
step. A young girl in white kneels in front of St Paul’s barricaded statue, while
a relative supports her from behind. Another tarantata has climbed on top of
the altar. Her head leans against St Paul’s tapestry, as if listening attentively,
hopefully. Voices and prayers ring through the air. They are melodic,
36
Seeking St Paul
desperate, grateful and occasionally punctuated by the piercing cry of the

tarantate: ‘A-hi!’ Inquisitive faces, framed in sunlight, peer through the
chapel’s portal. The crowd outside is packed tightly. Some are there for the
festival, many to witness the tarantate.
The mass of onlookers splits open at a tarantata’s command. Dressed in
black she approaches the chapel on her knees, cutting an aisle into the
surrounding throng. She moves, at first, as if lame or injured. Then, suddenly,
she is on her feet, galloping back and forth. The crowd retreats as her steps
carve out a large circle. Her arm thrashes upwards threatening the film
camera shooting from an overlooking balcony. A policeman seeks to calm her
male assistant, enraged by the film crew. The afflicted continues her reckless
rounds. Her guardian stands motionless, hands on hips. She begins to swirl on
the spot and he moves close, holding his arms around her body and skilfully
catching it as she drops backwards, unconscious, it seems. With a slight
gesture he summons the policeman nearby to pass over a cushion lying ready,
which he tucks under her tousled hair.
The festival procession passes [see Fig. 1.1]. Accompanied by a band, the
papier mâché statue of St Paul and golden bust of St Peter are paraded
through the city centre. Clergy in full ceremonial attire lead the way past
gaudy market stalls and underneath arched festival frameworks of bright,
coloured light bulbs.9 A tarantata races out of the chapel attacking and
splitting the crowd. A policeman blocks her attempts to reach the procession
and she is taken back to the chapel with three others controlling her
convulsions and resistance. More tarantate arrive. Others leave.
A tug on my arm brings me back to the present, interrupting the

movie passing in my mind. Marilena Angrisani greets me. She is from
Naples, in her twenties, and it is the third year we meet at Galatina.
Her graduate thesis was based on a month of fieldwork on women’s
views of tarantism (Angrisani 2000). Like her there are others I only
ever see on this occasion, once a year. Michela Almiento also
completed a thesis on the tarantate (Almiento 1990). From Brindisi
and now in her forties, she is one of the few to have participated in
the last rituals reported to have taken place here in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. Her friendship with the tarantata who danced then
has brought her back each year to face St Paul together with this
elderly lady. We met initially through my own research.
Then I greet Ada Metafune, physiotherapist and well-known
dancer of the pizzica. We know each other well, but I have never seen
her in Galatina before. She has told me how her life has been marked
by the pizzica, leading her to describe herself as a modern tarantata.
37
Dances with Spiders
We squat next to each other in the chapel, waiting, and she tells me
that she has always wanted to come, but has never quite managed to
make it at four in the morning. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t ready?’ she wonders.
‘But this year I told myself we’re going!’ She invites me to her house
later in the day. A television crew has asked her to re-enact a ritual
dance for them. She has done this many times, on stage and for the
camera, but insists that this will be the last: ‘I want to hang up the
frock of the tarantate! It’s as if I’ve passed that phase now, as if this
last time today will close the circle. It’s not by chance that they’ve
asked me to do this just now.’ Once again, just like Matteo’s reference
to the rain, coincidences are read like omens, as personal trajectories
are seen to cross those of the external world in more than a random
manner, creating a sense of invisible forces at play.
I meet Fabio. ‘There’re always lots of disrespectful people,’ he says.
‘Maybe this year we too can do something to maintain a bit of
respect!’ Clearly Annalù isn’t the only one concerned about
safeguarding this occasion. She knows this place and most people
there. She is also the first to announce the arrival of another
newcomer: ‘Look who’s coming! Crazy horse!’ She uses the English
words to refer to the nickname of this strongly built man in his early
thirties: Claudio ‘Cavallo’ (literally meaning ‘horse’) Giagnotti and
his group Mascarimirì are well-known for their progressive approach
to Salentine popular music or ‘trad-innovazione’, as they like to call
it (Romano 2006; Colopi and Giagnotti 2008).
It is almost 6 a.m. when a car finally stops directly in front of the
chapel entrance. It is carrying a tiny elderly lady, wrapped in black
and accompanied by four relatives. Like a magnet, their arrival
gathers the waiting crowd dispersed in the vicinity into a tight throng
around the chapel entrance. The tiny woman is Evelina. She gets out
of the car without any assistance and steps towards the chapel. I
haven’t seen her for a while. She extends both hands to me in
greeting, but keeps on walking. It is St Paul she has come to see and
he is the one she must greet. A few steps into the shrine, a shrill cry
emanates from her body and her arms fly up, as if hit by a laser beam
radiating from the tapestry depicting St Paul above the altar. She
collapses into the arms of two family members, who gently place her
nimble body onto a sheet and cushion spread out on the ground. She
lies there, immobile, for a few minutes. The air in the chapel is dense
with anticipation. Onlookers line the walls, standing or crouching,
38
Seeking St Paul
seemingly sunk away in contemplation, with a combination of

respect and curiosity creating a strange mix of outwardly attentive
introspection.
After no more than a few minutes, Evelina begins to move her
limbs and opens her eyes. Her daughter-in-law helps her to her feet
and space is made on the small bench flanking the chapel wall,
where she sits quietly, lost in herself, looking strained and extremely
tired. For almost half a century now, coming to Galatina has proven
to be the only balm for her suffering. ‘Sometimes, in June, we had to
come three or four times a day,’ says her son. His wife adds: ‘In 1968,
it was much worse. Now for some ten years she has been better. It’s
strange, since there’s no apparent reason. They say that when the
tarantula that bites you dies you feel better too, but you mustn’t take
Evelina as an example. She doesn’t move much and never danced.’10
Evelina’s offering to the saint has always been that of a pilgrimage,
channelling her crises according to modified ritual terms, more
acceptable than ritual dances, although officially dismissed by
Catholic doctrine. Traumatic events have conditioned her life: the
death of her brother and father at an early age and the birth of her
child out of wedlock. Condemned to remain single by social and
religious mores, she has increasingly isolated herself in her
homestead, with trips to work on the fields and her pilgrimage to
Galatina becoming exceptional forays beyond its walls.
This year she appears to be in better shape. Often, in the past, she
would faint before leaving the house on St Paul’s day and her family had
to drive her to Galatina unconscious. In previous years, her grandson
tells, ‘she was lying on the back seat, giving off muffled sounds. Her
fingers were clawed together like the fangs of a spider, occasionally

twitching, as if wanting to grab or bite something.’11 The tarantula’s
presence is identified in Evelina’s bodily state of rigidity and as a
common part of her environment. ‘La nonna (Gran)’, as she is
affectionately called, ‘seems to attract spiders. In the fields too, there are
always some around her. She never kills them.’12 Even in the absence of
music and dance, the feared spider is seen to have singled out Evelina.
Now too, in the chapel, she is the centre of everyone’s attention,
although many squat or lean against the chapel walls as if lost in
prayer or contemplation, not wanting to appear too inquisitive.
Suddenly, the fulcrum of attention swerves. Matteo is carried into the
chapel, having abandoned himself to the arms of Fernando and
39
Dances with Spiders
Cavallo. Evelina blurs out of focus as they place him on the ground by
the altar steps. Matteo’s pleas to St Paul blend with those to Cavallo:
‘Aiutami! Suona per me!’ (Help me! Play for me!) Cavallo stands,
hands drooping indecisively by the side of his large body, uncertain, it
seems, about how to react. Someone brings in a tambourine and
Fernando speaks out in a firm, quiet voice: ‘Can we all leave?’
Evelina’s son is the first to exit. Others move towards the door,
hesitating at the threshold, through which the lens of a video camera
cranes. Even Evelina is disturbed. She gets to her feet and,
accompanied by her daughter-in-law, moves to the small room behind
the altar closed off by a thick red curtain. Before leaving the chapel
she must urinate (her family brings a plastic container carried in an
inconspicuous paper bag) to expel what is tormenting her in a final act
of release. Once again, bodily fluids cross bodily boundaries, reversing
the direction of poison seen to be injected through the skin’s surface.
Then Evelina too leaves the chapel with the rest of her family.
I sit for a split second more, torn between the desire and curiosity to
observe what will happen and the request for everyone to leave. I
decide to leave and consequently rely on the fragmented tales of others
to describe what happened next behind the closed chapel door, acting
as both a visual and a partial acoustic barrier. Initially, I am told, a few
people managed to remain in the chapel. A man came out calling for a
young girl for whom Matteo had asked. Ada recounts later how Matteo
furiously beat around himself at the outset and she had found herself
the target of one of his blows. We joke about this (perhaps with more
than an ounce of belief?), evoking contagious magic: no doubt, he will
have conveyed some vital energy to her for her performance later that
day. Eventually, others confirm, only Cavallo with his tambourine and
the young female friend had remained in the chapel with Matteo.
When he finally exited, one witness remarks later, it seemed without
doubt that he had found relief.
In the meantime, I accompany Evelina and her family into the
church and we move to the same row of seats as each year. At the end
of the service, Evelina and her daughter-in-law go up to the altar to
take communion. Then we move on, as in previous years, to the
niche where the bust of St Peter stands, before circling the pews to
the other side wing to see the statue of the saviour himself: St Paul.
His papier mâché figure is imposingly spotlighted from below.
Elevated on a pedestal above the ground, it stands among flowers and
40
Seeking St Paul
behind neat rows of electric lights, each lit by a devotee’s prayer and
a coin or two tinkling into the wooden box of offerings.
St Paul’s robes are a striking red and green. One arm is poised
across his chest, while his weight rests lightly on his left sandalled
foot, accentuating the long, silver sword he is carrying like a walking
stick. By his feet, on either side, two cherubs hover in space: one
carries an open book, the other a green serpent stretching through
the air. The apostle’s gaze is framed by his bearded face and crowned
by rays of gold. A number of devotees stretch across the line of lights
to touch his gown, his feet, his body, securing his blessing through
direct contact. Sometimes a paper handkerchief is used and then
safely tucked away into a pocket or handbag. St Paul’s followers are
numerous and it seems that most citizens of Galatina come to see
him at least once during the festival days. Others arrive from
elsewhere. For many the tarantula is nowhere in the picture.
For Evelina’s family, meanwhile, the spider is present and the
reason behind their prayers and the lighting of yet another small lamp
or more at St Paul’s feet. Eventually, at a relaxed pace, we leave the
church and cross the main square to the local Eros Bar for a coffee. A
few sips of strong caffeine mark the end of this year’s visit. Evelina’s
may not be a ritual of music and dance, but it is nevertheless a
pilgrimage with ritualized phases: the passage to Galatina by car; a
visit to the chapel of St Paul; attendance at the early morning service;
a quick drink in the nearest bar; and, finally, the return journey home.
As we say goodbye, a young man (years later I discover he is from
Ostuni, near Brindisi, and also doing research on tarantism)
approaches Evelina together with a friend, asking whether they could
say goodbye to her. They shake her hand and kiss her cheeks.
Later our paths cross, and both ask, a little worried, if it had been
inopportune of them to greet Evelina. It didn’t seem so to me, yet,
inevitably, their gesture creates a mark, an aura attributed to Evelina
by way of their move, reminiscent of those seeking contact with St
Paul’s statue to guarantee his blessing. She is one of the very few still
propelled to Galatina in the midst of crises and, as such, stands as a
bridge between the tarantate of history and present circumstances in
which the tarantate have gained new fame. I wonder what
significance this tiny, elderly lady holds in the eyes of these two young
men. I never did find out, as they leave quickly, almost timidly, but I
imagine she may represent a living memorial to the rituals that once
41
Dances with Spiders
marked the territory of the Salento and are now retrospectively

spectacularized (if not glorified), as well as a source of hope for those
going through crises themselves.
Evelina and her family have left and I find myself jolted back to a
different present. Once again my gaze extends to a wide angle, taking
in what is happening all around the square. I wander across the
square to a bar next to the chapel. Downstairs there is a small group
of people I had met earlier: Fernando, Michela, Fabio, Enza. The
conversation swerves to Matteo’s case, as we struggle to confront this
incident with the existing categories in our minds. Was his behaviour
acceptable or completely out of place? Was it real or put on? My
immediate feeling was that his behaviour was one of imitation and
manipulation, highly desiring of attention. Condemning his actions, I
realized I was rejecting him for precisely the reasons for which the
tarantate have been accused for centuries: for putting on a show while
asking for a cure – an apparent paradox that is anything but new.
Already in 1771, the English traveller Burney was convinced that
tarantism was ‘an imposition practised by the people of Apulia to gain
money: that not only the cure but the malady itself is a fraud’ (Burney
1771: 313). By the year 2001, this notion of fraud or fiction has not
lost its pertinence. On the contrary, it appears more acute than ever,
turning a spotlight on the link between performance and therapy: is
the ‘show’ part of the cure? Or is it the best way of avoiding the steps
and changes required for recovery to take place and essentially
maladaptive? My sense is that both are possible. Later in the day,
watching Ada dance would allow me to reflect further on this.
In the meantime, in the Galatina bar, people’s views differ.
Fernando is adamant: ‘Matteo is a tarantato. In my opinion, what

happened today has only, once again, verified prejudices towards
tarantism. The tarantate in the past, too, were ‘faking’, in the sense
of finding an alternative route of cathartic escape, and, perhaps, also
conscious of this. In the end, each one of us here is a tarantato for
some reason or another.’ ‘What happened this morning’, Enza
disagrees, ‘is different from what happened in the past, to the
tarantate. For them, the moment of trance was important. This
morning, there was none of that.’ ‘I wanted to throw Matteo out of
the chapel,’ Fabio responds vehemently:
I felt that his behaviour was disrespectful towards the tarantate. In the
past, they had no choice. It was the only way of getting better. It was the
42
Seeking St Paul
only way out that peasant culture presented. But Matteo doesn’t know
anything about this culture. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a friend, I’m fond of
him and I don’t like to see him suffer, but I don’t agree with what happened
this morning. It’s a personal issue. It has nothing to do with tarantism!
Relationship, work and health problems are mentioned as triggers for

Matteo’s presence in Galatina. Disjunctures appear to mark all major
webs of his life and we may wonder to what extent his problems were
also related to the fact that the display of his crisis could not be
enacted in his home, in the presence of key people in his life.
A little while later, I come across Cavallo and others talking just
outside the chapel. Cavallo is one of the stars of this morning’s show,
yet right now, clearly, this isn’t a suit he is too keen to wear. ‘What
really bothered me’, he points out, ‘were all the people there. It’s not
like I feel at ease doing this kind of thing. There is also the woman
from Scorrano who comes to ask me to play for her. But I never have.
I just give her a tape.’ He is referring to one of the few other elderly
tarantate who apparently still performed rituals at Galatina in the
1990s. Months later, I meet Cavallo on the streets of Lecce and he
mentions that, since playing for Matteo, he has gained prestige as a
musician in the eyes of some. Although he himself does not seem to
live this experience unambiguously, others have invested it with their
own meanings: he was elected, he was seen as capable of intervening,
he had, perhaps, had a glimpse of another reality, that of tarantism,
glorified now that it was apparently, and with the exception of a few
cases, out of reach. Crisis and celebrity seem to feed each other.
Being catapulted into playing for someone in crisis has boosted
Cavallo’s celebrity, almost independently of his own will.
Clearly, the notion of tarantism is used to reflect many different

realities. At first glance, show business, fashion and fun appear to
have replaced issues of personal crisis. At the same time, they may
also serve to deflect these. Beyond the open, public and academic
discourses on the tarantula’s dance, there are other private, more
silent discourses founded largely on direct, visceral experiences of the
tarantula’s music and dance.
A key question that arose for me, however, on this morning of 29
June 2001, was whether Matteo and Evelina really wanted to get
better. Were they ready to make the changes required to overcome
what was making them suffer? Or were their actions in effect
reinforcing the status quo of what was making them suffer? My feeling
43
Dances with Spiders
was that the powerful myth of the tarantula (considering particularly

its revitalized fame) can and could work both ways: as a way of
accessing alternative and potentially curative experiences and
perspectives on reality with the assistance of others, as well as a way of
demanding change from others so as not to put oneself in jeopardy of
change. In this sense, ‘putting on a show’ may act either to confront or
to conceal crises.
Dances on Screen: Invention versus

Intention
The tarantate were attributed various degrees of celebrity or notoriety
throughout history: they were well-known and their rituals attracted
attention. The critiques of Matteo appear to mirror this historical
paradox of being both revered and castigated. A look at two
performances captured on film – one performed with the prime aim
of healing in 1959 and the other staged for a television series in 2001
– and the contexts in which they are taken and shown reveal key
issues regarding the authenticity of enactments and the centrality of
intentions in the performative process.
Maria’s 1959 Domestic Ritual: a Historical

Performance
A small, crowded room sets the scene. It is lit up by two flickering candles and
by the rays of the sun falling from a door frame and tiny window. An unmade
bed leans against one wall, tipping to the ground on one side, as if two of its
legs have been amputated to allow its occupant to roll effortlessly onto the
floor. A small altar with religious images framed by flowers hangs from the
wall and on the bedside table next to a flask of water stands a picture of St
Peter and Paul. A red cloth masks the chimney, with a crucifix on its
mantelpiece. The floor is cleared, except for a few chairs and benches on the
edge, seating observers and the musicians, including recently deceased
violinist Luigi Stifani, a guitarist and an accordion and tambourine player. A
white sheet is spread across the ground, delimiting the ritual perimeter. In one
corner stands a basket with offerings of money and paper icons depicting St
Peter and Paul. Within the sheet’s contours, a young woman lies prostrate.
She must be in her late twenties. Her dress and belt are white, and her ruffled
skirt reveals long, white underwear, frilled at the ends. She is barefoot and her
hair falls over her face and shoulders in tousled strains. Underneath, her
44
Seeking St Paul
expression is harsh and immobile, punctuated by eyes that open and close in
response to the pizzica beats reverberating through the room.
These are images of the dance of Maria of Nardò, rendered famous

among the tarantate by Ernesto De Martino’s book La terra del rimorso
(1961a), the most in-depth and well-known study on tarantism to date.
The film La terapia coreutico-musicale del tarantismo (Carpitella 1960)
shows her dance on 24 June 1959 (De Martino 2005: 38–46), and is,
to my knowledge, the first cinematographic document of these rituals,
despite the many mutations already affecting this tradition as socio-
economic and religious pressures were leading to its demise. Maria’s
dance, as captured in Carpitella’s film, is one of the only domestic
rituals not staged for the camera documented on celluloid. Ever since,
with a few exceptions, photographers and camera teams have had to
rely on reproductions: staged rituals performed by tarantate, or
substitute actors, paid to do so.13
Forty-two years later, for the festival of St Peter and Paul on 30
June 2001, this original footage is projected onto a massive screen
hoisted in front of the baroque façade of Galatina’s main church on
the San Pietro piazza. A spotlighted stage flanks the canvas sheet
across which black and white figures move: shots of Maria’s ritual
and others of the tarantate performing their crises on the very
pavement now packed with the film’s standing audience. A strange
disjuncture appears: moments of the past, hovering ghostlike a few
metres above the ground, continuing to place a spell on those looking
on, now safe to wear whatever colour they please, with a remote-
control option to switch off a performance that the Church fought to
extinguish for centuries. It is a screened, carefully canned version of
tarantism, available in easily digestible portions, and subsequently

washed (and danced) down to the beat of the pizzica and other
Salentine music, as various local bands perform on stage [see Fig.
8.1]. Meanwhile, the ritual filmed by Carpitella (1960) continues on
screen, and I elaborate it here with details from De Martino’s (De
Martino 2005: 38–44) written accounts of the very same ritual:
Four men in light summer clothes and sandals play the violin, tambourine,
guitar and accordion. Their faces are marked by fatigue, the effect of playing
from dawn to dusk, with nothing but brief breaks. Their notes bombard the
distraught-looking woman lying lethargically on the floor without reacting to
the melodies proposed. Then, triggered by a new piece, she begins to move,
taking up the rhythm. Her feet tap and her head moves rapidly from side to
45
Dances with Spiders
side. She shuffles across the floor on her shoulders, increasing the momentum.
Knees arched, she propels herself backwards on alternate heels, circling the
entire ritual perimeter with her arms stretched out or folded on her chest. At
one point, she tries to thread her body through the legs of a wicker chair,
which tumbles over.14 She follows, rolling over and over, moving across the
floor. She wrenches herself forward on her stomach, seeking the proximity of
the instruments, as if hungry to absorb, almost touch, every note.
The violinist kneels down in response to her approach. His bow moves
close to her ear and propels her onto her knees with her hands crouched in
front of her, chest tipping rhythmically from side to side, embodying mutual
interactions of ‘call and response’.15 Abruptly, the tarantata springs to her feet
and runs in circles, never losing the rhythm. Her moves include those of the
pizzica, some danced on the spot, while a handkerchief, clasped between
both hands, marks others. Her feet hit the ground rapidly, over and over again:
stamping, crushing, destroying.
Without warning a newcomer appears at the door, dressed in a bright red
and yellow striped pullover. The young tarantata becomes agitated and wavers
visibly. The intruder is chased away with violent accusations, but the invisible
chord between dancer and musicians has snapped. The tarantata remains
perturbed, as if inebriated and fails to respond to the rhythm the musicians
strike up again. Quickly, coloured ribbons are sought in remedy, as colours,
like sounds and movements, are part of the ritual remedy kit. Different
ribbons are thrown towards the young woman. She ignores them at first. Then
a red one provokes her attention. She grabs the strip of fabric, fixes it with her
gaze and shreds it to pieces with her teeth. Only then does she gradually pick
up the musical rhythm again and the ritual framework is retrieved.
Eventually the rounds danced by the young tarantata diminish in
circumference. She twirls in a pirouette, loses the rhythm and collapses.
Prepared arms bolster her fall and gently lower her head onto a cushion. A
cover is draped over her resting limbs. The musicians stop playing and wipe
off their sweat. Water and food are brought for refreshment, but the pause is
only brief. The dance must go on. Only late in the evening does the music stop
as a man bursts into the house, angrily dispelling the crowd. He is the
employer of the young dancer and urgently anticipates her return to work. It
is he who has anticipated the money (to be worked off by the tarantata later
on) to pay the musicians. For the time being, treatment is rescheduled for the
following day.
The next morning, the first musical chords stretch the tarantata’s body into
an arc: her spine flexes into a bridge resting on her strained neck and heels.16
Within a few seconds she drops onto her back and rolls off the bed onto the
ground. Numerous dance cycles are repeated. A short break is taken at noon,
and only in the early afternoon, winks between experienced bystanders
46
Seeking St Paul
confirm the first signs that recovery is close. The afflicted had eaten a little
earlier. She keeps on emitting short, shrill screams. Her dance phases are
shorter now and show a greater variety of steps. Then, finally, she breaks off in
mid-cycle, signals to the musicians to stop playing and steadfastly walks to her
bed. Relief spreads through the room. Just to be sure this is for real a last tune
is played. It is dedicated to St Paul. The young tarantata remains insensitive
to the music and, grateful for her recovery, everyone present kneels in prayer.
Later that day she dances once more at Galatina, in the chapel of St Paul. It
was he, she confirms, who has saved her yet again, whispering in dialect into
her ears: ‘I grant you grace.’
The life of the tarantata Maria, as recounted by De Martino (2005:

38–46), is marked early by the spider’s bite: her father dies when she
is young; at eighteen she falls in love with a man whose family
disapproves of her and, rejected in this way, she first succumbs to the
tarantula. She is compelled to dance and eventually persuaded, in
spite of St Paul’s demands to join her in mystical union, to marry
another man who is often ill and out of work. Nevertheless, St Paul
rules as her spiritual spouse and her annual afflictions allow her to
participate in the celebrations of his feast day. At the time of writing,
I am told, Maria continues to pay her respects at Galatina.17
Ada’s 2001 Dance on TV: a Contemporary

Performance
In the afternoon of 29 June 2001, as I drive to see Ada, I have no
doubts that her performance for the cameras of the Canale 5
television crew will merely reinforce the gaping chasm widely
perceived between past and present spider dances. However, this
prognosis also turns out to be too simplistic.

At Ada’s house, in the south-west Salento, the film crew, musicians
and family members are ready to set off when I arrive. In the car, Ada
begins to talk:
You can’t imagine how much I dreamt this afternoon. This morning I was
quite well after coming back from Galatina, but sleeping now after lunch,
I went through lots of things. I discharged myself with my dreams. I dreamt
of a dead person, Amadeo De Rosa. He died two years ago and every year
we organize a series of musical events in his memory. It was he who inspired
us young people to start with the pizzica. He was there. And then I dreamt
that I was dancing the pizzica and being lifted off the ground. I was literally
floating. It might be significant, now that I have to dance.18
47
Dances with Spiders
Once again, a fine thread of meaning is evoked to link experiences

and events. This occasion is not new to Ada. She has performed the
tarantate’s dance often, but it is the first time she is dancing with the
intention of having a final go. This date represents a symbolic
stepping stone, a desired turn in a dramatic vein of events and
experiences running through her adult life, surfacing soon after her
marriage and the birth of her first child, and often leaving her
abandoned to crises. Now she is in her early forties, the mother of
two children, a physiotherapist and fitness trainer by profession and,
through an association founded with her husband, engaged in
promoting cultural events in her hometown. She is a radiant woman,
with striking black hair and delicate facial features. Learning to
dance the pizzica, she stresses, has changed her life in many ways.
Above all, it has allowed her to connect with her emotions and
sensuality. This, she emphasizes, is why she sees herself as a modern
tarantata. In subtle interpretative stitches, she has woven the
costume of the tarantate into the fabric of her personal life,
connecting her own story with the precedent of other women in crisis
in the region in which she was born, a precedent made accessible not
only through the stories she has grown up with and sought out from
elderly generations, but also through the documentaries and
numerous publications booming in parallel to the tarantula’s music
and dance in recent years.19
Another car has joined us and we come to a halt on the top of a
ridge that drops down to the Ionian coast, providing a splendid view
of the port of Gallipoli and the surrounding coastline. The late
afternoon countryside stretching to the sea is a hazy olive-silver. A
few steps below the natural granite terraces where the cars are
parked, there is a small church set into the rock: a cave furnished
with pews, an altar and a cross at the entrance. Ironically, like the
tarantate, Ada was to perform near a chapel. The filmset is prepared.
Microphones and light exposures are tested, while Ada changes into
a long white gown with frilled cotton trousers and touches up her
make-up. Barbara, a young woman and passionate dancer from her
hometown, gives her a hand and then hugs her tightly, noticing how
emotional she has become. Ada’s eyes are filled to the brim. She
comes up to me, saying: ‘Dammi un bacio’ (Give me a kiss),
acknowledging what was going on inside her, making Barbara and me
aware of this intimate space, somehow pulling us in.
48
Seeking St Paul
The musicians begin to warm up. There are five of them now, with
four tambourines and an accordion. They are all men, members of
various local music groups. None of them is specifically dressed for
the occasion, their sandals, cotton trousers and T-shirts being their
usual summer attire. Ada and her mother, petite in a flowery dress,
prepare the ritual space on an even stone surface. They remove small
pebbles and twigs and then unfold a large white sheet, with a lace
edge, over a slight padding of mats taken from the cars around. The
sheet is spread with ritual objects, reminders of tarantism’s
syncretism with Catholicism, while at the same time, perhaps,
mirroring Ada’s individual preferences: an image of St Paul, coloured
ribbons, a red scarf, a string of bells. Then all is set.
Ada’s expression is one of concentration and anguish. She stands a
few metres from the ritual sheet, in between her mother and Barbara,
now dressed all in black for the occasion, one arm hooked into each
of theirs. The music starts. Slowly, extremely slowly, the group of three
women moves towards the ritual space. Ada’s soles drag heavily across
the ground and her head tips to one side as she abandons herself to
the performance. The musicians play in line, with their backs to the
magnificent coastal setting. Their manner appears automatic,
detached. Ada collapses onto the sheet, still supported by her two
female assistants. She lies face down on the ground, hardly moving at
first. A mop of hair hides her face. Close up, through my own camera
lens, the scene is a colour version of black and white photos of Maria
of Nardò’s dance. Slowly, she begins to stir in heavy, listless motions.
Then her rhythm picks up, she rolls over and over, gets to her feet,
moves close to the musicians with her head between her hands and
two tambourines, dances and then collapses onto the hard ground.
Her mother remains close by at all times, occasionally adjusting the
sheet as it shrivels up and out of place.
Two cameras move around Ada, in between her and the musicians,
like hungry mouths and overextended gazes, lustful where she is
listless. Never, however, is she interrupted or told what to do. No
more than fifteen minutes pass in all. In between, I have my own
(camera) crisis, perhaps indicative of my own degree of participation:
in a hectic attempt to replace my used-up film, I open the camera
without rewinding the completed roll, tearing out the ribbon of
ruined pictures as a last resort to capture at least some images of the
final part of the performance. Various others are standing and sitting
49
Dances with Spiders
around the scene. Three women on a late afternoon stroll up the hill
have moved close to watch. Then the music stops.
Ada sits up. She has an air of immense vulnerability, of gaping
emptiness about her. Everyone tends to themselves, their instruments,
the cameras, and Ada is left to her own resources without any notes
or the attentive camera gaze to sustain her. Barbara zooms in to
embrace her. Ada stretches to wrap her arms around the younger
woman, as if clasping on to a life-belt, something to support her as she
resurfaces, as she comes out of her role to face reality beyond the
performance. Finally, after a few moments, she gets to her feet slowly
and then moves around kissing everyone present in turn, musicians
and attendants, thanking each one.20
Just a few minutes later, Ada is back in front of the camera, under
a tree close to the cave, for an interview of some twenty minutes.
When everything is finally packed up to go, the camera team from
Canale 5 appears content. They are making a series, entitled ‘Gentes’,
on popular traditions of Italy and Europe, which is to be screened
nationwide in autumn 2001. Ada jokes light-heartedly in the car,
telling how she had been asked to end the interview with a warning:
‘State attenti alla tarantola!’ (Beware of the tarantula!)
Driving back to Lecce that night, I am struck by the strong
emotions Ada’s performance evoked not only in her but also in me,
seeing that I knew some of her story. One of the musicians I talked
to at a later stage, meanwhile, remarked how disappointed he had
been by the whole event, as it was too staged, too artificial. Once
again the fine link between invention and intention surfaces,
suggesting that faking or acting-as-if, so easily dismissed as fraud,
may (or may not) have a pertinent influence on everyday reality. Ada
used the setting invented for the TV crew with the intention of
fulfilling her personal objective of closing a phase in her own life.
Few others knew. Yet the cameras documented this moment,
eventually letting the whole nation witness it. Ada’s motivation was
deeply meaningful on a personal level, independently of what it
might mean or how it might appear to others. Her engagement went
beyond that of putting on a show for Canale 5, making it both staged
and not-staged at the same time.
Meanwhile, the events and discussions of 29 June 2001 left me
feeling as if I’d been around an inter-looping highway system of
tarantula tracks, on which Evelina’s, Matteo’s and Ada’s crises
50
Seeking St Paul
intersected. The life stories and pilgrimages of three generations

criss-crossed at Galatina, in one tiny chapel with a crumbling altar,
together with those of many others who, like me, found themselves
witnessing and participating with strong sentiments and animated
discussions. The double-sided link between crises and celebrity
emerged. Depending on the intention behind any performance, it
may encompass both the curative support of others, who
acknowledge the reality of issues and experiences faced by the
afflicted individual, and the manipulative potential of exploiting
others’ attention to perpetuate and reinforce situations of affliction.
The next chapter’s look at the tarantula’s appeal throughout history
provides further evidence.
51
Dances with Spiders
Notes
1. ‘Santu Paulu meu de le tarante, pizziche le caruse tutte quante, Santu Paulu
meu de Galatina, famme na grazia a mie e a tutte quante.’ This is one of the
most popular songs in the repertoire of Salentine musicians today.
2. The Italian words Evelina and her family use are i guai (literally translated
as ‘the troubles’ or ‘the difficulties’).
3. Giancarlo Vallone (2004) quotes Congedo (1903) to suggest that the
healing qualities of this well may be ascribed to healing spit, lo sputo
risanatore, and that the owners of the house where St Peter and Paul
apparently resided in Galatina were said to cure poisonous bites with their
spit. Such treatments of poisonous bites with spit were also applied by the
sanpaolari and others (see Chapter 6, ‘Tarantula Alternatives: Choosing
Treatment Options’). These references to the use of liquids in healing
practices may also be linked to the relevance of rain, urine and poisons in
case studies of tarantism, as well as discussions on ‘fluids of healing’ in
medical anthropology more generally. See Hsu and Low (2007).
4. This was the entrance to the eatery Il Covo della Taranta, the den or lair of
the tarantula, in the first years of the new millennium and a clothes shop for
children by 2007.
5. Galatina, 29 June 1997.
6. Marina Roseman (2002: 122) points out how ‘shimmering things,
combining movement and light, exist at the fuzzy boundary between the
visual and the kinetic, disassembling distinct sensory fields,’ and thereby
play a key role in bringing about experiences entangling ‘the empirically
observable with the magically real in a world of temporal, sensorial and
experiential overlap’.
7. See Nocera (1994: 178–86) and Almiento (1994: 255–66). These accounts
of rituals performed in the chapel of St Paul at Galatina in the 1990s are
variously disputed or confirmed.

8. What follows is a description of snapshots from this footage.
9. Salentine festivals are characterized by elaborate street illuminations
composed of coloured light-bulb designs, known as luminarie, creating a
festive atmosphere and leaving streets bright as daylight even at night-time.
10. Galatina, 29 June 1997. Evelina’s relation to the tarantula is mediated by
the figure of St Paul and her pilgrimage in his honour rather than music or
dance. Nevertheless, I present her situation here, as she is the only
tarantata who still openly manifests her affliction at Galatina. Moreover, her
annual pilgrimage constitutes a performative event shaping her story and is
indicative of a larger context of entanglements within which the tarantula is
seen to intervene.
11. Galatina, 29 June1997.
12. Ibid.
52
Seeking St Paul
13. It remains unclear as to what the earliest audio-visual registrations of

tarantism are. In 1959, De Martino and his team took photos, as well as film
and sound recordings of the tarantate in the Salento. Franco Pinna’s
photographs have been published in Pinna (2002) and in La terra del
rimorso (De Martino 1961a), the first edition of which was accompanied by
a registration of recordings made inside the chapel of St Paul in Galatina.
Diego Carpitella’s footage was reproduced in the documentary La terapia
coreutico-musicale del tarantismo (1960). This was later included in
Gianfranco Mingozzi’s film Sulla terra del rimorso (1982), which was
reproduced in video format in 2002 and in DVD format in 2007 (Nardò:
Besa) and sold together with the book La taranta (Mingozzi 2002),
containing the complete film script. Other pictures by photographers
Franco Pinna, Arturo Zavattini and Ando Gilardi appear in the book I viaggi
nel Sud di Ernesto De Martino (Gallini and Faeta 1999). Earlier sound
recordings were registered by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella in 1954
(Brunetto 1995: 139–47), and reproduced on the CD Italian Treasury:
Puglia: The Salento, edited by Goffredo Plastino (2002, Alan Lomax
Collection). For further musical sources, see also Agamennone (2005),
Attanasi (2007) and Chiriatti et al. (2007).
14. The tarantate were said to weave themselves through chairs in imitation of
the spider weaving its web.
15. These interactions bring to mind relationships between dancers and
musicians in many West African and sub-Saharan African musical traditions
(Chernoff 1979), as well as those described by Deidre Sklar (2001) in her
account of dance performances during festivities in honour of the Virgin of
Guadaloupe.
16. The tarantate were typically said to perform this movement, also described
as a ‘hysteric arc’.
17. Maurizio Nocera, 1 April 2006, referring to June 2005.
18. Interestingly, Ada’s dream relates to descriptions of trance dancing

elsewhere, such as among the Temiar of Malaysia: trance dancers speak of
‘soaring above the forest canopy and circling the mountain tops’ (Roseman
1993: 162) while dancing.
19. Various publishers – Aramirè, Besa, Capone, to name just a few – specialize
in publications regarding the tarantula’s music and dance.
20. This tender moment of ‘resurfacing’ is described in connection with trance
dances elsewhere. Edward Schieffelin (1996: 77) speaks of how, ‘coughing
and gasping’, a Kaluli medium in Papua New Guinea ‘returned to the living’.
Roseman (1993: 162) tells of how other participants help Malaysian Temiar
dancers who have fainted back onto their feet, and by ‘supporting them
around the waist … begin to dance them back to consciousness’, to their
‘true heart’ and ‘true eyes’, thereby choreographing ‘themes of community
support and interdependence’ (ibid.: 165).
53
Dances with Spiders
Fig. 2.1 From Observations Rares de Médecine, 1758

(reprinted in Scholes 1964). This work asserts that the
insects will dance rhythmically if a tarantella tune is
played to them (source: Oxford University Press).
54
Chapter 2
Webs through Time:
Origins and History of Tarantism
The symbol of the taranta

lends a figure to the formless,
rhythm and melody to menacing silence,
and colour to the colourless …
The symbol offers a perspective
for imagining, hearing and watching
what we lack imagination for
and are deaf and blind to,
and which nevertheless peremptorily
asks to be imagined, heard and seen.
De Martino 2005: 36
Once upon a time, Satan compelled a malicious woman to harm the

Virgin Mary of Finisterrae. This woman captured a number of
tarantulas and, knowing they were poisonous, placed them in the
alms caskets of the Madonna’s church. Henceforth, all who came to

leave a coin or two in devotion were treacherously bitten in their
hands. Fear and anguish spread among the faithful and, suspecting
witchcraft, many began to abandon the Madonna’s shrine. The Virgin
Mary, in turn, spoke to the spiders: ‘You were born without malice,
but an evil woman taught you to act in an immoral way. Now you will
do the same for punishment and everyone will be afraid of you. No
longer will you be spiders bringing gain. Instead, you will bring
death.’ By virtue of her powers, the Virgin directed the rays of the
ferocious July sun onto the tarantulas and the atrocious heat drove
them to madness. They poisoned each other, contorted themselves in
55
Dances with Spiders
agony, fled into the woods and then took revenge against the evil
woman by developing a preference to bite women. Through their
poisonous bite they transferred their own misfortune, the agony of
convulsions and madness, onto their victims.
Thus goes the legend of Sanarica, a small town not far from Santa
Maria di Leuca on the southernmost tip of the Salento, also known as
Finisterrae: end of the earth (Bronzini 1976: 136). This story places
Satan at the origins of tarantism. One woman falls for his powers and
the tarantula spiders become her tool. One curse is offset by another
and the spiders, ever since, dance to the Madonna’s tune. The
tarantulas are depicted as no more than playing cards in a classic
match of good against evil. They are props for the two-sided roles of
tyrants and victims, symbolically imbued with the power of whomever
they come to represent. They are cards in the hands of others, and yet
with a sting (and valency) of their own, played out in reaction to an
original sin, the original pact with Satan on which their own doom
depends: the original sin of a woman, for which all other women must
pay. Christian imagery is blatant in this game, reminiscent of another
downfall and another temptation, represented by the powerful symbols
of an apple and a snake. The legend of Finisterrae wraps tarantism into
Christian mythology. Its roots are equated with Satan. The tarantate
seem to be placed into Eve’s shoes and, in this way, a complex ritual –
with probable pagan foundations – is cut and filed to fit any golden
frame on a Christian church wall.
A look at the possible origins and the widely documented histories of
tarantism provides a perfect illustration of how understandings of
cause and effect in the context of affliction and cure, as well as forms
of intervention considered appropriate, are inevitably located

historically and culturally. ‘By writing on tarantism,’ writes Martha
Baldwin (1997: 185), ‘the physician could advocate his own
philosophical allegiance and demonstrate its ability to account for new
medical phenomena. Rather than being concerned with treating ailing
patients, the early modern physician was eager instead to explain the
forces of nature at work in the world.’ Tarantism has been (and
continues to be) decoded in numerous ways. What seventeenth-
century Apulians consider a radical treatment against the tarantula’s
poison was dispelled as deception by an English traveller of the same
era (Burney 1771). What a twenty-first-century woman may live as a
turning point in her life is presented on television to the rest of her
56
Webs through Time
nation as the spectacularized reproduction of a long-dead ritual

tradition. A link to the tarantula spider, continuously reweaving its own
interpretative web, appears to be the only constant fixture in this game.
A look back in time reveals diverse explanations of tarantism and, most
of all, the historical specificity of each. Moreover, the often
indistinguishable real and invented past inevitably colours the present.
In the modern Salento, views about how things are believed to have
been are flashed as trump cards of how things should, ideally, be.
Possible Origins: Searching for

Tarantism’s Roots
The precise roots of tarantism remain a mystery. A 1426 document
written by the Venetian doctor Sante Ardoini, and printed in the
Sertum papale de venenis series, is most commonly cited as the first
literary evidence of tarantism. This text describes the spider’s victims
as subject to a severe state of melancholy and a compulsive impulse
to dance. It also refers to earlier texts that mention afflictions by the
tarantula in the Mediterranean area without, however, making any
reference to music or dance. Goffredo Malaterra (1724), for
instance, tells how Norman soldiers bitten by spiders during the
1043 siege of Palermo were treated with hot compresses.1 George
Mora (1963: 419) challenged the historical primacy of Ardoini’s
account, arguing that a 1362 edition of the same De venenis series,
attributed to Guglielmo De Marra, constitutes ‘the oldest document
dealing with the musical exorcism of people supposedly bitten by the
tarantula … The concept is expressed in it – somewhat obscurely –

that the melodic bite of the arachnoid makes possible the re-evocation
of the bite in musical terms’ (Thorndike 1934: 526–34). Gabriele
Mina’s (2000) extensive research has since confirmed this.
The origins of tarantism have been sought in different times and
places. Ernesto De Martino (2005: 215) relegates the emergence of
this ritual practice to the period between the ninth and fourteenth
centuries, drawing on historical evidence to show how tarantism
developed out of a continuum of adaptations required for survival. The
actual danger of spider poisoning was widely reported in Apulia. At the
same time, its shores were not only subject to Islamic invasions, but
also a stopover point for the crusaders on their way to the Holy Land.
57
Dances with Spiders
The designated period up to the fourteenth century marks the time

span from the height of Islam’s expansion to the Occident’s eventual
counter-reaction. According to De Martino, tarantism arose out of the
dual need to deal with actual spider epidemics and changing socio-
political and religious conditions. The experience of spider poisoning
provided a model to deal with social crises, such as those arising out of
religious conflicts plaguing Apulia, as the symptoms of the tarantate
closely resembled those of actual spider bites.
Despite the obscure origins of tarantism, the mythic tarantula
itself had actual, zoological ancestors, notwithstanding disputes
about which spider type was to blame. Although this explanation
does not provide any indication as to why music rather than any
other treatment was used, this link to a naturalistic cause, supported
by a vast collection of medical literature, is likely to be one reason
why tarantism has persisted into the present century despite the
Church’s persecution of non-Christian beliefs (Sigerist 1948:
112–14; Rouget 1986: 162; Bartholomew 1994: 288; Di Mitri 1995:
226). Ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget (1986: 162), defining
tarantism in terms of possession, supports this point:
The Church of Rome could never for a moment have tolerated its existence
as an overt possession cult. The bite of the tarantula, whose effects coincide
so extraordinarily closely with the signs that herald the onset of possession,
provided a providential alibi … Women who gave themselves up to these
practices were no longer sinners but unfortunate victims of the tarantula.
Other precedents of tarantism have been sought in the European

dancing manias, St Vitus’s or St John’s dance, widespread in
Germany and the Netherlands in the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries (Hecker 1865: 143–91). Like tarantism, these manias
appeared to be seasonally determined; they found their victims
among all kinds of social and professional classes, and involved a
strong aversion to certain colours, especially red. However, this link
is placed in jeopardy by the fact that no mention whatsoever is made
of a poisonous bite or spider. There are few documents available
about the music used, but its application appears to have varied
considerably from that of tarantism: St Vitus’s or St John’s dancers
are, for instance, described as having been at the mercy of their
convulsions independently of music.2
58
Webs through Time
Meanwhile, more ancient parallels to tarantism have been drawn

with the Dionysian, Corybante and Orphic cults of Greek origin, all
of which were characterized by the cathartic use of dance and music
(De Martino 1961a; Salvatore 1989; Lapassade 1994; Di Mitri
1996).3 The fact that Apulia was part of the Magna Graecia in the
fifth and fourth centuries BC and so heavily exposed to Greek
influence is drawn upon as evidence. This period, however, is
extremely remote in time, even if we locate the first records of
tarantism in the ninth century CE as De Martino suggests. Marius
Schneider (1948) retreats even further back in history to propose
that tarantism has its origins in the medicinal rites of megalithic
civilizations. Along similar but bolder lines, Rosario Jurlaro (1980)
roots the tarantula’s ritual in ancient propitiatory rites. Dancers, he
proposes, mimed the wild reactions of animals bitten by a horsefly
and music was used to replace the horsefly’s buzzing drone.
With all these varying explanations it is valuable to remember, as
historian Peregrine Horden (2000) cautions in his study on music and
medicine, that the notion of continuity is always highly seductive.4 It
may conceal a variety of diverse phenomena, whose apparent
continuity may well be the result of numerous small discontinuities.
‘Rather than search the mists of time, we should reckon with the
possibility that new healing cults, tarantism included, can develop
quickly; unconnected elements can quite suddenly coalesce’ (ibid:.
253). Unrelated elements may spontaneously combine to create cults
or consolidate traditions, which are then – for a variety of
contemporary purposes – retrospectively linked to preceding ones on
the basis of common characteristics. The same reservations were
expressed by the eighteenth-century traveller Henry Swinburne, who

suggested that an accident may well have led to the ‘discovery’ of the
tarantula’s bite for the purposes of tarantism rituals (1783: 393).
The above qualms apply equally to ideas locating the origins of
tarantism in the Salento itself. Proof for these claims is generally
based on archaeological findings of recent decades, including the
1970 discovery of Palaeolithic cave paintings in the Grotta dei Cervi
of Porto Badisco, near Otranto (Graziosi 1996). This find gave rise to
hypotheses that initiation practices of early pagan cults were held
here and diverse rock paintings are seen to be linked to the symbolism
of tarantism (Tolledi 1998: 8). This applies specifically to one
anthropomorphic figure known as il dio che danza (the dancing god)
59
Dances with Spiders
or lo stregone danzante (the dancing wizard). Other, more abstract

designs were identified, in similar vein, as spider webs or tambourines
(Giannuzzi 1996). It remains impossible to draw precise conclusions
about the connection between these cave paintings and tarantism,
and, although I would be careful about accepting these links, it does
appear significant that, unblemished by this fact, the dancing god –
just like the tarantula spider – has become a blockbuster icon in the
contemporary world of the tarantula’s music and dance [see Figs 7.1
and 7.2].
Etymological considerations provide other clues about the
beginnings of tarantism. Most commonly the term ‘tarantism’ is
linked to the town of Taranto, tucked into the Gulf of Taranto in the
Ionian Sea (Basile 2000). To the Greeks, this ancient city was known
as Taras or Tarassos and, later, under the Romans, it was called
Tarentum. Its link to tarantism may be explained on the basis of the
widespread existence of the tarantula spider in this area, partly due
to its climatic conditions and non-intensive agriculture (Naselli
1951: 225; De Martino 2005: 213). Others argue that this link is
based on the importance of Taranto in Greek and Roman times,
which encouraged those who were ill to converge here to seek
medical help (Baglivi 1696; De Raho 1908: 3). According to
alternative opinions, the name of Taranto forms the base of the term
tarantism and is associated with the Greek word for agitation, tarassia
(Jurlaro 1980: 57). Yet others see a connection between the term
tarantism and the word terrantola, referring to creatures living in and
off the ground (Hecker 1865: 165; Katner 1956: 12).
Finally, legends, such as the story from Sanarica, posit potential
explanations for the origins of tarantism. Greek mythology is also a

frequently cited source. The tarantate are seen to ‘unwittingly
reincarnate the pursued heroines of Greek stories: Io, the woman-
cow, pursued by the divine bite of Hera’s horsefly; Phaedra stung by
love; Arachne driven to suicide by Athena, her rival in weaving;
Erigone, Icarus’s daughter, who hanged herself from a tree, setting
off an epidemic of hangings among young girls’ (Cixous and Clément
1986: 20). Arachne’s is perhaps the most frequently quoted story,
although music and dance do not feature in this account.5 One
version tells how the young Arachne had embroidered an enormous
tapestry depicting the stories of the gods. She displayed this work in
public and, receiving numerous compliments, became guilty of
60
Webs through Time
arrogance and presumption. When Athena heard this, she went to

see for herself and, struck with rage, tore the work to pieces. Arachne
escaped to the forest, but Athena followed and found her suspended
from a rope, dead. Athena brought Arachne’s body back to life,
transformed into that of a spider, which immediately began to weave
its web. ‘Weave, little one,’ Athena sighed, ‘from now on you will do
this for a living, without glory. No longer will you be able to boast and
defy the gods.’
Historical Interpretations: Explaining

the Tarantula’s Cult
Over the centuries, tarantism has gripped the imagination of scholars
throughout Europe, some informed by the tales and accounts of
others, some adventurous enough to go and see for themselves. Two
key points of view fired a fierce debate about the actual or mythical
character of the tarantula’s bite: one musical (considering the effects
of music on the human organism) and one medical (focused on the
character and causes of the symptoms involved).6 The Jesuit priest
Athanasius Kircher (1641, 1673) was one of the main proponents of
the musical perspective of the seventeenth-century Renaissance and
humanist periods. His writings, based on the accounts of two
informant priests from Lecce and Taranto, documented popular
beliefs on tarantism, magic, magnetism and the therapeutic powers of
music. His interpretation revived classical ideas on the
correspondence between bodily humours, states of health and illness,
and musical melodies seen to influence these.

Epifanio Ferdinando (1621) and Giorgio Baglivi (1696), meanwhile,
were key advocates of a medical explanation of tarantism. Their ideas
were based on naturalistic and positivist foundations, reducing
tarantism to a medical condition of two types: a biological reaction to
a toxic bite or a psychological disorder. Ferdinando, a native of the
Salento familiar with cases of tarantism, dispelled explanations of the
magical powers of music and, taking a physiological approach, argued
instead that music facilitated dancing and perspiration, thereby
expelling toxins via the skin’s surface (Portulano Scoditti 1999).
Baglivi, a university professor in Rome who received his information
from his adoptive father in Lecce, meanwhile, concentrated on the fact
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Dances with Spiders
that many tarantate were never actually bitten by a real spider. He

coined the term carnevaletti delle donne (women’s small carnivals) to
describe those who simulated the symptoms of the tarantula’s bite in
order to let their hair down and celebrate. Such a view of tarantism
emerged from many pre-nineteenth-century English texts (Burney
1771; Turnbull 1771; Swinburne 1783) and was voiced again on 29
June 2001 as a reaction to Matteo’s dance in Galatina.7
This confrontation between musical and medical views was catalysed
by related debates in the fields of magic and science (Tomlinson 1994;
Di Mitri 2006). In the eighteenth century, this conflict became
particularly evident when tarantism received two blows leading to its
gradual disintegration: one came with the advent of the Enlightenment,
the other from the Catholic Church. The Neapolitan medical school
institutionalized Cartesian scepticism, and tarantism was increasingly
discounted as a mere superstition and the tarantate viewed as
psychologically disturbed individuals, as the work of Francesco Serao
(1742) revealed. He was a physician from Naples, with personal
experiences of tarantism and extensive correspondence on this subject
with Apulian informants, viewing tarantism both as a form of corruption
characterizing Apulia’s lower classes and as a pathological condition. Its
cause, he argued, was not to be found in the tarantula spider, but rather
in the melancholic disposition of Apulia’s inhabitants themselves.
Catholicism brought a second blow. Attempts to control the non-
Christian ritual of tarantism were best demonstrated by the coercion
of mythical and biblical symbolism, as the image of the tarantula
became conflated with that of St Paul. In the years following the
construction of St Paul’s chapel in the mid-eighteenth century in
Galatina, ecclesiastical authorities played a major role in driving

tarantism indoors and underground.
Meanwhile, in the eighteenth century, conflicts continued
between the popular myth of the tarantula and more scientifically
founded interpretations of tarantism (Convegno 1999). The ideas of
the Neapolitan medical school were criticized and developed by
various scholars, increasingly recognizing the cultural character of
the tarantula’s bite (Valetta 1706; Caputo 1741; Cirillo 1771).
Nevertheless, resistance to these views persisted into the nineteenth
century. It was Giuseppe Chiaia (1887) who most openly expressed a
strongly anticlerical stance, seeking to prove the validity of popular
beliefs on tarantism by reviving Kircher’s ideas. At the same time,
62
Webs through Time
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical literature staunchly

continued to reduce tarantism to spider poisoning or psychological
illness (Carusi 1848; De Masi 1874; Campelli 1878; Kobert 1901). .
A detailed survey by Apulian doctor Francesco De Raho (1908)

followed this line of enquiry. With reference to experiments on
guinea pigs, De Raho concluded that the spider bite alone was not
sufficient to cause the violent symptoms observed in the tarantate.
Instead, he diagnosed a minor form of hysteria.
The twentieth century brought a gradual awareness of the cul-de-
sac medical research had run into by ignoring the cultural aspects of
tarantism. Henry Sigerist (1948), a Swiss-born doctor and one of the
‘fathers of modern medical history’ (Horden 2000: 22), established
tarantism as a neurosis peculiar to Apulia, derived from ancient
orgiastic cults and camouflaged as an illness so as to escape the
Church’s condemnation. Marius Schneider (1948) presented an in-
depth symbolic analysis of tarantism as a seasonal and medicinal rite,
expressing the cosmological understanding of megalithic peoples. His
approach was based on a ‘system of mystical correspondences
between nature and man, between the elements, astrological signs,
the seasons and sounds’ (Rouget 1986: 159). Nevertheless, medical
assumptions also proved to be resilient. Backman (1952) described
dance epidemics such as tarantism as the result of ergot poisoning
from grain and bread. Wilhelm Katner (1956) identified sunstroke as
the actual pathogenic stimulus, whereas Giordano (1957) applied
the category of collective psychosis to the tarantate’s affliction.
Only the surface of almost a millennium of studies on tarantism
can be touched on here. This vast and rich literature shows how
views on tarantism have been subject to continual negotiation. The

therapeutic options available to the tarantate directly related to
accepted views of this ritual tradition. Its interpretations embodied
not only a desire to make sense of the human condition but also an
implicit play of power. Cases of tarantism threatened the influence of
Christianity and the development of medical science and, as such,
both institutions sought to control it through redefinition. Perhaps
not surprisingly, with the turn to the twenty-first century the story of
tarantism is being rewritten once again (with more or less success) as
more than an antidote to fears of the millennium bug. It serves new
purposes for which the flourishing market of recent editions and
translations of historical texts on tarantism caters in grand style
63
Dances with Spiders
(Mina and Torsello 2006). Among these Dorothy Zinn’s English

translation of De Martino’s monumental work is one of the more
recent (2005).
De Martino’s View: a Key Point of

Reference
‘Have you read De Martino? Have you studied his book La terra del
rimorso?’ More often than not, this was the first question people in the
Salento asked when I talked about my research. The word ‘tarantism’
seems to trigger, first and foremost, the name of this well-known
Italian scholar and the title of his famous publication defining the
tarantate’s ritual as a form of musical, choreographic and chromatic
exorcism. It is as if tarantism, now apparently long extinct, continues
to exist on almost four hundred pages, densely packed with a rich
description and interpretation of this healing ritual. For an
anthropologist looking for personal stories and first-hand experiences,
it becomes a frustrating white screen on which shadows dance, as
paraphrased and often reductive versions of De Martino’s black and
white script dominate popular views of the tarantula’s dance. It is
impossible to consider tarantism today without taking note of this
important study, suggestive of the influence of anthropological work
on other contemporary movements (such as the writing of Mircea
Eliade, Michael Harner and Carlos Castaneda on ‘Neo-shamanism’),
or the historical documentation of tarantism rituals in Spain and the
United States subsequent to the translation of a book on this subject
by Giorgio Baglivi (Horden 2003: 193).

In the summer months of 1959, Ernesto De Martino and his team
of researchers undertook the first in-depth field study of tarantism.8
Their research involved detailed interviews with twenty-one
tarantate: sixteen women and five men between the ages of thirteen
and seventy-six. The team observed both domestic dance rituals and
pilgrimages to the chapel of St Paul in Galatina. Although the
duration of this fieldwork did not exceed three weeks (20 June – 10
July), De Martino was able to build on contacts established in the
early post-war period when he was posted to Bari and Lecce as
commissioner of the Socialist Federation (Panico 1983: 140).
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Webs through Time
De Martino uncovered the power relations within which tarantism

existed in the mid-twentieth century. His focus on tarantism as a
cultural phenomenon questioned psychologically determined
interpretations, unveiling the personal crises of the tarantate as
symptomatic of larger conflicts on a social level. De Martino drew on
the work of the politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci to depict
the conflict between the hegemonic order, the ‘capitalist form of
domination through ideas rather than through the use of force’
(Saunders 1984: 455), and the subaltern, ‘subordinate, proletarian and
rural proletarian’ (ibid.) classes, to which the majority of the tarantate
belonged. In this sense, La terra del rimorso was ideologically motivated
by De Martino’s belief in ‘the “historicization” of the subaltern world as
a prophylactic against … exploitation’ (ibid.: 456). This study was,
moreover, embedded within a larger intellectual context, in which De
Martino became a founding figure of Italian ethnology (although he
saw himself primarily as a historian of religion), influenced by
philosophical and political currents of post-war Italy, and specifically
the ideas of Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci, (Gallini 1982;
Lorenzetti 1982; Saunders 1984). De Martino’s contribution to studies
on southern Italy was fundamental in revealing that alleviating the
enormous differences between southern and northern Italy required
not only economic engagement, but also initiatives promoting a rebirth
of the South on a cultural level.
La terra del rimorso was a prime example. It proposed a new approach
to southern Italy’s situation. The magico-religious perspective of its
protagonists was examined not as an evolutionary relic of primitive
thinking, but as a culturally specific response to harsh living conditions.
De Martino proposed a psychoanalytically tinged interpretation viewed

within a historical and socio-economic framework. Tarantism was
defined as a ‘religion of remorse’, allowing for the payment of debts
contracted on an existential level. The tarantula was employed as a
symbol for eliciting traumatic experiences of the past, many of these
linked to the recurring themes of forbidden love, unfulfilled desires and
repressed emotions. The ritual of tarantism became a means for reliving
and healing individual crises threatening to explode without control. It
served as a channel of expression and resolution according to a
historically proven and socially acknowledged model.
Tarantism, according to De Martino, was irreducible to any form
of spider poisoning. The tarantula was a mythical spider, an
65
Dances with Spiders
ideological complex autonomous in its symbolism as it explained the

symptoms of the tarantate even in the absence of an actual bite. Few
of De Martino’s interviewees had, in fact, suffered from a real spider
bite. All, however, appeared to suffer from a ‘crisis of presence’ at the
time of their initial affliction: a sense of the self as unreal and
unrelated to present circumstances, implying a loss of referents in
the surrounding world, often in the face of socio-economic and
natural calamities (De Martino 1956, 1960, 1975; Pandolfi 1990).
Disaster struck and fuses blew, snapping the relational threads that
linked a healthy individual to her or his body, community and
environment.
It was here that the tarantula intervened. Through the injection of
its poison, De Martino explains, the mystic spider transferred its
attributes to its victim. Many became melancholic, others aggressive
or highly erotic in their behaviour. On average, three or four days of
dancing, especially to the rhythmic sounds of the pizzica tarantata,
provided the only way out. The rhythmic order of sounds, argues De
Martino, not only released tensions into movements, but also
provided ‘a very elementary cultural order to be preferentially relied
upon when a great existential catastrophe loomed’ (2005: 94).
Overall, research on tarantism following La terra del rimorso (De
Martino 1961a) has built on this rich contribution without
challenging it extensively. Nevertheless, various critiques have been
voiced. Some demanded further contextualization of the socio-
economic and political situation of southern Italy in the 1950s
(Cassin 1962: 133; Lorenzetti 1982: 28–31) and of the relationship
between those participating in the ideology of tarantism and those
discounting it as a superstition (Lorenzetti 1982: 28–31). Historians

challenged De Martino’s search for tarantism’s origins in Greek
Dionysian cults (Lapassade 1994; Di Mitri 1996; Horden 2000) and
added to or questioned his historical sources (Turchini 1987;
Salvatore 2000; Vallone 2004; Di Mitri 2006). Others pointed out
that the mythico-ritualistic complex of tarantism was not considered
in relation to the larger context of traditional curative practices
(Coppa 1996: 31) and, by dismissing the psychopathological
approach as inherently reductive, De Martino failed to recognize that
psychiatry was increasingly broadening its parameters to include
sociocultural variables (Anon. 1967: 347). A focus on the symbolic
level and its possible roots in ancient Greek traditions has, moreover,
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Webs through Time
obscured the importance of the performative element, based on

identification with the tarantula spider (Rouget 1986: 161), and of
broader performance contexts, including related healing rituals or
festive occasions (Lüdtke 2000b). Some of these gaps were addressed
in subsequent research.
Recent Studies: Continuing the Quest for

Answers
De Martino and his team were generally welcomed, it seems, into the
houses of the tarantate. Many participated in interviews hoping that
the medically qualified researchers would find alternative forms of
relief for their misery. The publication of La terra del rimorso brought
crowds of curious visitors to the Salento. In June every year, the town
of Galatina was swamped with film crews and photographers. For
many journalists and researchers, the Salento became an exotic
location still harbouring pagan relics, which needed to be
documented at all costs prior to extinction. Many condemned the
tarantate’s performances as tourist enterprises staged purely for
collecting money. At the same time, many benefited from the image
Galatina gained as a pilgrimage site. Every year, masses of visitors
spent their lire at local hotels, shops and market stalls (Panico 1983:
55–91). They also increasingly met with the tarantate’s resistance to
be interviewed or filmed (Montinaro 1976: 72).
In the wake of La terra del rimorso, research on tarantism can, for
the sake of convenience, be subdivided into three general themes,
socio-economic, medical and anthropological, depending on the key

focus taken. Studies on the socio-economic context of tarantism
tended both to elaborate on aspects neglected by De Martino and to
document and analyse tarantism’s transformations in subsequent
years. Medically inclined research refined the psychologically
reductive analyses criticized by De Martino. Tarantism was inserted
into a history of medicine and compared to other therapeutic systems
that challenged the incompatibility of biologically and socially
determined interpretations, although some psychologically reductive
studies persisted. Most anthropological studies were characterized by
a comparative approach. In particular, studies in psychological
anthropology have been central in weaving tarantism into a broader
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Dances with Spiders
fabric of healing rites interpreted in terms of spirit possession and

altered states of consciousness. This section presents a chronological
synthesis and selection of research based on both textual and
cinematographic sources, showing that these three fields are neither
mutually exclusive nor exhaustive. Moreover, the studies considered
are limited to the Salento and to tarantism as understood in its
ancient, ritual sense. 9 No reference is made at this point to studies on
the contemporary revitalization of the tarantula’s music and dance.10
Studies considered here as socio-economic were often of high
ethnographic import, providing valuable descriptions of the general
living conditions of the tarantate. Perhaps the most famous and
insightful of these was anthropologist Annabella Rossi’s book Lettere
da una tarantata, Letters from a tarantata (1970), based on her
correspondence with a tarantata in the Salento over a six-year period
from 1959 to 1965. These letters recurrently touched on the
harshness of existing living conditions based on agricultural labour,
the anxieties linked to being a woman in tight-knit family circles, and
the hopes and prayers invested in religious figures appealed to for
well-being. The tarantata who dictated these letters suffered from
epileptic fits from an early age and identified the cause for these in
two different maladies – one attributed to St Paul and the other to
St Donatus – which she distinguished according to whether she felt
the urge to dance or not: only St Paul required her to do so. The
publication of these letters remains a unique testimony of a
tarantata’s life conveyed in her own voice, without, however, escaping
the dilemmas of representation: inevitably these letters were edited
and existed in relation to Rossi’s own letters.11
Writing a few years later, Brizio Montinaro (1976) described

tarantism as a rusty tool of the past, still deeply rooted among parts of
the Salentine community. He suggested that the option of tarantism
may have stood in the way of potentially urgent medical intervention,
after witnessing how a young man, subsequently diagnosed with a
brain tumour, was brought to St Paul’s chapel in Galatina. This view of
tarantism as a two-sided sword was further exposed in a valuable article
by Miriam Castiglione and Luciana Stocchi (1977). Their Marxist-
inspired study took a close look at the lives of the tarantate in relation
to those who did not share their belief system. It focused particularly
on the ecclesiastical and socio-political context, as well as the
condition of women, in the 1970s Salento. The domestic exploitation
68
Webs through Time
of female labour, seen within a framework of capitalist development,

rural depopulation and emigration, revealed how many women were
left to rely on limited family and neighbourhood contacts, as well as the
mass media, to overcome situations of extreme social isolation. At the
same time, the religious ideology inherent in the insertion of Pauline
theology into tarantism rituals perpetuated the exploitation of women
as reproducers of the existing labour force and as substitutes for
insufficient social services. The Christian influence on tarantism was
unveiled as fostering the causes of the tarantate’s misery, despite the
temporary relief conceded by pilgrimages to Galatina.
In the early 1980s, the documentary film Morso d’amore
(Miscuglio et al. 1981) threw into relief changes in both the socio-
economic context and the performance techniques of tarantism. The
film-makers documented a case of self-instigated therapy: images of
a tarantata rocking from side to side on her bed, singing to herself,
invoking the presence of St Paul and the tarantula. No musicians
were involved and only one other participant sat by the side of her
bed to ensure that she did not come to any harm. This woman was
bitten on her first day back at work in the fields of the Salento after
years of factory labour (and better working conditions) in
Switzerland. She told the camera that her periods had ceased from
this day onwards and returned only when she finally received St
Paul’s grace, the very year she became the protagonist of Morso
d’amore. We may dismiss this link as a mere coincidence or question
what impact the camera team may have had on her life. Was its
presence enough to render her misery public, visible to the eyes of
others, and hence imaginable, acceptable and possible to process?
A comparison to Ada’s performance for the Canale 5 cameras,

twenty years later, inevitably comes to mind. Both told their story in
verbal and corporal form, sustained by the gaze of others, human
eyes and camera lenses, acknowledging and recording it in tangible
form. As their fate was aired and made public, legitimate, so to speak,
potential sentiments of shame, embarrassment or guilt are likely to
have lost their charge, becoming redundant, suggesting a step
towards recovery. Historically, too, tarantism rituals were
characterized by their public nature. This case was, moreover, not the
only one to involve a returning emigrant. Just one year later,
Gianfranco Mingozzi, in his film Sulla terra del rimorso (1982),
documented a similar case of a tarantato who was bitten when
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Dances with Spiders
settling once again in the Salento after years of working abroad. It is

also significant that many of those who passionately brought about
the revitalization of the pizzica in the 1990s had spent some time
working or studying in northern Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany
or elsewhere before returning home to the Salento.
Medical perspectives on tarantism, meanwhile, variously engaged
the views of ethnopsychiatry, the history of medicine, psychoanalysis,
medical anthropology, toxicology and music therapy. Ethnopsychiatric
work on tarantism brought into relief problems of defining psycho-
pathologies, as the cause of the tarantate’s afflictions was sought in
both biological and social terms. Psychiatrist Giovanni Jervis (1961,
1962) argued that biologically defined symptoms of psychosis and
schizophrenia could be detected in some tarantate, but, nevertheless,
tarantism had to be seen as an ideological institution: as a culturally
specific instrument of explanation, used to define and alleviate
symptoms irreducible to any one interpretative schema. George Mora
(1963) addressed these issues by considering tarantism in relation to
the diagnosis of psychopathologies in ancient Greek culture and
contemporary psychotherapy. Piero Coppa (1996: 29–33), referring to
De Martino (1961a), as well as to Risso and Böker’s study (1964) on
psychopathologies among South Italian migrant workers in
Switzerland, emphasized the danger of stigmatizing individuals by
using out of context terminology.
Research on the link between actual spider bites and tarantism has
been scarce. Eric Carlson and Meredith Simpson’s study (1971) of a
nineteenth-century case in America provided one exception: it told of
a young woman from Rhode Island bitten by a tarantula for whom
the only effective treatment proved to be music and dancing. In this

case, the ritual of tarantism may well have been unknown to the
young female victim and it is unclear what other factors may have
come into play. Historian Peregrine Horden (2000: 251) suggested
that a translation of Giorgio Baglivi’s (1696) book, printed in the
New York Magazine of 1797, and ‘the physician’s unwitting power of
suggestion’ may have had a prominent role in this choice of
treatment. More recently, in 1996, a case of spider poisoning was
registered in the Salento and carefully documented by the doctors
involved (Colonna et al. 1997, 2000). It revealed a close analogy
between the symptoms of actual spider poisoning and those of the
tarantate. Although insufficient case studies of actual spider bites
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Webs through Time
exist in the Salento to be able to draw well-founded parallels, it was

inevitably noted that the symptoms of this young patient subsided
after three to four days, the average period of dancing required for
the ritual of tarantism (Chiriatti 1997b).12
Psychoanalytical studies of tarantism focused on the sexual
symbolism inherent in these rituals. Psychiatrist Dario Caggia (1984)
made a unique reference to a tarantata subjected to psychoanalysis.
Unfortunately, few, if any, insights were given about this treatment;
instead, symbolic references to Greek myths were drawn upon to
provide an interpretative context. A provocative, although little
developed, stance on the relation between tarantism and sexuality was
taken by Luigi Chiriatti and Georges Lapassade (1985) in the context
of Salentine performance traditions more generally, considering
music-making and dancing as a means of socially evoking, expressing
and controlling individual erotic impulses.
Historian of medicine Angelo Turchini (1987) provided an
extensive review of medical literature on tarantism, creating a
valuable complement to La terra del rimorso. His focus was on the
use of therapeutic elements, particularly music, songs, conjurations
and the role of healing figures, such as the sanpaolari, putative
descendants of St Paul said to have healing qualities, and the capo-
attarantati, responsible for conducting tarantism rituals. On an
interpretative level, Turchini equated tarantism with linguistic
alchemy, a system of explanation facilitated by the use of non-verbal
media. Meanwhile, Jean Russell’s (1979) medical history of
tarantism continued to define this phenomenon as a form of hysteria
particular to the Mediterranean context.
With regard to the field of the performance arts therapies and

particularly music therapy, tarantism has been prized as an early
European example of this discipline (Alvin 1966; Horden 2000) and
simultaneously dismissed as an obstacle to the professional
recognition of the arts therapies. Various studies considering the
relationship between music and medicine in historical and cross-
cultural contexts have touched on the tradition of tarantism
(Schullian and Schoen 1948; Kümmel 1977; Tomlinson 1994; Gouk
2000; Horden 2000). Interestingly, Kümmel (1977: 21), in his
detailed and lengthy summary of examples of music and medicine in
(primarily European) contexts of 800–1800, deliberately refused to
take tarantism and related dancing mania into account, considering
71
Dances with Spiders
them to be inappropriate to the context of humoral medicine. His

explanation was that, whereas medical practitioners applied music to
regulate and balance patients’ moods, the so-called dance epidemics
accentuated existing moods, thereby not helping to attain an
emotional equilibrium.13
Medical anthropology, meanwhile, has emphasized the importance
of indigenous illness contexts, categories and meanings. Robert
Bartholomew contested the widespread classification of tarantism as
a form of mass psychogenic illness, which, he argued, ‘may involve
normal, rational people who possess unfamiliar conduct codes,
worldviews and political agendas that differ significantly from those
of Western-trained investigators’ (1994: 281). This article showed
how universal categories inevitably succumb to cultural prejudices,
thereby uncovering reductive stances. Vittorio Lanternari (1995,
2000) considered tarantism with reference to religious healing
rituals, arguing that these were not so much directed at combating
clinically definable states of psychophysical illness, but rather worked
towards overcoming experiences of suffering linked to psychosomatic
syndromes: sensations of emptiness and a lack of points of reference
and meaning to life. Drawing comparisons between tarantism and
two charismatic healing cults, his focus was on the performative use
of the body. Physical enactments were considered a means of
accessing a symbolic world and activating the body’s auto-therapeutic
potential. Lanternari’s work suggested that symptoms of tarantism
persisted despite the decline of this tradition, and underlined the
risk of categorizing and treating certain human conditions as forms of
illness when these may be inherently auto-therapeutic.
A comparative approach has also characterized anthropological

studies, developing De Martino’s (2005: 177–86) references to
ethnographic, folkloric and historical parallels of tarantism. Bringing
into play relations of power and gender, Ioan Lewis (1971) defined
tarantism as a form of rebellion and possession determined by social
marginality. Tarantism was presented as an aggressive strategy for
the politically impotent, predominantly women and occasionally
men, constrained to live in socially oppressive circumstances. Entry
into this protest cult, an integral part of the therapeutic process, was
achieved by succumbing to the mythical tarantula’s illness. Although
personal situations may not be radically remedied, Lewis argued,
relief was found in a ‘religious idiom, which men can condone as a
72
Webs through Time
divinely sanctioned therapy’ (1971: 92). Along similar lines, in his

cross-cultural study on the role of music in triggering states of trance,
Gilbert Rouget (1986) argued that tarantism was a means for the
public expression of hysteria, facilitating recovery through bodily
imitation with the source of affliction. Rouget, moreover, emphasized
that tarantism was not a form of exorcism, ‘not a conflictual relation
with the deity that is involved, but the partaking of an alliance’ (1986:
164): the spider and that which it symbolized were appeased rather
than expelled. For this reason, the diverse performative ways of
identifying and coming to terms with the spider were crucial.
Georges Lapassade’s (1994, 1996a, b, 2001) research, meanwhile,
has aimed at retrieving the meaning of trance rituals as a human
resource for use in modern contexts. Inserting tarantism into this line
of research, he emphasized its affinity with Corybante dances as
opposed to Dionysian rituals, describing the experience of performers
in trance rituals as based on the explosion of an ordinary state of
consciousness resulting from the rhythmic synchrony established
between musicians and performers.
A reading of these studies provokes critiques associated with the
choice of terms used to refer to subjective experiences and notions of
consciousness. It raises questions about the wide range of definitions
applied to so-called altered states, about what is seen to induce these
and how they are experienced and explained in culturally specific
terms. Moreover, these issues bring into play difficulties of
establishing criteria of ethnographic and/or biomedical authenticity
and genuineness, which may not only overlap but also include
various levels and ways of talking about these terms (Hamayon 1995;
Becker 2004). In the Salento, these problems are magnified, as many

– both performers and researchers – uncritically use the Italian terms
trance and stati alterati or modificati di coscienza to describe
experiences of music-making or dancing, thereby enhancing risks of
covering up culturally and individually specific forms of expression
with standardized labels.
Such reflections have led Damian Walter (2000: 112–13) to
propose an alternative, without, however, escaping the hazards of
generalization:
In preference to terms such as trance, ecstasy and altered or alternate states
of consciousness … the notion of an altered state of awareness … gives
73
Dances with Spiders
support to the idea that in a culturally-recognized ‘trance’ state – however

defined – the subject learns to identify and give precedence to different
visual, aural, somatic, and mental criteria, without necessarily implying
that he or she becomes dissociated from his or her immediate surroundings
and without prioritizing etic categories concerned with the truth or falsity
of what is believed to be taking place.
With regard to the anthropology of performance, little research on

tarantism is available. Luigi Santoro (1982, 1987) has approached
tarantism through his own experience of theatre. Likewise, Michela
Almiento (1990) set out to discuss Joseph Moreno’s ideas on
psychodrama in relation to the tarantate’s rituals, but did not pursue
this perspective beyond the confines of her master’s thesis. Some
significant contributions to historical and contemporary interpre-
tations of tarantism were provided in two volumes of conference
papers published as a result of the international conference
Quarant’anni dopo De Martino (Forty years after De Martino) in
October 1998 (Di Mitri 2000). Experiences and accounts of the
world of tarantism in the last few decades have, moreover, been
published in various recent books by Giorgio Di Lecce (1994), Luigi
Chiriatti (1995) and Maurizio Nocera (2005) and are also portrayed
in Edoardo Winspeare’s documentary San Paolo e la tarantola
(1989).14 These studies document the persistence of tarantism on
the margins of contemporary life and public health care in the 1980s
and 1990s despite constant declarations of its extinction. This
paradox appears central to the multiple and changing manifestations
of contemporary tarantism.
74
Webs through Time
Notes
1. Ernesto De Martino (2005: 214–15) cites this account from Malaterra (1724).
According to Jean Russell (1979: 405), Ardoini also refers to earlier writers,
such as Avicenna, Rhazes, Gilbert the Englishman, Albucasis and others, who
wrote about the cure of the tarantula’s bite.
2. For a discussion of similarities and differences between tarantism and St Vitus’s
and St John’s dances, see also Katner (1956: 77–82) and De Martino (2005:
217–22).
3. For a discussion of the symbolic links between ancient Greek cults and
tarantism, see De Martino (2005: 187–211) and Salvatore (1989: 217–45).
Lapassade (1994: 10) focuses on tarantism’s similarities to the Corybante rites
and Di Mitri (1996: 11–28) has emphasized the Orphic connection to tarantism.
4. See also Horden (2003) on issues of historical continuity and discontinuity with
respect to music therapy in the Mediterranean more generally.
5. See Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1957), Book VI. Pierpaolo De Giorgi (1999: 176)
draws an analogy to the legend of Sanarica by positing a link between the evil
woman (Arachne) and the Virgin (Athena).
6. For references to the history of tarantism, see Sigerist (1948: 96–116); Katner
(1956: 5–25); Mora (1963: 417–39); Turchini (1987); Chiriatti (1995: 31–46);
Baldwin (1997: 163–91); Convegno (1999); Gentilcore (2000); De Martino
(2005: 187–244); Di Mitri (2006).
7. For reprints of these historical texts, see Lüdtke (2000b: 318–27).
8. The team members included Giovanni Jervis (psychiatrist); Letizia Jervis-Comba
(psychologist); Diego Carpitella (ethnomusicologist); Amalia Signorelli D’Ayala
(social anthropologist); and Vittoria De Palma (social assistant).
9. For research on tarantism in Spain and Campania, see León Sanz (2000, 2008)
and Rossi (1991) respectively; for studies on the related phenomenon of the
argia in Sardinia, see Gallini (1967, 1988).
10. See Nacci (2001, 2004); De Giorgi (2002, 2005); Lamanna (2002); Santoro and
Torsello (2002); Collu (2005); Del Giudice and van Deusen (2005); Durante
(2005); Thayer (2005); Imbriani and Fumarola (2007).
11. Paolo Apolito (1994) edited a further edition, showing what new light recent
anthropological developments throw on this correspondence. Anna’s case has
also been analysed from a psychoanalytical perspective by Francesco Lazzari
(1972: 91–134).
12. See Chapter 3, ‘Spider Poisoning: a Contested Case’.
13. For a review, see Peregrine Horden (2000: 21–40).
14. Winspeare subsequently went on to produce two further fictional films linked to
the tarantula’s music and dance: Pizzicata (1994), a wartime love story involving
a case of tarantism, and Sangue Vivo (2000), the story of two brothers involved
in smuggling and drugs, inspired by the true story of Salentine tambourine player
Pino Zimba.
75
Part II
The Spider’s Cult Today
In the contemporary Salento, the living webs of old and new tarantati
intersect, the first frail, dismissed and practically abandoned, the
second neon-bright and vibrant. Part II is an ethnographic journey
following the tarantula’s tracks across both types of web. Chapter 3,
‘Curing Myths and Fictive Cures’, looks at old-time silver-threaded
webs of the world of tarantism. It juxtaposes the views of believers
and sceptics, bringing spiders alive and killing them off as they speak.
Novel expressions of the tarantula’s dance reveal new web designs, as
Chapter 4, ‘Ads and Antidotes’, confirms. From backstage circles of
musicians and dancers to satellite-broadcast mega-concerts, the
tarantula today weaves its web across the globe and broader spatial
orbits. As a multi-purpose toolkit, music and dance have become a
potent logo of Salentine identity, serving both to accentuate conflict
and to bring about a sense of community. They present a choice, a
very visible and audible one, between taking opposition or joining

forces and the manifold options in between. Whereas historically
music was the only antidote for the tarantate, the same notes
function today as tourist ads and fun fair invites. Chapter 5, ‘Sensing
Identities and Well-being’, proceeds to consider personal accounts,
showing how the spotlights on today’s buzz around the tarantula’s
music and dance can serve to blind us to the sociocultural
implications of contemporary afflictions and to re-appropriated
discourses on healing and well-being.
77
Dances with Spiders
Fig. 3.1 Mass at the grotto of St Paul in Giurdignano, June 1998 (photo:
Fernando Bevilacqua).
Figs 3.2 and 3.3

The Giurdignano
grotto with the
fresco of St Paul next
to the tarantula’s
web, September
2007 (photos:
Erhard Söhner).
78
Chapter 3
Curing Myths and Fictive Cures:
Views of Believers and Sceptics
There is a Salento that believes

in the tambourine, in music,
and there is a Salento that does not believe.
Today, tarantism is this.
Galatina, 23 June 19991
In its ancient, curative sense, tarantism has become extinct. Public

rituals of music and dance, once widespread throughout the
Salentine peninsula, Apulia and beyond, no longer exist. This fact is
well-known and open to little doubt. And yet the belief system within
which this ritual dance was wrapped has not dissolved into time
immemorial. A minority of believers and a majority of sceptics reside
side by side in the Salento today. This was sharply brought home to
me one afternoon in August 1999 when I talked to two elderly

gentlemen in the south-west of the Salento. One, a victim of the
tarantula, had been at the mercy of the spider’s whims for three
consecutive years in the 1960s. The other, a fervent scholar of
tarantism, was convinced that this ritual tradition was nothing but
pretence, theatre and fiction. These two perspectives, indicative of
the tensions between believers and sceptics more generally, continue
to clash as they have done for centuries.
79
Dances with Spiders
Tarantism as Cure: Debates in Favour of

the Tarantula
It is 11 August 1999 and the five o’clock afternoon heat is stifling in
the kitchen of Francesco Greco’s apartment. We sit around a large
table above which a ceiling fan is stirring the humid air. My brain is
numb from the heat and sweat runs down my legs, with a cotton skirt
creating sauna conditions. It takes every bit of concentration to hold
onto the thread of questions prepared in my mind for this interview, at
risk of being swept away by the centrifugal force of the rotating blades
above our heads. I have come with two personal contacts, Vittorio
Marras and Bengasi Fai, thanks to whom this meeting was arranged.
We sit down at the long kitchen table with Francesco. His wife Cinzia
and a young woman and child settle down on a sofa nearby. They form
a backdrop to the scene, with Francesco’s wife taking an active, almost
sentinel-like part in the conversation. I ask how everything started.2
Francesco: I don’t remember the year. It was some twenty years ago.3
Karen: And was it a spider?
Francesco: I can’t tell you that it was a spider. It’s also possible that it was
a snake or a scorpion.
Karen: Did you feel the bite?
Francesco: Yes, I felt it. I was working where the grain was being ground
and I felt something sting me, but didn’t really take notice of it.
I continued to work. At the moment of the bite, you don’t feel
anything. Then, after a day or two, I began to feel unwell and
vomited. The vomit was yellow, like the poison that this animal
was carrying.
Karen: And what did you feel?

Francesco: My body felt completely abandoned,4 tired and very heavy. You
couldn’t even take a cup into your hands. I now pick up a
quintal,5 but then not even a cup. It wasn’t clear what it was or
what this affliction depended on.6 The doctors didn’t find
anything. They didn’t find a poison internally. We went to see
major specialists, but they never found anything. They told me
to have an injection and gave me one, but there was nothing to
do, because it was that problem, that illness which the saint
gave me. There are no medicines that can cure you. And they
don’t find anything wrong, because we are healthy. As persons
we are completely healthy.
Karen: But you weren’t well.
80
Curing Myths and Fictive Cures
Francesco: I wasn’t well at all. The doctors call us mad. When you speak
about certain things, about these illnesses, the doctors say:
‘Nothing of this is true!’ The doctors don’t believe. Our own
family doctor says that we’re staging a show for people. That’s
why those other people came to play. After a day, two days, or
even a week – there are people who danced for a week and
even two weeks – you received the saint’s grace. Now some of
the doctors believe, not all of them, but some. It’s because now
they have begun to study these things, the new doctors.
Karen: And how did you know what the affliction was?
Francesco: Those who played the music had come across many others with
this illness. The doctors didn’t believe in this illness, but my
family, my mother, my father, the other people said: ‘It must be
the tarantula! It must be the tarantula!’ Word got round that I
wasn’t well. In this state, we don’t want to go outside and are
always in bed, feeling abandoned like that. And the people
asked: ‘How come?’ If someone in the village isn’t well, word
gets round immediately. And people said: ‘It must be the
tarantula.’ I had an aunt, my mother’s sister, who played the
tambourine. She came round one day, on her own, without
telling me or anyone else. She came secretly and brought the
tambourine and started to play, just the tambourine, on her
own. When I heard the tambourine, I started … And that’s
when my aunt said: ‘It’s the tarantula!’ She had seen hundreds,
hundreds of these cases and so when she saw me in this
condition, she knew.
The next day my aunt called the musicians. There were
three. I didn’t know anything about this, as I was in bed, feeling
completely abandoned. They came to my mother’s and
prepared the house. They put covers on the floor, because
when we fall, we fall and can end up hitting a chair or the wall.
The musicians came around 11, 11.30 a.m. and started to play
for ten minutes, for fifteen minutes. The music made me react
on the bed, jump up, dance. I got out of bed on my own and
went to the room next door and danced.
There were also some colours that bothered me, because
there are certain colours that the animal doesn’t like. The
animal chooses the colour. At Galatina, we were capable of
stripping someone of their jacket or vest because we didn’t like
the colour. One woman remained naked in the middle of the
street. If the animal was yellow, then it was yellow that it
couldn’t bear seeing. Or red. And we were the same. We would
always look out for this colour.
Karen: What instruments were there?
81
Dances with Spiders
Francesco: There was a tambourine, a diatonic accordion and a violin.7

Not an accordion, but a diatonic accordion, because the
accordion doesn’t give you the same sound. It was important
that it was this diatonic accordion, because, if someone took
up the accordion, the music wasn’t the same. With the
tambourine it is the same. If someone just plays, you don’t feel
anything. I can tell if it’s played by someone who is an expert,
who plays the beat of that music, of that illness. You can tell if
someone is competent in those things.
Karen: And did they know what to play, or did you ask for specific
music?
Francesco: No, no, no, they played the sound of the tarantula, of that
animal. Even today they play that sound of the tarantula. There
are tapes. Even though I like that music, and I buy it for myself
at times, after a little while, I turn it off. It’s the only music that
I really like, because of the grace that I received. But I
immediately sweat, because I still feel a little bit this event of
some thirty years ago. They used to play one hour, two hours,
depending on what the saint said. There has to be a person that
commands us, and it may be that it is this saint. You see an
image. While we dance, we see a person in front of us. But we
don’t know who this person is. We see a shadow. It’s he who
commands you. He tells you what you have to do and what you
don’t have to do. In my sister’s case, it was a snake. But with
her it took just one year.
Karen: And, for you, how long did it take?
Francesco: Three, four years, no? For one or two days you were really in a
bad state and then there was this vision, this person that said:
‘You don’t have to dance any more. Enough!’
Karen: Did others perceive this vision?
Francesco: No, no one.

Cinzia: Some people were told by the saint to go around the village to
collect offerings.
Francesco: One year my sister said that she needed one hundred, two
hundred thousand lire8 and we were ready to give them to her
to take to the saint, but my sister said: ‘No’. She had to collect
these as offerings. She had to go down the streets to collect this
money. My mother said that we had this money to give, but the
saint didn’t accept. Previously, you heard a lot about these
things, and people believed in these things and more than one
gave a thousand lire, five hundred lire, and the sum of money
collected was enough to go to Galatina and to offer to the saint.
The priest then took the money, or someone else took it. Once
82
my sister had collected this money and gone to Galatina, she

was all well again, completely fine.
Then the last year that I did this, after two, three days
always in these conditions, this vision said that the following
day was the day of St Peter and Paul. We generally went the day
before. I went to do my duty, but he sent me away. The saint,
this shadow, said to me: ‘You shouldn’t have come today. You
have to come back. You have to come tomorrow.’ I had to turn
back, to go back home, in a bad state, to wake up at four in the
morning and to return on foot. My brother, my father, my
mother wanted to take me by car. But he said: ‘No, I won’t
accept.’ I had to go on foot and left on my own.
Cinzia: I’ll never forget the last year that he was really ill, in 1967. Of
course we were worried at home. I followed him secretly by car,
to see in case he wasn’t well, but I just wasn’t able to see him
anywhere. Who knows which road he took.
Francesco: They didn’t see me. But I was on the road. It’s not that I took
another road. I took the normal road to Galatina, the principal
road. And they say that they didn’t see me. I took one hour to
get to Galatina and close to the church my family saw me. It’s
possible that they passed by me and didn’t see me. When I
arrived, I went to the small church, because you have to go first
to the small church and then to the large church. I had to
move on my knees from the chapel to the large church. It’s
about a hundred metres distant. The altar was all laid out with
people all around and I don’t know how I found myself there,
but I found myself on the statue of St Paul.
Karen: On the statue?
Francesco: I found myself on the statue of St Paul in the church.
Karen: On top?
Francesco: On top. I don’t know how I got there, how I climbed up onto
the statue. Then the police arrived and other people. They
thought I was mad, because the saint carries a golden angel
and they thought that I’d gone up there to steal the gold. I
arrived on top of the saint and then came down by myself. The
priests condemned me, but I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see
anything. I didn’t even see the police or the people inside the
church. The people in Galatina don’t believe in these things.
They don’t believe, because at Galatina St Peter and Paul have
protected their territory, saying that here these things should
not exist.
In the whole province this happens, but not in Galatina. In
most parts, there were one or two per village. I met many of
these people. Most of them are dead now. Among the young,
83
Dances with Spiders
few have remained. I have remained alone with these things.

But in the church you still find these people, old ones, aged
eighty or so, and they still do these tricks.9 These people still
dance. In the church, you need to close the door, because, you
know, a man wears trousers, but a woman doesn’t and there are
people who don’t believe in these things and they come to look,
to laugh, to joke. Also, at the back of this church, there was a
cistern with water inside and it was full of snakes. There was a
bucket with which you brought up the water. Those of us who
suffered from this affliction drank, but no other person did.
When the water came up in the bucket, those serpents, and
scorpions – I don’t know which animals they were, because you
didn’t see them – disappeared inside the bucket and just water
came out. Not everyone could drink this water, but we drank it
without worries.
Karen: And what about the music?
Francesco: There were people who played music inside the church. The
musicians who played were brought by the family from one’s
own village.
Karen: And what effect did the music have?
Francesco: You felt stronger. You felt things the force of which even we
didn’t know how to explain. You saw serpents. You saw people
thread themselves through chairs,10 without even noticing. I’d
never manage now, but then I did. And I was always big as I am
now. But, it wasn’t me. It was all based on this animal that did
all of these things.
Cinzia: There was no control on their part. They can’t perceive why
they did it or how they managed to do it. The point is that they
don’t even remember.
Karen: And this shadow, did it appear when the affliction began?11
Francesco: First you had the affliction and you danced to this music.
Then, when you were feeling tired, you asked for grace from
this saint because you just couldn’t take it any more, because
you felt just too tired. You asked for the saint’s grace and he
told you what to do, depending on the penance that you had to
fulfil, depending on the effect of this poison, of this animal.
Karen: And why was it St Paul?
Francesco: St Paul is our protector. It was he who directed me. He is the
person in the vision that we have. It’s just that we don’t know
who it is. We imagine that it is this saint. And we speak with
him. You don’t hear anything. I spoke with myself, and the
saint. There was no one else who could hear. I could even
speak in a loud voice, but the people around couldn’t hear
anything.
84
Bengasi: Before, had you ever thought about this saint?

Francesco: No, to be honest, I never went to visit St Peter and Paul. When
I was young, I went to St Pantaleon, because my father took
me to the festival. He was a devotee of St Pantaleon. I never
thought about these saints. Afterwards, yes. Before, in fact, at
times I’d use the saints’ names in blasphemy. Nowadays, if I
hear someone who speaks badly of St Paul, I immediately get
furious. I feel uneasy, because they are referring to this saint.
For me this saint is a confidential thing, and, if others don’t
show proper respect for him, I get very angry. I have been
fortunate with this saint. For those of us who have this illness,
who have been bitten by this illness, we have all been saved. I
believe in this saint, because he is a saint that has made me
well. Thank God, he granted me health.
Cinzia: Were you there at St Peter and Paul’s?
Karen: Yes.
Cinzia: (turning towards me): So you were there in the chapel. We were
coming out and you arrived and sat down. In fact, I said: ‘That’s
someone who’s interested, let’s go.’ I said: ‘Please, hurry up,
let’s get out of here,’ that’s what I said, ‘There’s someone from
the RAI,12 when here there are people who aren’t well.’ … You
sat down on the small bench near to the wall. And I said: ‘Let’s
go. Let’s go.’ (Her emotional tone encourages me to come to an
end, despite Francesco’s invitation to ask as many questions as we
liked.)
Karen: One last question, when you received grace, how did you feel?
Francesco: Well. Normal. I left the church, went to the bar and had a
coffee, as if nothing had happened. For three years, I was
unwell. Throughout the year, I was fine until this period
arrived. But since I have received this final grace, following my
visit on foot to Galatina, I have found myself well. But I still go

to the church every year to do my duty, and as soon as I arrive
near the small church, I feel emotional because I think
everything might come back once again.
Francesco continues to speak long after I have switched off my tape

recorder. My companions and I stand in his kitchen, in his doorway, and
then outside his house, next to the car, gripped by his accounts, unable
to leave. The memories triggered by our visit pour forth. His speech is
passionate. It holds us, preventing us from turning on the car’s ignition,
inhibiting us from bidding him farewell. It is as if this tale is seeking to
keep our attention so as to be spun on, so as not to be suspended or
85
Dances with Spiders
abandoned in the air. It is a long while before we eventually depart, and

I wonder what repercussions our visit has had on Francesco’s life and
that of his family. It seemed as if our coming had stirred deep waters, yet
again recalling emotions of crises brought on by the tarantula. I can’t
help but wonder what events had led to Francesco’s affliction, what
human relations created the backdrop to his crises, and how others
involved might have presented his case. I never did find out.
In spite of this obvious partiality, Francesco’s account is that of a
believer: although he was no longer subject to the tarantula’s sting, the
return of its symptoms was always, potentially, imminent. This
conviction does not belong to Francesco alone, although the tarantate
persisting today are a tiny minority. Others confirm their existence,
although accounts of their well-being vary. In 1998, Luigi Chiriatti,
well- known for his research on popular music and Salentine traditions,
confirmed the following during a seminar at the University of Lecce:
‘There are still some fifteen tarantate that I know in the Salento today
who are suffering from the symptoms of tarantism. Some continue to
perform rituals in the privacy of their homes. None, however, directly
and openly admit that they are tarantate.’13 On the same day, Salentine
writer Maurizio Nocera explained: ‘There are still some tarantate who
are “performing” in their homes today. Until the day before yesterday,
Christina performed the rituals you see in the film Morso d’amore.14
Now she is in hospital because she is not well … You will find that most
of these individuals do not talk.’ By 2006, Nocera estimated that there
were no more than five or six tarantate still alive.15 Meanwhile, social
anthropologist Stephen Bennetts (2006) writes: ‘According to one
Salentine authority, the last episode of tarantism took place in 1993,
and the last living practitioner died in 2000.’ Clearly, there is much
room for speculation.
Personally, I have met no more than five (ex)tarantate during my time
in the Salento and I am unable to confirm the persistence of any rituals
involving music and dance. However, like Francesco and Evelina, a
number of tarantate continue their pilgrimages to Galatina in
commemoration of St Paul in June every year. It is here that public
performances of tarantism were still observed in the early 1990s
(Almiento 1990; Di Lecce 1994). These accounts are variously disputed
and sometimes dismissed as nothing but show, as researchers’ attempts
at seeking credit and recognition. Personally, I have no proof for the date
of the most recent performance at Galatina. However, in my interviews
86
various unconnected accounts of these rituals in the early 1990s

confirm one another.16
However this may be, this site too appears to be increasingly
abandoned, perhaps replaced, and certainly reinvented, as Matteo’s
dance in June 2001 suggests. Luigi Santoro (1982: 75), professor of
theatre history at the University of Lecce, meanwhile, hints at the fact
that ritual pilgrimages have been displaced to other sites in the
Salentine countryside:
Michelina … told me that the following year she would no longer come to
Galatina; like the other tarantate, she too would go to … If you want to
come – she had added – come alone. Each year we count ourselves to see
who has remained and who has died … But don’t bring anybody else,
otherwise the black tarantula will take revenge and eat us all.
On 29 June 2007, a young researcher from Ostuni suggests the same

as we chat in the chapel of St Paul. To my knowledge, these hints have
not been followed up or mentioned in writing elsewhere, although
another landmark, St Paul’s grotto, just outside the town of
Giurdignano, sees St Paul and the tarantula spider venerated side by
side.
St Paul’s Grotto: a Contested Site

For most of the year, this grotto is bare except for moss and fern growing
inside its moist ecosphere [see Figs 3.2 and 3.3]. The months of May
and June bring change, as the crypt interior fills up with red-glowing
candles, bouquets of wheat, potted plants and fresh wild flowers. By the
time St Paul’s feast day arrives, much of the cavern floor is covered with
offerings. On 29 June 1998, I attended a service here [see Fig. 3.1].

By seven o’clock in the evening, a crowd of about seventy people has
flocked around St Paul’s grotto. It is surrounded by fields of sunflowers
and lies some hundred metres beyond the periphery of the town of
Giurdignano on the convex curve of a tarred country road. Painted on
the faded walls inside the cavern are two human figures and a spider
web: it is here that St Paul dwells side by side with the tarantula. The
spider’s image has been scraped out of the stone wall, leaving only a
scar hinting at its presence at the centre of the painted web. It was, I
have been variously told, picked out by a tarantata. St Paul’s face, too,
is largely effaced and one side wall holds the smudged outline of other
figures. The paintings, according to local views in Giurdignano, go
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Dances with Spiders
back to Byzantine times, when a monk is said to have resided in this

cell and first decorated the walls.
Art historian Linda Safran, who works on the medieval Salento,
however, asserts that there are no traces of Byzantine paintings here.
Stylistic grounds suggest that these frescoes do not pre-date the
nineteenth century. Moreover, the grotto in its present form is unlikely
to be a hermit’s cell, given the presence of medieval tombs immediately
above.17 Historian Gino Di Mitri (2000: 96) writes that the paintings
have been redone several times, while a builder and painter from
Giurdignano, whom I interviewed in 1999, confirmed that he had been
commissioned to renovate these murals some thirty years ago.
Apparently, it was his idea to include the tarantula in its web, although
I was unable to elicit his motivation for doing so.18 I have not been able
to verify this fact through other records, but, unless found to be untrue,
it suggests that the spider was brought to life here only some four
decades ago.
The grotto is topped by one of the many stone monuments – of
medieval origin, according to University of Lecce archaeologist Paul
Arthur (2004) – dotting the Salentine landscape: a menhir, tipping
slightly to one side, catching the unsuspecting eye likely to miss the
excavated hollow below. Many hypotheses account for the presence of
such stones widespread in the Salento: they may have served
astronomical functions as ancient sundials or marked ritual sites,
boundaries, crossroads or, in more mystical terms, intersecting ley
lines.19 To yet others, they designated abodes of the devil, explaining
past efforts of the church to destroy and erode these stone pillars or to
Christianize them through the incision of a cross. In 2006, a sign with
information about the Giurdignano grotto officially marked this site as

a tourist destination.
During the 1998 service, this menhir hovers above the crowd
together with a loudspeaker. A table covered in white holds a Bible and
religious utensils. The village priest gives his sermon and the
congregation actively participates in prayers and hymns, voices mixing
with the sound of birds and mopeds or tractors passing at a distance.
Only this once every year did the Christian Church agree to honour a
site possibly rooted in a pre-Christian past. What is more, this was to be
the last time, following the decisions of Church authorities. Most of the
open-air congregation is elderly and from the village of Giurdignano
itself. The most senior members have taken their place at the centre of
88
the crowd. Several black-clad women stand at the opening of the grotto
at road level with their faces carved in deep and solemn wrinkles. A
number of older men have positioned themselves alongside the obelisk.
One leans against the ancient stone: a picture of resilience.
I recognize two or three of the younger faces; I had seen them at the
chapel of Galatina that same morning. There is also Fernando. He
moves around the crowd of people taking pictures from various angles.
His telephoto lens stands out like the loudspeakers, time-markers in a
set that could have belonged to other decades and centuries if it weren’t
for the clothes people are wearing and a tractor waiting to pass along the
narrow road blocked by the congregation. The service concludes with
the distribution of pane benedetto, blessed bread, traditionally made
from the first grain threshed every year.20 Then the congregation
gradually flows back into town.
Some linger behind, and one last devotee arrives accompanied by her
family members. She deposits a personal offering inside the cavern and
bends her brow over the grotto opening until she is face to face with St
Paul. Her lips move in prayer. She too has lived with the tarantula’s
sting, I am told by her family members. Now she has received St Paul’s
grace and yet, every year, she continues to pay her respects.
A year later, in June 1999, Giurdignano has a new village priest and
no mass is held at this site. Just a small service consoles those for
whom it holds meaning. The priest’s decision, I am told by two elderly
ladies who, like many of Giurdignano’s inhabitants, continue to pay
their respects, is based on ‘higher orders’ concerned about the fact that
this landmark is no longer consecrated. However, even in June 2005,
there are still over twenty-five candles, plant pots and flowers
underneath the painted spider web.21 Maurizio Nocera hints at

another motive behind the new priest’s arrangements, linked to the
strong presence of (ex)tarantate at this occasion: ‘He realizes that he is
blessing the devil, the spider, with all those signore there.’22
It is unclear, however, whether anyone has danced here in honour of
the tarantula and St Paul. Various elderly and young people denied this
fact or said that they did not know, while researcher Luigi Chiriatti
implies that this site has resounded with the beat of tambourines: ‘In
the night … sounds of hides and copper-plates and cries howled at the
moon, and dances, Filomena, bride of St Paul’ (1996: 12). Who may
have danced and for what reason remain a mystery. What is clear is
that difficult-to-verify allusions abound. These are voiced not only by
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Dances with Spiders
those who have been directly involved with the tarantula’s bite, but also
by researchers with or without first-hand experience of tarantism. Like
travel writers in the past, those who inscribe accounts of the tarantate
on paper today play a vital role in perpetuating the clash between
believers and sceptics, dropping information that is at times
uncontextualized, sometimes obscure because unfounded or so as not
to reveal the identity of those involved, and very often cross-fertilized
by hearsay. Just as St Paul’s site brings to the fore tensions between
believers and sceptics, an episode of Latrodectus poisoning recorded in
the late 1990s, evoked heated debates for and against the tarantula.
Spider Poisoning: a Contested Case

In 1996, an actual case of spider poisoning was recorded near the
town of Otranto. It brought to a peak the discourses that make up a
vibrant part of what constitutes tarantism, in its curative sense, today.
Five doctors from the Cardinale G. Panico Hospital of Tricase treated
the young man bitten on 4 July 1996 and wrote their official report
(Colonna et al. 1997: 49–50, 2000: 171–79).
The poison found its way into the body of the young male victim
via a sting on the left foot. Ignored at first as an unwarranted itch,
with no trace of a possible instigator, insect or thorn, ten minutes
passed: the silence before the storm. Then the venom hit. Violent
cramps in the left leg forced the young man’s body to a halt,
compelling him to take a closer look at the two lesions on his foot.
Another ten minutes, and the venom fiercely contracted his stomach
muscles. Others accompanied him to a first-aid centre. Analgesics
helped to loosen the poison’s grip, enabling the victim to be taken to
the surgical unit of the Scorrano hospital. Surgery was ruled out and
the intensive care unit of the Tricase hospital became the next stop
in this race against the toxin. A tiny, triangular lesion, no more than
three millimetres broad and marked by three holes, identified the
poison’s port of entry. By this stage, the venom had knotted the
patient’s stomach muscles and left limb into agony. Tests were
administered and symptomatic therapy initiated: analgesics, muscle
relaxants, antihistamines and diuretics prescribed to defy the poison.
A day later, the patient was still extremely anxious, trembling,
perspiring heavily and his urine had turned black. Another twenty-
four hours passed before any considerable improvement was noted,
recovery appeared secured, the venom on its way out, and the
90
patient, finally, safe. A few days later, the young man was released
from hospital.
From a clinical point of view, this case was resolved on the sixth day,
when the patient was discharged. From an anthropological point of
view, the story had only just begun. Repercussions of this bite revealed
major discrepancies marking perceptions of tarantism in the
contemporary Salento.23 The medics involved confirmed that this case
was exceptional in that it led to the only documentation of a
contemporary case of spider poisoning based on laboratory tests
available in the Salento today. However, this clinical report gives no
hint of the perplexity this case caused for the medics in the intensive
care unit of the Tricase hospital, or of the ethnographically specific
consequences, which locate it within the Salento.
In their conversations with Luigi Chiriatti (1997b: 58–59) and
myself (in March 1998), the doctors involved relate how this case
presented them with a diagnostic puzzle accentuated by the following
factors: firstly, the patient was suspected of snake poisoning, but the
administration of an anti-viper serum had to be carefully assessed as it
is not without potential allergic side effects; secondly, the location of
the bite mark on the patient’s left foot dispelled the hypothesis of snake
poisoning, as it was unlikely that a serpent would have been able to
enter the patient’s boot. Moreover, the crushed shell of a snail was
found inside this boot, suggesting that a smaller insect inhabiting the
shell was responsible for the bite; and, thirdly, none of the doctors
involved had ever come across a case of spider poisoning before, nor
were they familiar with the symptoms involved.
Later enquiries among their colleagues in the Salento suggested
that no instance of spider poisoning had been reported in the last fifty
years or so. Initially, no link was drawn to the tarantula: it was simply
one of many suspects under investigation. The patient was consulted
and extensive laboratory tests were undertaken to test all possible
hypotheses. Literature on spider poisoning was reviewed as the
tarantula became a key suspect. Interestingly, this included De
Martino’s book La terra del rimorso (1961a), which turned out to
provide essential clues: the descriptions of the tarantate’s symptoms
were found to correspond precisely to those of the patient. The Centro
Veleni di Milano, a Milan-based unit specializing in the analysis of
poisons, then tested the patient’s blood sample and confirmed the
tarantula’s culpability.
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Dances with Spiders
Apparently, according to the doctors’ account, the patient himself

drew no links with the tarantula. Only when interviewed at a later
stage did he reveal that his father and aunt had immediately suspected
the spider (Chiriatti 1997b: 56). Not only his family, but also other
elderly people who came to know of his case insisted that he go to
Galatina. He was repeatedly warned that, if a tarantula had been
responsible for the bite, he would have to dance the following year. He
himself staunchly discounted tarantism as nothing but popular belief,
although other members of his family had previously been bitten by the
tarantula (ibid.: 56–57). Apparently, he never did dance.24
Media headlines, however, maximized the sensational: ‘After
thirty years of silence, it has struck again. The “tarantula” has
returned to make its voice – and its poisonous bite – heard in the
fields of the Salento’ (Delle Donne 1996: 9). Moreover, a conference
entitled ‘Il tarantismo fra mito e realtà’ (Tarantism between Myth
and Reality) was organized in September 1996 to bring together
researchers from both the medical and the social sciences in order
to discuss this case. Links to tarantism were stressed (Chiriatti
1997b: 59): the period of recovery corresponded to the average
length of tarantism rituals (three days); the bite was registered in an
area identified as a mythic and elective site of the tarantula because
of the relatively large number of tarantate still known to live there
today; and La terra del rimorso (De Martino 1961a) was used as a
diagnostic tool. Others criticized such correlations as reductively
conflating tarantism with spider poisoning (Rivera 1996). Clearly,
researchers play a key role in constructing, moulding and
reinventing perceptions of tarantism today. They too may be the
targets of the tarantula’s modern sceptics. This scepticism was

expressed with particular vehemence in another conversation I had
on the very day in early August 1999 that I spoke to Francesco, who
had experienced the tarantula’s curse.
Tarantism as Fiction: Debates Against the

Tarantula
Having finally said goodbye to Francesco and his family, my
companion Bengasi, who had kindly arranged the meeting, urges me
to speak to another fellow citizen: a gentleman about the age of
Francesco who has been studying tarantism for many years out of
92
personal interest. Our friend Vittorio has to leave us. I wouldn’t mind
leaving either, feeling more than saturated with the information from
the previous interview and roasted from the heat. But it seems a
chance not to be missed: an interview offered on a silver platter, so to
speak, and, moreover, I sense there is another view Bengasi wants me
to hear, as he has taken the trouble to arrange this second meeting
without any prompting on my part. As a result, we arrive at the studio
of Paolo Zacchino, a high-ceilinged space, which I recall through
tired senses as a combination of office workspace and theatre prop
collection. We sit facing each other on three chairs placed just inside
the large, garage-like entrance opening onto the street. Paolo begins
to speak in a solemn and emphatic voice:
They have built castles in the air around tarantism. Tarantism, in
our parts, is a complete invention. There is nothing that is true. It
is all false.
Bengasi: There’s a castle falling now, for this young lady!
Paolo: The castle must fall because … some scholars have taken on
information about tarantism always based on the view of people who
were directly involved or had family members who were … but
scientifically – I will explain why, and then a scholar who has done
research on this topic should answer me – the phenomenon of
tarantism was born out of needs linked to the family. There may be
controversies within the family. Note that almost always a teenage
girl was involved. Why is it that the sting of the tarantula always
affected a teenage girl? Was it because of sexual needs? Principally
it was because of divergences that occurred in the families. And
then the tarantula – scholars call her the dancing tarantula – is said
to bite only in the summer period, during the wheat harvest, during
the tobacco harvest. Now why don’t the scholars explain this to me?
Let’s take the example of wheat. It wasn’t the women who went
to reap the wheat, it was the older people and they were the ones to
have direct contact with the grain, but note that these elderly people
were never bitten. First, as to the tobacco harvest, entire families
were involved in harvesting. But why did the tarantula bite only the
young women? Did this tarantula have a sixth sense and go in search
of a particular hand or a particular foot of a young woman to bite?
There has been a lot of speculation about tarantism. And then, the
other aspect is that tarantism is spoken about only with regard to
Nardò and Galatina. Why doesn’t anyone speak about Galatone,
Copertino, Leverano, Veglie, Salice?25
Bengasi: In past years, Copertino was also spoken about.
Paolo: Well, okay, but always marginally.
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Dances with Spiders
Karen: Also the area of Otranto is often mentioned.

Paolo: Yes, because the phenomenon then spread out, the affair assumed
county-wide dimensions; but beyond these towns? Even in the area
of Brindisi, wheat is grown and tobacco, etc., but these phenomena
don’t exist. So I am convinced, very convinced – and scholars will
have to demonstrate otherwise – about the family issue. And nobody
knows how it was born. How were the various traditions born?
Something happened and then assumed larger dimensions.
Karen: Often there was no real bite, often the tarantata wasn’t actually
bitten by a spider.
Paolo: No, the tarantula has nothing to do with it. It may be an illness
relieved through music. It may be a need … Today, if someone has
convulsions, etc., there is the hospital. But, yesterday, when they had
these moments of illness, these things … well, what do you say, has
she been bitten by the tarantula? Let’s see … I took part at one of
these dances of a tarantata and am still left with the impression of
pretence. It was behind my house and complete pretence. This
person danced for an hour, for half an hour, etc.; people came and
threw one hundred lire or two hundred lire26 onto the blanket, and
when they finished playing and she was tired – it’s logical that after
dancing she was tired – maybe she’s calmed herself, maybe she’s
healed; and when the people have gone away she collects all of the
money and puts it away.
Karen: But why pretend to suffer to make money?
Paolo: To make money or to convince a parent who didn’t want to give their
daughter in marriage to Tizio, Caio, Sempronio,27 to convince the
parents that her cure could be a husband, so this one danced until
her mother said: ‘Let’s go to St Paul, it’s necessary to go to Galatina,
for this young girl a husband is needed,’ and so they were convinced.
Bengasi: It’s important to look at the customs of the families, how it was
possible to use this phenomenon for personal means. It’s important

now to go from one part to the other and to see how they coincide.
I think it’s necessary to reconcile everything: I don’t believe … I
believe … like you hear about Padre Pio, who performs lots of
miracles.28
Paolo: I take many situations into careful consideration and these lead me
to not believe.
Bengasi: The Church doesn’t believe in these miracles.
Karen: But what about the tarantate who jump up onto the altar, even
though they entered the chapel without strength, carried in the arms
of others?
Paolo: In a word, a young woman! Wouldn’t you manage to jump onto the
altar?
Karen: But also the old people …
94
Paolo: No, there weren’t any old people. There were some women who
reached the age of forty, but they are the kind of women who put
themselves in front of a cart and pull it for you. To jump onto the
altar … for a young woman who is emancipated, isn’t difficult. It’s
just like with the unlikely story of when they pass through the chairs
… So what happened with the phenomenon of the chairs? There
was someone who, as there was a chair on the ground, slipped
through it. Contorting themselves they could pass underneath, and
then the others recounted: ‘Madonna! She passed through the
chair!’ But it’s not true that she passed through it. It’s not possible.
It’s absurd. But word spread, that she passed through the chair …
They also came to interview me, those from the RAI, but then I was
disappointed that they didn’t take my view into account.
Bengasi: They help themselves to create spectacles, broadcasting any kind of
rubbish.
Paolo: Then they spit on what you say … what you hear, you should say!
It’s not like you always find what you want … Now I don’t know
what your research is aimed at, but I would study all of this more
thoroughly, but scientifically and not by hearsay, because there is
lots of hearsay. If you interview a person who has been directly
involved they can’t say: ‘No, it’s not true!’ having already been
involved in interviews, in newspapers. They tell you: ‘Yes, it’s true!
I’ve been miraculously healed. I went to Galatina, to St Paul, I
went through this or that, etc.’ They will most definitely tell you
this, if there still are any. But, most definitely, there will also be
people who know the life of the family, the various reasons, and so
you need to make this comparison: in other words, this one is
telling me this in one way, and this one in another way …
When I went to Galatina, I was participating in theatre shows.
What I saw in Galatina were theatrical acts, there was nothing
true, all this movement that they did, all these scenes, you saw a
normal person, tired, that shows immediately, but that’s it, there’s
no illness, no bite, nothing; it’s all pretence, it’s all staged, it’s all
a show … they were up to all sorts of mischief; as you said, they
climbed onto the altar … now it’s all forbidden, but you saw those
who climbed onto the altar, and it’s not like the one who didn’t
manage to walk climbed up. The young girls climbed up, the
young women, etc., who had, perhaps, even rehearsed at home,
climbing onto a table or a bench!
As my companion Bengasi and I drive away, having said goodbye to

Paolo, I can’t help but feel as if I had just walked out of a classroom.
Paolo had made every effort to debunk all myths and miracles
associated with the tarantula. He had reiterated various points De
95
Dances with Spiders
Martino isolated as proof against any direct cause-and-effect link

between the actual threat of spider poisoning and the crises of the
tarantate. However, whereas De Martino interpreted these facts as
culturally specific responses to suffering, Paolo dismissed everything
as pretence. His view highlights the potential power play and
manipulation for personal means that may underlie cases of
tarantism, but his stance also entails the risk of rejecting this entire
phenomenon on the basis of its symptoms (dispelled as inventions).
However, a look at others’ sceptical responses shows how the notion
of invention comes into play to varying degrees for both believers and
sceptics.29 Some of the elderly farming community in the Salento
continue to equate tarantism with spider poisoning. ‘The soil has
become cold because of the pesticides, which have killed all the
spiders. That is why there are no longer any tarantate,’ one elderly
farmer told me. The (apparent?) eradication of the spider provides a
straightforward explanation for the extinction of tarantism. For many,
tarantism is a cause of amusement or embarrassment. ‘Today we laugh
about it!’ For some, tarantism was never more than a fable. ‘Ah, the
tarantate – but that’s a legend – I don’t believe in them!’ A few,
moreover, do not know about tarantism. The subject was taboo in some
families. A young female student at the University of Lecce confirmed
that she had never heard about tarantism until it was discussed in a
university course she attended.
For others belief in tarantism is irreconcilable with Christian or
biomedical logic. On the morning of St Paul’s festival, I spoke at length
with a newspaper vendor in Galatina: ‘I don’t believe in it’, he argued,
‘because I follow the Church. The Church and medicine don’t admit
these things.’ This point was also brought home to me during a

conversation with a middle-aged woman in a small town near Tricase:
‘Tarantism is a thing of the devil … The only doctor is our Lord!’ For
some, tarantism may have had its validity in the past, but is clearly
outdated today, as Antonio Antonacci (1988: 1), a priest from Galatina,
stresses:
As regards the problem of the ‘tarantate,’ there are people who have remained
fixated, like a broken clock, in a remote past … Tarantolism is a distant
reminiscence. And, it is known that people also want to see themselves in this
‘reminiscence,’ as if to project themselves with gratification into a past of fears
and difficulties … the subtle denigration of the South, also in this field, is
inexhaustible.
96
When asked to speak about this phenomenon for the purposes of my

research, Antonacci explained his unwillingness to do so on the basis
of the fact that he considered tarantism to have been a falsehood.
A retired secondary-school teacher and relative of a deceased
tarantata, meanwhile, argues that the violent and traumatic roots of
tarantism leave the afflicted without trust or self-esteem and with
feelings of not being worthy of joy or pleasure, leading to vicious cycles
of suffering, which could have been avoided with psychiatric and
pharmaceutical treatment: ‘It’s a form of self-punishment. The
afflicted punish themselves by excluding themselves, because they feel
excluded. This leads to a vicious circle, because this behaviour of self-
exclusion easily becomes a source of embarrassment for others, who
then begin to deliberately exclude these individuals too.’ Yet others
point to the conceptual changes modern health care has brought with
it. A psychologist at a psychiatric centre in Lecce expands on this: ‘In
the past, someone was either mad or a tarantata. The concepts of
depression, burnout or nervous breakdown didn’t exist. All were
classified as “mad”. The diversification of medical concepts has
contributed to the end of tarantism.’ Music therapist Rita Cappello,
meanwhile, adds: ‘It is very likely that symptoms of tarantism persist
today under a new name, but using tarantism today instead of music
therapy would be like teaching a child to learn to count on its fingers
without ever giving it access to a computer.’
Diverging views coexist in the Salento today, revealing various levels
of belief in the historical validity or reality of tarantism. It is widely
dismissed as invention or fiction, providing good reasons not to link
symptoms of tarantism to contemporary disturbances. And yet the
views voiced by health-care practitioners suggest that although the

tarantate may no longer exist their symptoms persist, cloaked in new
terminology. The tarantula spider may have been eradicated from
Salentine soil and the beliefs of its younger generations, but
experiences of affliction comparable to those of the tarantate have not
been eradicated with an equally reassuring certainty. Show business, as
the next chapter reveals, helps to distract attention from this fact,
nominating the tarantula, instead, first and foremost as an emblem of
local identity.
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Dances with Spiders
Notes
1. These are the words of a speaker at a conference on tarantism held during
the days leading up to the festivities of St Peter and Paul.
2. On my return to the Salento in 2001, I am told that Francesco, too, has
passed away. I record this interview here in his memory.
3. It remains unclear when exactly Francesco’s afflictions began and how long
they lasted: he speaks of both twenty and thirty years ago, while his wife
cites 1967 as the year of his last major crisis.
4. Francesco uses the word abbandonato here, which may be variously
translated as abandoned, marooned, forsaken, uncared-for, helpless or
forlorn.
5. The Italian term quintale refers to the metric equivalent of approximately
100 kg.
6. Francesco uses various terms to refer to the symptoms of his crises: male
(translated here as affliction, although it has broader connotations of evil,
ill, wrong, misfortune, adversity, trouble, as well as illness, disease, pain or
ache); guasto (damage, breakdown or failure); and malattia (illness, malady,
infirmity or ailment).
7. The Italian name organetto, used by Francesco, refers to the diatonic or
button accordion found in central and southern Italy.
8. One hundred thousand lire is the approximate equivalent of 50 euros (using
the conversion rate of 1,936.27 lire to one euro from 1 January 2002, when
the euro was first introduced).
9. Francesco uses the Italian term scherzi (jokes, jests, pranks or tricks) to
refer to the behaviour of the tarantate at Galatina.
10. Francesco refers here to a phenomenon widely associated with the tarantate
and generally viewed as inexplicable by those who believed.
11. Here I pick up the term ‘shadow’ used by Francesco earlier to describe the
presence of St Paul.
12. RAI is the Italian broadcasting service, Radio Televisione Italiana.
13. Lecce, 2 February 1998.
14. Nocera refers here to the film by Miscuglio et al. (1981).
15. Lecce, 1 April 2006.
16. Brindisi, 15 November 1997, and Lecce, 10 June 1998.
17. Personal communication, 6 February 2006.
18. Giurdignano, 18 August 1999.
19. Leylines are said to connect strategic geographical points such as
megaliths or ancient monuments. These alignments are associated with
magnetic or magical forces by some and dismissed as pseudoscience by
others.
98
20. The group Mascarimirì sings about this in their song ‘Pizzica RAÏ’ on their
album Triciu (Romano 2006): ‘Santu Paulu de Giurdignanu con il primo
pane tra la mano’ (St Paul of Giurdignano with the first bread in his hand).
21. I thank Linda Safran for providing me with photos of the grotto from this
year.
23. For a collection of interviews on this case see Chiriatti (1997b: 45–84).
24. Giorgio Di Lecce, Lecce, 23 October 1998, confirmed this after speaking
to the young man two years later.
25. The towns listed belong to an area south-west and west of Lecce [see Fig.
0.2].
26. One hundred lire would be approximately 5 cents (using the conversion rate
of 1,936.27 lire to one euro from 1 January 2002, when the euro was first
introduced).
27. Italian equivalent of Tom, Dick and Harry, referring to any ordinary person.
28. Padre Pio (1887–1968) of San Giovanni Rotondo, Apulia, whose icons,
statues and devotees are widespread in Apulia, was sanctified on 16 June
2002.
29. These views are taken from field notes based on interviews in various towns
throughout the Salento written in the period from June 1997 to August
1999.
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Dances with Spiders
Fig. 4.1 Salento ‘Open All Year Round’, 2001 (postcard: Azienda di Promozione
Turistica di Lecce, Martano Editrice and Radici di Pietra; photo: Fernando
Bevilacqua; claim: Nello Wrona).
Fig. 4.2 Poster of ‘La Notte

della Taranta’, August 2007
(© Istituto Diego Carpitella).
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Chapter 4
Ads and Antidotes:
Celebrity versus Conservation
Down in the Salento we have the sun and the beautiful sea
and with the tambourine people dance and play,
but this ‘ethnic music’ has become like a postcard
of a fake Salento of nights and tarantulas.
I am ‘ethnic’ but infuriated because the tambourine
mustn’t become like a ring through the nose.
Applaud the politicians,
who invent the festivals and so everything seems to go well.
And so I say: Heavy blows with sounds and songs,
Heavy blows for all and without mercy.
I am an infuriated ‘ethnic’ and one thing I have to say,
If we don’t speak now, tell me when we should speak.1
Roberto Raheli, Album Mazzate Pesanti, 2004
The group Aramirè takes a verbally militant approach, as the lyrics of

their song ‘Mazzate Pesanti’ (Heavy Blows), performed to the pizzica’s

beats, shows. Roberto Raheli, director of the group and author of this
song, speaks out strongly against the commercialization and
exploitation of the music, dance and territory of the Salento. The inside
cover photo of this album shows an equally evocative and all too
common scene in the Salento: a rubbish dump of abandoned washing
machines, stoves and fridges on the outskirts of a village marked by a
flag post sign reading ‘Divieto di scarico’ (No Waste Dumping). A ban
acting as a magnet. Raheli spotlights further contradictions:
For me discourses need to be more complete, regarding the Salento as a
whole without isolating questions of music and dance. It’s no good
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Dances with Spiders
attracting tourists to festivals and other events if the beaches remain dirty.
It’s no good speaking of diversifying events throughout the seasons if then
all major events are programmed in August. It’s no good spending heaps of
money on mega-concerts if the traditional stone walls all around the
Salento are falling down.2
The tarantula’s music and dance have become a free-for-all device,

abounding in inconsistencies and bringing to the fore key issues –
questions of authenticity, invented traditions and identity, in
particular – associated with the so-called ‘revival’ or revitalization of
musical traditions more generally (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983;
Grenier and Guilbault 1990; Livingston 1999; Sant Cassia 2000).
This is not without friction, as Paolo Apolito (2000), lecturer in social
anthropology at the University of Salerno, brilliantly discusses.
Whereas only a decade or two ago tarantism was a source of shame,
fostering conceptions of Salentines and Apulians as poor and
ignorant, this has been reversed today. ‘This time it is the Apulians,
in particular a cultural group, which is urbanized, critical and post-
modern, who claim tarantism as a positive, noble and profound sign
of their history and identity’ (ibid.: 139). Surfing this wave, De
Martino’s book La terra del rimorso (1961a) ‘often not read and not
understood, has become a strong source of interest, concentrated,
just like an emblem, a banner, of local identity’ (Apolito 2000: 139).
In this context, the tarantula has become ‘a symbol that stands for
itself ’ (Wagner 1986), with a certain autonomy in relation to its
users, showing how the invention of meaning involves an unrelenting
process of transformation. Whereas in the past the tarantula’s ritual
was part of a cultural complex deeply rooted within everyday life,
these links were cleanly cut by the 1990s, and tarantism appears to
be no more and no less than a free-floating spot or slogan, as aptly
labelled by Apolito (2000: 141): ‘Tarantism is not an essence which
is in some way configurable and identifiable. Instead it involves all
that can be said about it.’ As a manifold tool, applicable to multiple
purposes, the tarantula is as ubiquitous as ever.
A look at four specific initiatives that have brought the spider back
to fame, locally, nationally and internationally, illustrates this. First,
experimental techno-pizzica jam sessions provide examples of
attempts by intellectuals and musicians to adapt the tarantula’s music
and dance to contemporary music trends. The festival of San Rocco
presents a second key initiative and a mecca for pizzica fans from all
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over the Salento, Apulia, Italy and elsewhere, vibrating to the pizzica’s
rhythms from dusk to dawn on the night of 15 August each year.
Thirdly, the annual ‘Night of the Tarantula’ concert held in August has
become the diva of summer celebrations, taking the spider on tour
worldwide. Finally, this large-scale event is offset by a low-key local
initiative, La Sagra dei Curli, the Festival of the Spinning Top,
representative of less formal, more intimate get-togethers. The
pizzica’s beat is the dynamo behind all of these occasions.
Taranta-muffin, Techno-pizzica,
Tarantavirus: Hybridizing the Pizzica
One heated, omnipresent discourse regards the contamination of
Salentine music. Some deliberately incite processes of hybridization
whereas others seek to record and reproduce ‘the old ways’ as much as
possible. French academic Georges Lapassade (1994) is among those
with an active interest in so-called hybrid musical forms and their
relation to discourses on identity.
Lapassade has suggested that musicians such as those of the
Salentine rap group Sud Sound System can be defined as today’s
tarantati. This group coined the term ‘taranta-muffin’ to refer to a mix
of Jamaican reggae and their own musical heritage, knitting together
rhythms with ‘local’ and ‘global’ connections, integrating the ‘foreign’
and ‘familiar’. Where musical creativity reaches out to engulf influences
from elsewhere, Lapassade has drawn historical connections to stress
that contemporary performances of the pizzica provide essential
symbols of group identity and a key to Salentine culture as such.

With this in mind, Lapassade lists potential points of contact
between the performances by the Sud Sound System and the rituals of
the tarantate: first, in line with traditional tarantism songs, the young
rap group insists on using the Leccese dialect, emphasizing its territorial
origins. Second, this group’s concerts may be viewed as ritualistic on the
basis of the extensive involvement of the audience. A ‘rotating
microphone’ may mark these occasions. It is passed between performers
and spectators, allowing participants to contribute improvised lines.
Third, certain pieces by the Sud Sound System, such as ‘Afro ragga
taranta jazz’ on the LP Comu na Petra (1996), explicitly contain pizzica
rhythms. These connections cannot, however, make up for the deep
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Dances with Spiders
discrepancies between historical rituals of tarantism and contemporary

performances of the Sud Sound System. Interestingly, the musicians
themselves initially opposed being categorized as nuovi or new tarantati,
objecting to associations with a cult weighed down with prejudices, but
subsequently, with the new pizzica craze, began to promote this image
themselves.
Meanwhile, academics Lapassade and Piero Fumarola actively
promoted other experiments of ‘contaminating’ traditional Salentine
music, including the techno-pizzica (Maggiorelli 1996).3 During the
1997 Venice carnival, to which a number of Salentine groups were
invited, an initial ‘jam session’ was organized with the Sud Sound
System and Gli Ucci, a group of anziani (elderly) well respected for their
musical skills and renditions of the tarantula’s music in its ‘traditional’
sense (Durante 2005: 60–61). Since then, similar events in Lecce and
elsewhere have explored the potential of this musical cocktail. Daniele
Durante (1999: 174) draws attention to similarities between past rituals
and such techno-pizzica events:
Whoever enters this musical atmosphere loses control of inhibitory restraints
and looks to the music as a vector to reach ‘other’ dimensions in which to
forget, discharge, digest or eliminate the poisons and tensions of daily life …
To interrupt this sonorous flow almost brings about a physical unease in the
dancers, comparable to that of the tarantate at one time, and to ravers today
… A further analogy with the therapeutic orchestra is represented in the
pursuit of the instrumentalists to excite4 the tarantula by taking turns in
approaching the ear of the tarantata with their instruments. In our case, this
was possible through the use of the microphone. Taking turns to distance
ourselves or come close both with the tambourine and with our voices, we had
the impression of penetrating the bodies of the dancers. Many dancers, in fact,
placed themselves close to the loudspeakers, knowing well that, when very
strong sound waves are emitted, it is no longer the ear that hears, but the body.
Inevitably, such comparisons require careful and critical

consideration. However, although the techno-pizzica has been scorned
by some, it is a good example of how the active and deliberate
involvement of intellectuals in the promotion of research linked to the
tarantula’s music and dance is fundamental to contemporary discourses
on tarantism.5
The 1970s saw initial attempts, led by young intellectuals and
musicians, at recording the traditional music of the Salento as
performed by elderly members of society. Often these endeavours met
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Ads and Antidotes
with resistance, as they evoked memories of a past tinged with suffering

and anguish, often looked back on with embarrassment. Many did not
want to remember (Chiriatti 1998). Despite the ardent efforts of a few
passionate individuals, it was not until the 1990s that Salentine music
took off in grand style. By the year 2000, some fifty groups had sprouted
out of the ground, while more established groups, with success in Italy
and elsewhere, numbered a dozen or so.6
Dance ethnologist Giuseppe Gala (2002b: 48) identifies the
reasons for the pizzica’s boom in the 1990s not only in intrinsic
factors (the impacts of the spider’s seductive myth and the
tambourine’s rhythmic repetition) but also in external ones, including
choices other than drug addiction; research and cinematography on
tarantism; the fashion of world music and ‘ethnic things’; the
influence of esoteric, New Age philosophies and of popular figures in
the Italian popular music scene (such as Eugenio Bennato, Teresa
De Sio, Daniele Sepe and the group Nuova Compagnia di Canto
Popolare), as well as generational fashions more generally. A member
of the discussion forum on the website www.pizzicata.it takes up this
point:
The success of the pizzica is certainly in part a fashionable and commercial
phenomenon, but in my opinion it also represents a response to globalization,
currently wanting to force us all to listen to the same music, to eat the same
things (perhaps at McDonald’s), to think in the same way, not to speak of war.
With the recovery of popular music, traditions and local identities in general,
many are looking for a way to fill a vacuum of values they feel inside… This is
a phenomenon that is happening in the whole world and it is positive if it
doesn’t lead to the construction of new fences: a community can have a strong
identity but it is important that it is a community that is open to the outside

… after all, many of our traditions were born from a mixture of cultures that
have influenced our land.7
Similarly, the late Giorgio Di Lecce, director of the group Arakne

Mediterranea and lecturer in the history of dance at the University of
Lecce, explained: ‘In my opinion, it is because a generation has passed.
Those of today no longer have points of reference as the generation
before did. The young people today are in need of roots. They are
looking for points of reference.’8 The notion of terra, of earth or native
land (translated here in the sense of roots or origins), is evoked to speak
about a lack of coordinates in everyday life. Di Lecce takes up a
common discourse associating modernity with the challenges and
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Dances with Spiders
hardships of being ‘rootless’, despite the incomparably improved socio-

economic conditions of younger generations in comparison with their
predecessors.
The pizzica’s burst of popularity has also created a source of intense
rivalry and back-stabbing regarding questions of origins, musical
execution and ownership. Many insist on having been the first to
revitalize this music, claiming their right to others’ acknowledgement, if
not to copyrights. Rather than considering the efforts of various
individuals and groups in creating the momentum and popularity that
the pizzica currently enjoys, energy, words, time and money are, often
indirectly, invested in fighting for ‘first place’ – despite equally insistent
claims regarding the ancient and medieval precedents of this music and
dance. Depending on the perspective taken, various names are
pinpointed as key catalysts behind the pizzica’s recent revitalization,
although overall it is probably fair to say that momentum picked up over
the years through the engagement and dedication of the many who
spurred on this movement through both enthusiasm and competition.9
In 2007, the CD Tarantavirus was brought out in conjunction with
the events calendar quiSalento, presenting the combined musical
talents of two Salentine stars: Uccio Aloisi, retired farmer in his eighties
and charismatic singer and tambourine player of the group Gli Ucci
(Raheli et al. 2004), and Cesare dell’Anna, talented trumpet player in
his forties, known for his performances inspired by Balkan music.
‘“Tarantavirus – the impoverished spider” is a disc of passage, from the
ancient to the modern, from the “old” to the young, it is a representation
of the meridian spirit through a “technological” lens, a natural
“contamination” of ancient instigations with new technologies, new
desires and new dances’ (Anon. 2007: 81).10 Tarantavirus is one of

hundreds of CDs on the burgeoning market of the tarantula’s music and
dance. Efforts to revitalize this music and dance, of which the Festival
of San Rocco is a key example, have become inextricably intertwined
with their commercialization.
The Festival of San Rocco: Revitalizing

and Commercializing Traditions
I still remember as if it was yesterday that incredible shove he gave me,
perhaps with the elbow, which pushed me into the centre of the circle; I raise
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Ads and Antidotes
my eyes, and find myself face to face with a gypsy; he is large with dark skin
and his fiery eyes are fixed on me; his body moves lightly in spite of its massive
structure … wake up! phew … with incredible potency he skims my face …
with no time to reflect, I dodge; my adrenaline rises to never imagined levels,
I’m afraid, my eyes search for my preceptor; he plays, his squinting eyes
focused on nothing; careful! … blow after violent blow follows; there’s no time
to think or to be afraid; I let myself go … I dance. (Probo 1996)
With these words Lamberto Probo, member of the group Officina Zoë,
describes how, for the first time, he finds himself dancing the scherma.
An old man and teacher had propelled him into this situation. The
occasion is 15 August, the festival of San Rocco, and the venue
Torrepaduli, a small town in the south-western cape: the most well-
known ‘fortress’ of the scherma today (Di Lecce 1992; Melchioni 1999;
Tarantino 2001; Chiriatti and Miscuglio 2004; Monaco 2006; Inguscio
2007). Until the first mass on 16 August tambourine players of all ages
enact their modern-day vigil (Torsello 1997b), singing and beating their
instruments, standing in tight circles of performers, opening and closing
spontaneously, within which the pizzica pizzica and scherma are
danced.11
At Torrepaduli, nowadays, courtship and duels go hand in hand, but
it was not always like this. These crowds are recent and, apparently, this
festival’s popularity among performers goes back no more than two
decades. Prior to the 1980s, ‘the festival of St Rocco in Torrepaduli was’,
as Giovanni Pellegrino (1995) writes, ‘the last shore on which
tambourine players performed, or rather “resisted”: those last players
were almost all very old and resigned. This age-old festival had become
reduced to a pigtail, which wore out shortly after midnight.’ The
resurrection of this festival, paralleling similar endeavours throughout

Europe, was part of more widespread attempts to revitalize traditional
Salentine celebrations eroded in the post-war period, in the face of
social fractures left by large-scale emigration and the advent of
everything that stood for modernization (Boissevain 1992; Tak 2000).
In 1982, a group of Salentines decided to promote il ritorno a San
Rocco, the return to St Rocco. They sought out musicians and dancers
to find out what factors brought them to San Rocco or kept them away;
approached cultural and academic institutions, as well as local
authorities to seek advice and support for this event; and relaunched the
tambourine, as an emblem of past forms of socializing, at the Festa del
Tamburello, the Festival of the Tambourine, in Cutrofiano eight days
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Dances with Spiders
prior to 15 August, to publicize and warm up for San Rocco. In

subsequent years, slowly but steadily, the tambourine made its way into
the limelight and the festival of Torrepaduli has now become a major
focus for celebrations of Italy’s national holiday, ferragosto.12
In 2005, I arrive at Torrepaduli at 2 a.m. and there is a two-kilometre
queue of cars leading up to the village. The town centre and piazza in
front of San Rocco’s sanctuary are packed. We need to take care not to
step on dogs or people sitting on the litter-covered ground. The
atmosphere is heavy with drained, dreadlocked bodies, many appearing
stoned, sprawled on the ground: although marginal in number these
young people, generally labelled as punkabbestia for their unkempt
looks and ragged pet dogs, stand out in an area where locals dress up for
the occasion and the average person would rarely be seen sitting on the
curb of the road.13 It is hard to ignore the sense of chaos and disregard
that permeates the air, although excessive drunkenness or aggression is
absent. On the main piazza circles of musicians hold back throngs of
onlookers and carve out spaces in which dancers move. These circles
form spontaneously, with participants joining in and dropping out,
determining whether circles last or simply dissolve. Some continue for
hours, with spectators containing and animating the performances, and
create a stark contrast to the confusion elsewhere around the festival.
Where rules are respected, seduction and playful competition reign.
Despite this success in attracting crowds today, many of those who
never deserted this festival and worked to revitalize it are unhappy about
the current situation. ‘It’s nothing but chaos’ is the most common
criticism, initiating fiery discussions between traditionalists and
modernists (Metafune 2002). Giovanni Pellegrino (2002) draws up a
balance sheet twenty years after the initial return to San Rocco,
isolating two main problems: the ‘acoustic pollution’ of market stalls,
with loudspeakers booming over the sound of the tambourines played
live, and the increasing presence of ‘invasive’ drums and African
rhythms. ‘With every respect for other cultures and their fans,’
Pellegrino (2002) appeases his readers, ‘I believe … that we’re speaking
about the most classical meeting of Salentine tambourines and the
rhythms of the pizzica and of nothing else.’
By 2005, leaflets of the manifesto Proteggiamo Torrepaduli, Let’s
Protect Torrepaduli, aimed at safeguarding this festival, present four
clear demands: respect for the devotees of San Rocco; a zone in front of
St Rocco’s sanctuary reserved for ‘traditional circles’ without drums; no
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participation in circles by absolute beginners; and, no more than one

couple appearing in a circle at one time.14 The subtitle, ‘Awareness
Campaign for the Recovery and Protection of One of the Last
Traditional Salentine Festivals’, raises questions about how traditional a
revitalized festival can be and, more importantly, what purposes its
apparent traditional qualities may serve. Where continuity is ruptured,
as Hobsbawn (1983: 13) points out, reference to the past often
disguises other motives, hidden agendas, ‘exercises in social
engineering’, if not overt discrimination. Commercial factors are often
the first to be highlighted, as the pizzica with its mystical roots in the
Salento has helped place this area in a prime position on European
tourist maps.
Although widespread efforts have sought to make the tarantula’s
music and dance accessible on a large scale at the Festival of San
Rocco, these endeavours increasingly clash with accusations of and
interests in commercialization. Desires to make this festival appealing to
everyone are questioned, as certain participants, such as the
punkabbestia, challenge social norms and expectations. Despite calls for
the traditional and authentic, San Rocco presents fertile soil for the
invention of tradition, as women dance the scherma and the pizzica is
danced to African drums. As these drums are marginalized and the
tambourine prioritized, notions of ‘contamination’ or ‘hybridization’ are
once again defied. These tensions equally mark the mega-concert of the
Night of the Tarantula, the spider’s first and foremost spot [see Fig. 4.2].
La Notte della Taranta: a Music and

Media Spectacle
On 27 August 2005, by 10 p.m. the eighth edition of La Notte della
Taranta, the Night of the Tarantula, is in full swing.15 Some have
nicknamed it la notte fatale, the fatal night (Santoro 2005b). I have just
arrived at Melpignano, having skirted the long queue of cars waiting to
turn off the Lecce-Maglie motorway to find a parking spot, on a friend’s
motorbike. The well-loved elderly singer Uccio Aloisi and his band are
up on stage, their faces projected onto various screens suspended from
the ex-cloister walls next to the grand stage, surrounded by an estimated
throng of some eighty thousand listeners (Maruccio 2005). The
atmosphere is lively and light-hearted. This is obviously the place to be
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Dances with Spiders
if you want to listen to Salentine music in concert grandeur, enjoy a

warm summer night get-together or care to be seen where the action is.
Street vendors selling food and ‘ethnic’ jewellery make the most of this
night. Wine, T-shirts and shoes with the spider logo of this 2005 version
are also on sale: a first-time marketing stunt to promote local products
in tandem with this occasion (Anon. 2005). People dance, chat and
hang out, packed like sardines closer to the stage, and standing or sitting
in more dispersed groups on the edges.
Backstage, meanwhile, there are snacks and drinks for free for those
who have the status or connections for an entry pass. A large number of
the Salento’s current centre-left government, including its president
Giovanni Pellegrino, are here. Other significant politicians have not
missed this occasion either. Among them are Massimo D’Alema, leader
of the national party Democratici di Sinistra, as well as Nichi Vendola,
member of the left-wing party Rifondazione Comunista and current
president of the region of Apulia. On stage, well-known Italian stars –
Francesco De Gregori, Giovanna Marini, Piero Pelù and Sonia
Bergamasco, to name some of the most famous – take turns behind the
microphone with Salentine performers: seventy singers and musicians
making up the Orchestra Popolare la Notte della Taranta, directed by
Ambrogio Sparagna, doing this job for a second year round.
Newspapers, meanwhile, have announced the participation of a
Chinese television troupe (Presicce 2005), as well as initiatives towards
inserting this night into the Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani (Indennitate
2005; Vendola 2005). The spider is back in action, many times
magnified by the media, and thousands are dancing to its tune.
This highly controversial jewel of Salentine cultural policymakers
was inaugurated in 1998. On the evening of 24 August 1998, eleven

Salentine music groups performed their musical repertoires in nine
different villages of the Grecìa Salentina, a region south of the Salentine
capital of Lecce, in which Griko or Greek dialects are still spoken by a
small minority.16 By 11.30 p.m., musicians and spectators converged on
the centrally located town of Melpignano, where a final concert
including all participants was staged. This spectacle had been rehearsed
for three days preceding the event under the direction of Neapolitan
musician Daniele Sepe. Crowds in the hundreds tightly packed the
main town square, where a large stage was floodlit in bright colours.
Performers of all ages sang, danced and played in an as yet
unprecedented collaborative effort. The crowd participated frenetically.
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Circles of tambourine players and dancers formed, broke up and

re-formed below the stage amidst a flash of cameras and enthusiastic
applause, until the concert was officially concluded with an
announcement by Maurizio Agamennone, ethnomusicologist on the
scientific committee of this event: ‘See you all at the Night of the
Tarantula ’99!’ His invite signalled the pizzica’s step into the limelight of
what has become a major annual festival within the world music
scene.17
From the very beginning, controversies – both among the musicians
themselves and with respect to the ‘outsiders’ involved, such as the
Neapolitan musical director and two university professors with major
organizational responsibilities – brought to the forefront notions of
identity played out on stage. Promoted by the Istituto Diego Carpitella,
inaugurated in 1998 to document and encourage research on local
traditions (Santoro 2005a: 93), this night, bringing together so many of
the Salento’s pizzica enthusiasts, was for many a great success. For
others, the pleasure evoked did not outweigh underlying dilemmas.
A heated debate about the link between tradition and modernity in
Salentine music emerged in the local papers subsequent to the first
occasion.18 Opinions appeared to be divided into two main camps. One
side spoke of the need for an active confrontation of the Salento’s
musicians with other types of music, in order to elaborate the existing
repertoire of Salentine music through ‘hybridization’ or ‘contamination’
with other styles (labelled ethnic, techno, New Age, etc.), thereby
fostering innovation and diversity in a context within which ‘the same
songs are continually fried and refried’ (V. Santoro 2001). The other side
argued that any kind of popular music was inherently subject to a
process of ‘natural’ change, but nevertheless staunchly underlined the

importance of not forcing this process. Whereas it was seen as
inevitable that certain groups were, for instance, influenced by Balkan
music, considering the strong influx of people from these regions to
southern Italy in recent years, intellectually imposed projects ‘conceived
at a table’ (Raheli 1998) were strongly disputed.
As in its first year on stage, this event continues to attract enormous
crowds, as well as immense criticism. ‘The syndrome of the tarantula’,
Gino Di Mitri (2001) writes, ‘is transversal, invasive as an enticing pest:
it pleases the anti-global supporters of a home-made “buena vista social
forum” just as much as right-wing municipalities engaged in (why not?)
the popularistic road to tarantism.’ In fact, performances of musica
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Dances with Spiders
popolare such as the pizzica have accompanied the electoral campaigns

of both right- and left-wing political candidates over the years. Generally
speaking, however, initial inputs leading to the re-appropriation of
tarantism and its music are intrinsically related to a left-wing political
ideology – still considered the most politically correct in the pizzica
milieu – focused on promoting and defending popular culture and local
traditions.
Significantly, problems that have shaken up the organization of the
Notte della Taranta and the very foundations of the Istituto Carpitella
are linked not only to divergent opinions among the scientific and
artistic committee, but also to the interests of politicians engaged in this
event. As Gino Di Mitri (2001) states: ‘What’s the target? Visibility in
the media, popularity among the pizzica aficionados, publicity and
votes!’ Technology and visibility have become major priorities, as has the
creation of a Night of the Tarantula Foundation aimed at promoting
research and performances in the field of popular music through a
permanent Night of the Tarantula Orchestra (Torsello 2007). Further
discussions regard the institutionalization and legislation of popular
music and archiving resources (V. Santoro 2005b). Moreover, whereas
initially criticisms were voiced about the vast discrepancies in local
government expenditure for cultural programmes focused on
‘cultivated’ rather than ‘popular’ music, the pizzica has now become a
major market label.
In the summer of 2003, ex-drummer of the group Police Stewart
Copeland was in charge of the Orchestra Popolare la Notte della
Taranta, taking it on its first European tour in the summer of 2004,
including the capital cities of Athens, Brussels, Paris and Rome. In
February 2006, the Venice Carnival concluded with a smaller edition of

this show (Barone 2006). Two months later, local and national
newspapers hailed the orchestra’s Beijing concert, with fifty thousand
paying fans, as a unique promotion for Italy at large (Presicce 2006).19
‘For once, I am really proud of my homeland,’ says one enthusiast.20 For
others, it is an occasion of yet further disillusionment. ‘I am deeply
ashamed and fear that the degradation of this vicenda, this initiative,
has arrived at a point of no return.’21 Critics add that the money used for
this event could have promoted vast local initiatives, while politicians
and cultural managers plan the next stops for the Night of the Tarantula
musicians: Jordan and the Football World Cup Championships in
Germany (Indennitate 2006).
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In 2007, the Night of the Tarantula celebrated its tenth anniversary

with a focus on integrating other music traditions from the
Mediterranean basin, promoting female voices and celebrating related
Apulian traditions (Quarta 2007a). Prior to the grand night, two weeks
of concerts brought various Salentine music groups on stage in fifteen
municipalities of the Grecìa Salentina, as well as the towns of Otranto
and Andrano (Quarta 2007b: 77).
La Notte della Taranta has, in many ways, come to epitomize the
contemporary revitalization of the pizzica.22 Warnings abound. ‘Dance
and sing,’ writes Dinko Fabris (2005) in the national newspaper La
Repubblica, ‘but, please, leave the poor tarantulas be, who, besides,
should be a protected species.’ Roberto Raheli is more adamant: ‘The
Night of the Tarantula arrives in the very delicate context of the re-
appropriation of almost lost songs, like an elephant in a crystal factory.’23
While this event has become by far the most extravagant and publicized
concert of the tarantula’s music and dance, there are some who have
always boycotted it, making their act of absence a statement in itself.
Meanwhile, a snapshot of another summer night in 1998, the year
the Night of the Tarantula was first staged, provides a glimpse of
another festivity, much more intimate and small-scale, within which the
tarantula surfaces both through its music and, what is more, through
the improvised re-enactment of elements of the tarantate’s rituals by
one of the female participants, Tanya Pagliara, who explicitly declares
herself to be a (modern) tarantata.
La Sagra dei Curli: a Community Festival

‘Do only that which enchants you,’ the late Antonio Verri, much-loved
Salentine poet and writer, had said. La Sagra dei Curli, the Festival of
the Spinning Top, is dedicated to his memory and to this endeavour.24
It is 1 August 1998, a Saturday in Vignacastrisi, a small town south
of Otranto. I arrive with Tanya, in her early thirties, whom I had met in
a sociology of religions class at the University of Lecce. She is an artist
and two of her recent exhibitions revolved around the tarantula. Last
summer, she and others sought out abandoned country houses to paint
while listening to or playing the pizzica. Other pictures took shape at
popular music concerts. Her paintings are brightly coloured and depict
the Salento’s natural landscape, spiders and serpents, the tambourine
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Dances with Spiders
and, frequently, a young woman [see Figs 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3). Tanya
declares that she was ‘bitten’ in this period and became obsessed with
everything that had to do with tarantism. Her tambourine, given to her
as a gift by a musician, is inscribed with the words, per Tanya, la
tarantata (for Tanya, the tarantata). In her life, she tells me, everything
seemed to be going wrong. ‘I’m run down,’ she says. ‘Does it show?’
It is 9 p.m. when we arrive at Vignacastrisi, and the town is quiet.
Only the central square, bathed in yellow street lights, shows sporadic
activity. The bar is open and a group of men sit on plastic chairs,
chatting in the night-time shadows of a few large trees. Cars and
mopeds wait by the pavement. Occasionally others drive by, cutting into
the bubble of male conversations. We park next to the town hall, and a
bustle of sound and movement takes us through an archway into a
courtyard, where a white spotlight illuminates a rectangular space filled
with some seventy chairs. A number of people intermingle and the air is
filled with anticipation. The programme of the last but one of five
festival days has yet to start. Tonight the Antonio Verri Award will be
announced, its aim being to stimulate grass-roots creations in the fields
of poetry, music and theatre.
A further hour passes. A table is set up in one corner and laid with
food: bowls of freshly cut tomatoes drenched in basil and frise, the local
dried bread. Two barrels of wine and water flank the table legs. Small
groups gather, sit, talk, come and go. A cement staircase leads around
two sides of the courtyard to the first floor, where two photographic
exhibitions are displayed. There are pictures of the tarantate at Galatina
and others of the serpari of San Domenico in the province of L’Aquila,
Abruzzo, with processions of saintly statues and humans draped with
snakes. There are also publications on sale and to give away: a collection
of poems presented at previous events of this kind; short stories folded
on single leaflets; and a booklet of photocopied texts and images.
By 10 p.m. a respectable crowd has assembled and a few introductory
words turn one end of the courtyard into a stage. There is Annalù
Sabetta, small, energetic, in a white summer dress, presenting the
various performers. Tanya and her female partner are among these. In
summer dresses, with painted faces, the two lay out what they identify
as a magic circle. Masks, made from natural fibres, and candles mark its
perimeter. Their performance evokes a mystical world, inhabited by
winds and entranced beings embodied in colours, symbols, actions and
songs. It is inspired, Tanya tells me later, by her recent visits to local
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caves. The audience, moving about freely, bridges all generations and
participates keenly, looking on, chatting, commenting and applauding at
the end. There are locals enjoying the evening for its out-of-the-ordinary
entertainment. There are others who have come for the pizzica. Many
are ‘regulars’ in the world of the sibilo lungo, the ‘deep murmur’, coined
and identified by Antonio Verri as emanating, since time immemorial,
from ‘the close and profound link that exists between Salentines and
their land … that interior force which you can feel among our people,
that close link with the land, which manifests itself in the grand
phenomena of devotion towards our saints, our village festivals and
towards the pizzica’ (Presicce 1999: 11).25 We may wonder, however, to
what extent this perceived connectedness to the land and the pizzica
may be generally acknowledged among Salentines or is rather a notion
predominant largely among the younger and left-wing population.
The performances continue. Poetry readings alternate with short
theatrical sketches and end with the declaration of the prize-winners.
Tanya interrupts occasionally with theatrical gestures and elaborates on
the female announcer’s comments: ‘Do you know Annalù? She is a
tarantata like me. I … I know her.’ Remarks such as these solicit friendly
amusement and feedback from the crowd. Eventually, the invited band
Terra de Menzu begins to play. Only a few notes from the guitar,
tambourine, flute and harmonica move the first dancers onto the floor.
From the seats and side-wings others clap and sing along. Slow pieces
of music alternate with faster ones. Tanya dances in the crowd and
enthusiastically tries to draw others onto the floor. The fifth song is slow.
The male vocalist plays with the lyrics. His gestures jokingly refer to
Tanya, who is sitting next to him. The audience responds with good-
hearted laughter and Tanya reacts by sensuously moving her bare shins
up his leg.
The sixth piece is a pizzica. It cuts into and changes the atmosphere,
propelling Tanya and others onto their feet, into its rhythm. Tanya lets
out a shrill scream, throws herself onto her knees, flings her head from
side to side with the tambourine’s beat and imitates the tarantate’s cry:
‘A-hi!’ Others move around and past her. She is neither ignored nor
given exclusive attention as she stretches out on the ground and rolls
over and over, colliding with the dancing feet of others, fingers tapping
the pavement, further cries straining her vocal chords. Eventually she
sits up, stands and merges with the other dancers.
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Dances with Spiders
The pizzica continues for over five minutes until the vocalist’s sweat-
covered face contorts in a grimace. He warns the other musicians and
stops playing. The bleeding skin of his thumb has left blood streaks on
his tambourine. Shortly afterwards the group bid farewell. Some
spectators leave, too. Others remain. Chairs are moved aside to make
more room. One person strikes up the chords of a song and others join
in until another piece is proposed, at times interrupting the first, as
musicians and audience mingle. Tanya dances, sings and plays tirelessly,
communicating in grand gestures with a male singer as they improvise
verses to the melody of a well-known song. By 2 a.m. the remaining
participants gather around a female singer whose striking voice rings
around the courtyard. At this point, Tanya and I leave. Driving home,
she remarks how liberating it had been to imitate the tarantate’s ritual:
she feels better now.
La Sagra dei Curli presents an example of an event far from the
spotlight of television cameras and media coverage. The tarantula’s
music and dance are engaged with to commemorate Antonio Verri and
to celebrate a sense of community among his friends and fans, while
endeavouring to put Verri’s vision of spurring on creativity into practice,
independently of predominating political tendencies or financial
subsidies. It thus presents a major contrast to large-scale events in the
public eye. Although unique in its objective, it may be seen as
representative of many such community or home-based initiatives
hosting the tarantula’s music and dance, which may be recorded only in
local newspapers or on home-made videos, if at all.
Clearly, just as the past ritual form of the pizzica was used not only to
heal the tarantula’s victims but also appropriated for manipulation and
to achieve other, less explicit ends, so today the tarantula’s music and
dance present a double-edged sword. It is a means of advertising and
merchandising the Salento – using rhetorics of musical antidotes to
modern ills as a publicity scoop – without consideration of its natural
and cultural heritage. At the same time, it presents not only a potential
source of celebrating identities within and beyond the Salento, but also
a key to developing this area according to culturally sensitive and
environmentally sustainable parameters. A look at the experiences of
participants, such as those of the modern tarantata Tanya reveals,
moreover, how the tarantula’s music and dance are still, or again, being
linked to experiences of recovering well-being.
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Notes
1. ‘Abbasciu allu Salentu tenimu sule e mare, e cullu tamburrieddhu la gente
balla e sona. Ma ‘sta musica etnica ete na cartolina de nu Salentu fintu de
notti e de tarante. Su etnicu ‘ncazzatu percé lu tamburieddhu non deve
diventare comu n anello al naso. Battitini le mani all’amministratori ca
inventanu li festival e pare tutt’okei. E allora dicu ieu: mazzate pesanti culli
soni e culli canti, mazzate pesanti pe’ tutti senza santi. Su etnicu ‘ncazzatu
na cosa l’aggiu dire, se nu parlamu moi, dimme quando imu parla.’
2. Alessano, 10 August 2005. Raheli refers here to the stone walls found
throughout the Salentine peninsula, made without the use of mortar from
stones gathered from the rocky terrain to free land for cultivation.
3. I am not certain who first introduced this term, but it has become largely
associated with the academic Piero Fumarola and some musicians, such as
the group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, while under the direction of
Daniele Durante.
4. Durante uses the term scazzicare.
5. In this context, Vincenzo Ampolo and Guglielmo Zappatore (1999) have
also presented their research on the use of drugs in the Salento in relation
to techno-pizzica experiments, as well as so-called ‘counter-culture
movements’ and ‘altered states of consciousness’ more generally. Although
the whiff of joints is often in the air in the context of summer pizzica
concerts, some informants have stressed that the effects of drugs such as
marijuana, which are likely to promote a passive attitude, are
counterproductive to those of music-making or dancing, which demand
active participation. More extensive research is required in this respect, but
the effect of tambourines is often seen to replace and outdo even the best
marijuana.
6. In 1999, there were over twenty popular music groups playing the pizzica in
the Salento, of which at least five had had success elsewhere in Italy and
abroad (Durante 1999: 190). By 2005, there were over fifty (Nocera 2005:
5).
7. Raf, 9 April 2004. Retrieved on 8 February 2006 from http://www.
pizzicata.it/index.php?name=MDForum&file=viewtopic&t=106.
8. Lecce, 25 June 1999.
9. Piero Canizzaro’s films Ritorno a Kurumuny (2003) and Ritratti dal Salento
(2005) present portraits of various individuals (predominantly male) seen as
portatori (carriers) or promoters of Salentine musical traditions.
10. This production represents the first step in a larger project signed by Cesare
dell’Anna and 11/8 Records (a studio set up some years ago together with
academic Piero Fumarola and musician Daniele Durante).
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11. See ‘You Tube’ video clip ‘Ronda di pizzica alla notte di S Rocco’:
http://it.youtube. com/watch?v=eJJ8gpubdTA.
12. Throughout Italy the national holiday of 15 August or ferragosto is a
synonym for time off during the summer heat. Its origins go back to 18 BC
when the Roman Emperor Augustus dedicated the entire month of August
to festivals and celebrations (Feriae Augusti) and it continues to be an
important Catholic holiday in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
13. The term punkabbestia was recently included in the Italian dictionary
Nuovo Zanichelli to indicate ‘a group of young people living in the company
of dogs and without a fixed home, dressing in a disorderly way and tending
to have piercing and tattoos’. Often linked to the no-global and pacifist
movement, this group has little in common with the transgressive 1970s
London punks.
14. This campaign was launched by the Web community www.pizzicata.it.
15. For the official website, see www.lanottedellataranta.it.
16. The towns of the Grecìa Salentina include: Calimera, Carpignano
Salentino, Castrignano dei Greci, Corigliano d’Otranto, Cutrofiano,
Martano, Martignano, Melpignano, Soleto, Sternatia and Zollino. See
http://www.greciasalentina.org/ L_Html/.
17. The following musicians have acted as musical directors of the Notte della
Taranta since its inauguration: Daniele Sepe (1998); Piero Milesi (1999);
Joe Zawinul (2000); Piero Milesi (2001); Vittorio Cosma (2002); Stewart
Copeland (2003); Ambrogio Sparagna (2004–6); Mauro Pagani (2007–8).
See Quarta (2007a).
18. The following articles are of specific relevance: Durante (1998); Fumarola
(1998); Raheli (1998); Seclì (1998). See also Quarta (2007a: 18). Similar
issues are developed in a series of articles published on the pizzica three years
later in various editions of the Quotidiano di Lecce in August 2001: Blasi
(2001); Di Lecce (2001a); Di Mitri (2001); Imbriani (2001); L. Santoro
(2001); V. Santoro (2001).

19. See www.lanottedellataranta.it/galleria_video.php?cod=8, retrieved on 2
September 2007, for a short news report in video format on this event.
20. Lecce, 3 May 2006.
21. Lecce, 4 May 2006.
22. Two films, Piero Canizzaro’s La notte della taranta e dintorni (2001/2003)
and Paolo Pisanelli’s Il sibilo lungo della taranta (2005), present visual
documents of this event.
23. See http://aramire.splinder.com/post/9160721, retrieved 2 September 2007.
24. Verri met an untimely death in 1994 and has since acquired somewhat of a
cult status among some Salentines for promoting grass-roots art and
creativity.
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25. ‘Il sibilo lungo translates literally as “the long ‘s’ sound”, a sibilant. Although
“murmur” does not capture this phoneme, it attempts to render the deep,
mythic echo and murmur of the land’ (Raheli 2005: 128). This notion
emerges from the following much-quoted lines of Antonio Verri:
‘It changes, it will change much, the face of the land, of gathered humanity,
of entire towns … what will never change is the idea of dialoguing with the
earth that humanity has established from time immemorial, the long breath,
‘the deep murmur’ which can be heard only in the early morning, while
looking out over the vast fields, while standing next to the silver trees, the
silent sentinels.’ (in Del Giudice 2005: 264)
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Dances with Spiders
Fig. 5.1 Ada Metafune and her mother Sabina Romano dancing the pizzica,
Parabita, July 2001 (photo: Karen Lüdtke).
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Chapter 5
Sensing Identities and Well-being:
Personal Motivations and
Experiences
To be true to oneself is, in the end, the only thread

that links us to our individual father’s house.
It’s our true identity: idem, the same, that which remains,
even when the circumstances change.
Eugenio Barba, Lecce, 11 November 20021
‘The success of the pizzica today is directly linked to the fact that
tarantism no longer exists,’ says one middle-aged Salentine man,
suggesting that show business grows on the negation of crises and
cure.2 One exits and the other enters on stage, and their appearances
appear irreconcilable. Would tarantism, with its heavy baggage of
inherent crises and suffering, make it to the headlines today if it
were too close to the bone, if it were attributed more than a soap
opera feel? The answer of a middle-aged woman, native to Galatina

is clear: ‘Today this tradition has lost itself. It was more than a
tradition; it was anguish. We experienced it above all as anguish. But
today you don’t feel that any more. I find it interesting as something
that identifies us as Salentines. But I wouldn’t take up anything other
than the dance for today’s purposes.’3 Nowadays, it appears most
people in the Salento would defend this view. According to its new
terms and new outfit as a source of local pride and identity, tarantism
can resurface even within officially religious and political contexts.
Very few speak openly about the crises cutting into their lives today
and how they relate these to their engagement with the pizzica and
other Salentine music. Every performance is, however, cross-cut by
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Dances with Spiders
the personal biography of each participant, and every stage, no

matter how publicized or intimate, is set within a complex web of
intentions and choices. The current media hype leaves little, if any,
space or attention for the personal dimensions behind this buzz,
some explicit, others tucked away in the wings. A number of
Salentines, however, like Tanya, who danced at the Sagra dei Curli in
1998, link their experiences of the pizzica to sensations of enhanced
well-being. A consideration of the individual motivations and
experiences of performers engaging in the tarantula’s music and
dance today reveals how memories, autobiographies and perceptions
of the self may be evoked, reshaped and reconstituted in this way.
The group Alla Bua, perhaps more than any other, has linked its
performances to discourses on well-being. Their focus on the healing
power of the tarantula’s music, although emphasized less in recent
years, sets the scene for the accounts of two women, Tanya Pagliara
and Ada Metafune, whose lives have been transformed through their
engagement with the tarantula.
The Alla Bua: Music for Healing

On 24 April 1998, I see the Alla Bua on stage, in action. On this
occasion, what at first seems a technical disaster brings home to me
aspects of what these musicians define as the potential of their
music. It is Friday evening; the group is up on an elevated stage in a
large tent-like sports hall in the town of Taurisano in the south-west
Salento. The floor before them is packed with teenagers dancing to
their fast and frenzied rhythms. Then, suddenly, the electric fuses
blow and, as the amplifiers go out, the music jumps to a different
volume and tonality, ringing, for a moment, through the dark, until
dim emergency lights reset the scene. The atmosphere has changed
and the musicians have moved forward from behind their now-
useless, microphones. They step off the stage without interrupting
their playing and begin to circle the dance floor. Then they halt in a
semicircle and suddenly turn round.
All at once, a young female participant finds herself trapped in a
ring of pounding instruments. She remains frozen, standing as she
had before, with her arms folded protectively across her chest. The
musicians play fiercely, letting their instruments address her, their
eyes making no contact with hers. She laughs back, embarrassed, at
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Sensing Identities and Well-being
others joking about the trap she is in. A moment later, one of her legs
starts to move to the beats that are bombarding her, and her arms slip
open, dropping to her side. After no more than a minute or two the
musicians turn away and move on around the dance space. Freed
from their clasp, the young woman joins the crowd of dancers. Later
she tells me:
I had been feeling angry, after an argument with a friend, and was standing
on my own, trapped in my anger and closed stance. The musicians took me
by surprise. Their music provoked an itch to dance, to get rid of the iron
grip of this contained rage excluding me from dancing. By standing round
me, physically cutting me off from the dance floor, this sense of
confinement was duplicated, externalized. At the same time, the music
encouraged a reaction and, like an invitation, drew me out of my frozen
state. In fact, as soon as the musicians moved away, I joined in the dancing
without a second thought, my anger pushed backstage by the desire to
dance, to be part of the fun.
When I relate this occasion to the lead singer and tambourine

player of the group Alla Bua, at a later date, he replies:
Our music has a certain force. It is a force. A successful performance starts
off slowly and then gradually we try to charge the music more and more,
always more, increasing the rhythm. A strong sense of flying is evoked.
Sometimes it rises up directly from the feet. You feel the music physically.
When I feel this sensation, in that moment, I’m happy, I’m content. It is
something that gives me immense pleasure, because I know then that if I
am feeling these vibrations, these sensations, the others are feeling them
too. However, when I don’t feel this sensation – this music that takes off by
itself – I feel discontented, I feel down. But, to us, it almost always
happens! Even though we aren’t musicians. I don’t know music. I’ve studied
it by myself, but I don’t know how to play an instrument. I know how to play
the tambourine, but it doesn’t have particular chords, ours at least. It’s not
based on notes, but on tonality and vibrations. To trust in your own force,
potency and spirituality means succumbing with this force and spirituality
to everything that you don’t know on a theoretical and practical level as far
as music is concerned.4
The three group members I spoke to were all in their mid to late
forties at the time.5 Two of them grew up with the pizzica. Playing
this music, they argue, has always been an important part of their
lives and their identity. The third is a psychologist who is originally
from the Salento but spent many years of his childhood and student
life in other parts of Italy before settling back in the Salento.
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Dances with Spiders
Inevitably, the outlook and aim of this group has been influenced by
his various insights into the curative uses of music in other cultural
and therapeutic contexts.
‘Their way of understanding and playing music aims to involve the
spectator in a frenetic and liberating dance which helps to cure
“modern ills”: stress, tension, anxiety, depression, etc.’ (Anon. 2002).
Such is the presentation of the Alla Bua in a summer events calendar.
Assumptions linking the pizzica and well-being merge with others
expressed in the group’s first 2003 music video (Alla Bua 2003): this
portrays ritual re-enactments of transparently dressed teenage
tarantate responding, with pouting lips and swaying hips, to the
insistent drumming and piercing gaze of male musicians. Highly
charged erotic images speak for themselves, showing how modern
life reverberates both to the beat of industrial and commercial
demands and to images of femininity and masculinity as portrayed in
fashion magazines and TV spots. Nevertheless, concert settings are –
often uncritically – attributed a healing potential, and the pizzica is
seen to maintain therapeutic powers capable of addressing
contemporary afflictions.
‘They say that we play “hard pizzica”!’ affirms the Alla Bua lead
singer. ‘It’s because of the intense and fast manner in which we
play’.6 ‘The rhythms today are different,’ the group’s guitarist explains
further:
That is why we express this music differently. They tell us that we play
‘pizzica rock’. Why? Because this attracts the young people. Clearly, it is
also a personal form of expression, our way of interpreting the pizzica. But,
at the same time, we’ve noticed that this form is closer to the music of
teenagers today, who also live in more accelerated terms. In my opinion, it

is this that makes this music a form of therapy, because it links the ancient
– our musical tradition, which entails certain values – with faster rhythms,
which are those of today. It reunites our traditions and origins with how we
live today. It gives the young teenagers a sense of continuity, while they live
in a schizophrenic manner, with extreme generational and cultural gaps.
They immediately throw themselves into these frenetic rhythms, not
knowing what their origins are. But musically and rhythmically they live
these rhythms as resonances inside themselves, whether in a conscious or
unconscious manner.7
124
All three musicians confirm that they see a link between the music
they are playing and its impact on well-being. One of them expands
on this:
Yes, because it does us good as well. For us, too, the same method as for the
tarantate can be used. It’s the same. Music is important because it’s like an
outstretched hand. The rhythm is like a hand that helps you get up when
you don’t feel well, when you’re ill, when you can’t walk properly; it repairs
you. Music summons up energy, it calls upon the spirit or, rather, I’d use the
word blood; it calls upon the blood, just like a magnet. This is the message
we try to communicate. It’s very simple. We invite everyone to
communicate, because we feel the need for this energy to circulate, to be
able to feel it within our spirits, in order to feel well.8
This link between music and well-being is also seen to be

expressed in the group’s name:
The name Alla Bua may be seen to mean ‘other cure’. The name may have
many meanings. We called ourselves the Alla Bua initially because we often
played in a tavern, where a group of old men, when singing, always repeated
these words as a refrain between the verses of whatever song they were
singing. It never came to my mind to ask them why. However, first of all,
what is the meaning of la bua? It means fracture, confusion, and abrasion,
something that has hurt you. Meanwhile, our music can have a therapeutic
effect. There is therefore this sense of fracture, and at the same time the
notion of healing.9
Like the Alla Bua musicians, two modern tarantate describe the
impacts of the tarantula’s music and dance, as promoting well-being.
Tanya’s Story: Dancing Colours

I first met Tanya, who re-enacted elements of the tarantate’s rituals
at the Sagra dei Curli in August 1998, when she was in her early
thirties. At the time, she was studying to complete her university
degree in sociology and actively following her vocation as a painter,
while living with her mother in a village just outside Lecce. Her life
story is marked by disjunctures: her parents were separated and she
spent various periods of residence between Italy and France, where
her father lived. When I meet Tanya again in February 2008, she
confirms that her need for the tarantula’s music and dance,
animating the creation of her paintings [see Figs 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3],
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Dances with Spiders
was directly linked to a love story that could not be expressed or lived
due to the circumstances within which it emerged. She associates
this with the time of her initial bite. On 27 January 1998, during a
visit to her home near Lecce, Tanya first told me the following:
We were painting in the open, on the beach, with music at a high volume.
It was a type of techno situation. There were lots of young people, playing
the djembe and tambourines. There was absolute liberty. The heat was
terrible. I was barefoot all day long. We were living in direct contact with
nature, always hearing those primordial, archaic rhythms, dum, dum, dum.
And I felt this bite, the bite of this earth. At the time, I accessed a magic
world of my own.
In retrospect, a year on, I have tried to rationalize it all. I think that
something was moved inside me, repressed memories, all of the culture I
received when young, the fear of the tarantula. Seeing and visualizing this
phobia in something else, in an artistic product, unchained this reaction in
me. But also a love story, because guilt followed, remorse, the figure of the
Salentine woman with everything she entails. There was this fear of being
bitten by a spider since I was small, then the fact of not believing in
anything when I was older, and then the experience of entering into this
absurd dimension. I believed in the tarantula. I felt possessed, but
possessed in a strange way, because there was a lucid part of me that didn’t
believe in anything.
It all began two years ago when I decided to follow a university course in
the sociology of religions.10 I went sporadically and with little interest.
However, hearing and speaking about tarantism, about altered states of
consciousness, about Castaneda, and seeing videos about these topics,
inspired me to find out whether there was someone who was expressing
these things artistically: a tarantolated painter … I met him, a painter from
Gallipoli, who feels the bite of this earth. He has read a lot of Castaneda
and, in an artistic manner, expresses the feel of this land and the bite of the
Salentine earth. His favourite subjects are tarantulas or crabs, things that
bite. He says that he speaks with the snakes and has always felt this call,
this strange bite.
I suspected that it had to do with phenomena of trances linked to
images: seeing the painting of the other artist, I entered into this
dimension. He maintains that the inducing factor was the loud music
played all day long under the burning sun and the hard work that made us
access these images, this other dimension of consciousness. There are
many factors. I can’t tell you what it was exactly. I followed the tambourine
players, all of the groups. For an entire year, I did performances with them.
I wasn’t in a lucid state, although there was a lucid part of me which knew
that I had to follow that road, to get out of this, to become rational again,
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because I was living only off colours and sounds. All day long I was fixed on
hearing the tambourines. I passed from psychedelic art to this typically
Salentine thing, even though I don’t feel Salentine. I have lived here, in
France, in Sardinia. Maybe it was the influence the university course had
on me regarding tarantism and altered states of consciousness. I associated
these with the type of painting I was doing before, the psychedelic art of the
discos. Previously, I had never painted typically Salentine subjects. This
must have been the input.
I told myself, you can do it, but only by tarantulating yourself, as a
tarantolata. I’m not sure if I liked it or not, because many of those things
happened to me which you cannot talk about, which cannot be said in
words. I became part of a magic game. I decided to leave, to go to Paris, to
stay there for three months to try and liberate myself, and when I returned
I decided to create l’arcu pintu,11 to work in a group, as therapy, to get out
of this dimension. I looked for other artists who had something of me. We
went into the countryside, to abandoned farmhouses. We didn’t eat. We
listened only to the tambourines. There was a strange contact between the
seven members of our group. We didn’t communicate. We understood each
other in our own way and we created our pictures in this primordial state.
Before continuing, Tanya takes me to a back room where she has

stored her paintings. There are over twenty animated by a spider in
some part or other of the frame. The colours are bright, oils mixed
with earth and other natural fibres, and some of the canvases stretch
up to a metre or two in length and breath. One by one, Tanya holds
up her pictures and speaks about what inspired her to create each
one:
This picture shows an olive tree that is spitting out a tambourine. It is the
sensation of the tarantula: an ugly olive tree that is vomiting a tambourine,

a vortex that turns and turns. I made this while I was in a trance. There’s
lots of movement. It’s rhythmical. They told me that I was dancing while
painting. But the idea didn’t come to me. My consciousness was completely
annihilated. I was concentrating on those sounds of the tambourines. I
didn’t feel anything. I opened my eyes and saw this image. It had
materialized itself. I didn’t conceive it beforehand. It exploded in my head
on its own and I discharged it, onto the earth.
And I got out of that dimension. It was a real therapy in the end to
collaborate with the others. I gave a part of myself. I encouraged the others
to live in the way that I was living. I entered into a dimension of myself and
the others. I – us – God. That is not I – God. But, we – God. We – God –
I. Among all artists there is this predominance of thinking: ‘I against the
others’ or ‘I am my own God.’ Instead, being together we created an ‘I-
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individual-but-group’. We tried to understand what was meant by this ballo

all’arcu pintu, this dance of the arcu pintu, which is often referred to with
respect to the tarantate. That is, to dance a colour, what does it mean? This
is what we experienced in the end. We felt the arcu pintu inside ourselves,
as a visualization. It’s something that cannot be said in words. You feel, see
and touch the sounds and colours. It is a different dimension of awareness,
where sound and colours become mixed and quasi-materialized.12
Later, when I recovered, I enquired about the meaning of the term arcu
pintu. I wanted to understand what these colours of tarantism were. Why
did the women see all the colours, wanting to dance all the colours, all the
emotions? What I was told, although these things are never certain, is that
arcu pintu is derived from the arcu dellu pintu, which refers to weaving in
colours, like the spider. A woman weaves her cloth with specific colours,
with specific emotions, maybe the particular emotion that has made her ill.
For some, arcu pintu implied something mystic linked to Salentine magic,
something that the spirits have, to hide treasures, mischievous spirits who
play with destiny; for others, this term referred to architecture, to a painted
arch; for yet others, it implied the rainbow, seven frequencies, seven
colours. This is what the old people told me. For the young people it doesn’t
mean anything. For me it relates everything, like a keyword.
From the moment that you enter into this world of the tarantate, etc.,
you find yourself thinking as a believer, as a Catholic, as a superstitious
person. Then you think, no, it’s not possible. There is something strange,
time flows differently, the circle always repeats itself, an absurd circle
repeats itself, strange encounters, for instance, or knowing in advance
where a person is, meeting a number of people all interested in the same
things at a single site. It’s something that can’t be said in words. For a
believer it is a saint, destiny, the tarantula. I believe that it is strong
suggestion, which induces this dimension where space and time change
and consequently you live in another way. The contact between people,
space, time and the others changes, and then these quasi-mystical things
happen. It is mysticism, even though mysticism is different. Others also see
me as someone mystical, magical, but I don’t feel that way. Every time
somebody experiences modified states of consciousness, they begin to
speak in mystical terms. For that reason I’ve also been taken for a kind of
saint. It annoys me, because it’s not like that.
Tanya struggles to describe what she has lived. Her account

underlines the difficulty of conveying subjective experiences in
words. Metaphors and symbols help, but their multivalency
inevitably invites diverging interpretations and misunderstandings.
Like Ada and Matteo on 29 June 2001 in Galatina and the tarantate
in the past, Tanya weaves meaningful links between apparent
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coincidences. She draws, moreover, not only on the phenomenon of

tarantism, but also on anthropological, sociological and New Age
literature, grasping the notions of magic, mysticism, trance and
altered states of consciousness in an attempt to express what she has
experienced. She goes on:
In our group, l’arcu pintu, we spoke a lot about our experiences, about
altered states of consciousness and about whether art was therapy for us or
not. What emerged is that it is a form of therapy, yes, but not alone. There
is this desire to recompose our sense of self, which is torn from the existing
social system, because no artist recognizes herself in this social system.
However, art goes beyond therapy: it is a message, a way of communicating
with others and for some it is a way of communicating with God, for others
a means of contesting, of upsetting the existing culture, of creating a
counter-culture with images. In this sense, it goes beyond therapy, but there
is also therapy. Therapy is above all socialization, an alternative way of
socializing for artists. We socialized in this way. That was the beautiful
thing about l’arcu pintu: we came out of our shells, our worlds, our
individualism that is typical of painters. Instead, l’arcu pintu as a group was
an alternative group, an alternative way of socializing. There was therapy,
because I didn’t manage to get out of this state on my own. I wanted to
return to normality to communicate with others. In this sense there was
therapy, not because I wasn’t well in this situation, but because I couldn’t
survive in it.
The alternative would have been to become an artist on the street, that’s
all. I knew Edoardo, who had chosen this life of a completely liberated
artist, of a savage.13 It was he who made me understand that, if I continued
on this road, I would never become anything. A bohemian artist today
would serve no purpose. In fact, he advised me to alternatively enter and
leave the social order, to live altered states of consciousness, but also to
then find a way of entering the social system again and of creating a role for
myself, even if it was a feigned one; not only one role, but several roles, to
be able to completely annihilate consciousness, to pursue only my instinct
and to express myself only with colours, but then also to be capable of
assuming a well-defined role and entering the system. In this sense, l’arcu
pintu was therapy, a way of returning to everyday consciousness.14
Tanya refers to recovering a greater sense of well-being through

forms of socialization and through experiences of reality seen to be
different from those of everyday life. She speaks of a sense of
fragmentation, an experience of being torn from the system, which
she sees as characterizing the existence of artists like herself. The
process of re-integration into society is what she identifies as
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recovery: not because she wasn’t well before, in the period she
described herself as ‘bitten’, but because she realized that in today’s
society she couldn’t survive in this way. In this sense recovery
required a compromise. It involved finding others with whom she
could share an experience of well-being, suspending and eliminating
her feelings of being disjointed. It also involved a shift in perspective:
Tanya speaks of the need to play roles in order to belong in and fit
into the existing social order, even if she may not always condone it.
Her self-reflexive attempts to rationalize her experiences linked to the
tarantula have made her increasingly conscious of the flexibility of
the roles she plays and of their ability to rewrite and transform her
sense of self.
When we meet again in 2008, Tanya is still painting, as well as
writing about her own experiences in relation to the tarantula.
Although the spider may have lost some of its pertinence in her life,
it continues to serve as a channel of expression. Meanwhile, Ada’s
story too is one of recovery, of retrieving a sense of empowerment and
a growing awareness of an identity beyond affliction.
Ada’s Story: Retrieving Soundness

Three days after performing the tarantula’s dance for the cameras of
Canale 5 on 29 June 2001, the very day she had gone to Galatina and
witnessed Matteo and Evelina’s displays of crises, Ada tells me how
she had lived this experience:
Afterwards, I felt very empty. In the past, I tried to do something to make
this go away. I became afraid. Now I confront it with more calmness. That’s
the way it is. I let the emptiness be. I didn’t do anything to send it away. I
listened to it with some sadness. You give a large part of yourself. It’s the
same sensation as when you give a very strong workshop. It’s similar. The
days afterwards I felt overwhelmed. I have physical bruises because it was
very hard on the ground and I hurt myself a little. Today it is different from
fifty years ago. The tarantate of the past did it without awareness. They
knew they would be better. For someone who knows, the impact is even
stronger. This time it was different from the other times. I knew I was going
towards something and I knew I would confront it with awareness. In
tarantism a degree of awareness always remains, even if it seems to you that
you do not have any dimension of body or soul. For those of us who have
lived closure – let’s say for me, because I can speak only for myself – it has
a profound significance.15
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Ada speaks of being overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness and

closure, as in some way juxtaposed – or complementary? – to the
experience of herself as without limits, without body or soul, while
re-enacting the tarantate’s ritual. The clarity and calm with which
she now speaks have emerged from her story marked by periods of
crises. She had first told me about these two years earlier:
I started to dance in my early twenties on the occasions when the pizzica
was played. My father was against it. It was not seen as a very respectable
thing to do. But I felt the need to dance on every occasion that presented
itself. Just like the tarantate in the past. Looking back, I now see how this
process of learning to dance changed me. My childhood led me to
rationalize everything. My emotions and my body were practically non-
existent for me. However, when I began to dance, everything around me
disappeared and I instinctively began to communicate with my body. At
festivals and concerts, others began to acknowledge me as someone who
dances well. I was invited to work with a performance group. On stage, I
had to learn to open myself to the audience. Before I had always felt
embarrassed about my body. I wanted to be taller and slimmer. I had tried
to hide my breasts. The birth of my first child left me completely
disintegrated. I did psychoanalysis for a while and stopped again. But, I
continued to dance. I’d forget about everything around. It was a way of
presenting myself as I was. It helped me to gain security about my body and
to express my feelings.
With the pizzica pizzica, you can live out all of your sensuality. It is you
who direct the dance, subtly, even though it is the man who circles around
you. Learning the scherma was a final step for me. It is all about defining
and defending your territory. It forced me to bring out the aggression which
I’d always hidden before. Through dancing, I not only regained access to my
emotions but also to an energy which we have inside and which is part of
something larger, something global. I don’t think that such a force, brought
alive when you dance, can be accidental. There must be an underlying
layer that nourishes it. Although for a long time I avoided the Church, I
now believe in a spirituality that is universal, that doesn’t classify faiths.16
Dancing on public occasions and to live music allowed Ada to

come to acknowledge her own body and her emotions, as she says
[see Fig. 5.1]. While her father and elderly villagers had discouraged
her from dancing and communicating in this way, she experienced
others admiring and appreciating her talent at concerts of the
tarantula’s music and dance. Moreover, experiences of dancing were
influential in transforming her initial resistance towards the Catholic
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Church into an openness towards a sacred dimension, which she

now sees as inherent in nature and reality at large.
In 2001, Ada spoke to me again about the pizzica in her life:
You know, it’s simply that it doesn’t end here. Now I’m more aware of what
happens but I still always have to try not to live in a split state. It’s a
continuous journey. And I have little time to myself. For me, today,
emptiness is really the key. Even today I often find myself rationalizing
everything, to cut myself off from the head downwards. And it’s not always
easy to reunite that which I am. Even today I often ask myself: who am I?
Everything started a bit with my marriage. I was twenty-nine. It was
perfect. But I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. For two years afterwards, I kept
myself under control. Then some psychosomatic symptoms started. My
head was spinning. I felt unwell. But the doctors didn’t find physical
reasons to explain my affliction.17 Then, when my son was born, everything
exploded. Until that point, I had everything under control. But it was as if
everything was already going towards this culmination.
Today, ten years later, I am calmer. With the family, I don’t have much time
for myself. But the children also help me, because they are very spontaneous.
With their reactions they make me reflect about myself. At the beginning I
wanted to throw away everything that I’d been, that had been a part of my life.
I had to accept parts of myself that I didn’t like and I got to know other aspects
that I didn’t know before.18
As Ada speaks her young son becomes increasingly agitated. He asks

his mother to help him put in a video and to stop talking so he can
follow the sound of the film. ‘He doesn’t like me to talk about these
things,’Ada explains. ‘He immediately gets angry.’ No doubt it raised red
flags of difficult times. Five years later, in April 2006, when I ask Ada
whether she would prefer me to use a pseudonym to tell her story, her
answer is very clear: ‘No, this is who I am.’
Clearly, the accounts of Tanya, Ada and the Alla Bua provide
snapshots of intricate biographies, which need to be considered in
relation to the lives of others who may or may not see themselves as
modern tarantati, in order to examine what patterns may be identified
among pizzica enthusiasts more generally. Ada’s story, meanwhile, like
Tanya’s, raises questions about whether she would have experienced the
impact of the pizzica as powerfully as she relates had it not been
paralleled with the boom of the tarantula’s music and dance. How
effective, moreover, can the appropriation of the tarantula’s symbolism
be considering its inherent historical fracture? Even if Tanya found a
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sense of belonging within her group of artist friends, did this permeate
her life more generally? Even if Ada has gained recognition as a dancer
both on and off stage – and as one of the few female scherma dancers,
if not the only one, performing at Torrepaduli – to what extent has this
reconciled her with wider society, within which tarantism has become a
free-for-all gadget? And to what degree is the therapeutic rhetoric of the
Alla Bua accepted and defended by others – whether musicians or not?
Although the experiences and views described here may apply only to
a minority of those engaging with the tarantula’s music and dance today,
what transpires is that, while the 1990s boom of the pizzica may be
directly linked to the death of tarantism in its traditional sense, it has
nevertheless been re-appropriated by some contemporary performers to
promote discourses and experiences of well-being. Just as the tarantate’s
crises referred to highly varied personal circumstances linked to the
inability to cope, so the stories of Tanya and Ada relate diverse
experiences of crises, leaving both women incapable of coping with
their lives on the basis of the explanatory frameworks available to them.
By engaging with the pizzica in their own idiosyncratic ways, but within
a context in which this music and dance were gaining popularity on a
daily basis, the two women found relief. Ada speaks of coping with
emptiness now. Tanya tells of coming to terms with ways of socializing
in daily life. These personal accounts demand a look at how meanings,
explanatory systems and treatment options were and are negotiated, on
a more general level, to identify those under the tarantula’s spell.
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Notes
1. University of Lecce. This is a citation from a talk given by Eugenio Barba,
founder of the International School of Theatre Anthropology, during a
workshop entitled ‘La casa di mio padre’ (My Father’s House), stressing
Barba’s Salentine origins.
2 Lecce, 14 October 2005.
3 Galatina, 24 June 1999.
4. 29 May 1998.
5. Two of its members have left the group Alla Bua since the time of these
interviews.
6. 29 May 1998.
7. 7 May 1998.
8. 20 May 1998.
9. 29 May 1998. For an explanation of the group’s name, see also
www.allabua.it: ‘The meaning, it would seem, comes from the ancient Greek
language (truly ancient, from the Lower Salento, and not the area called
Grecìa today, circumscribed by some ten municipalities and quite far from
Alliste, the place of this discovery): Alla Bua stands for alternative medicine,
other cure.’ Retrieved on 30 September 2007 from http://www.allabua.it/
09_ gruppo.html.
10 A similar example of the role of academics and university seminars in the
tarantula’s contemporary web, both as a source of information and initial
instigator – or metaphorical ‘first bite’ – is given by Maurizio Nocera’s
interview with Tore Greco. When asked about the occasion on which he
first felt the spider’s presence, Tore responds: ‘There is a precise point of
reference: the presence of Georges Lapassade in Lecce on the occasion of
the seminar ‘Il ragno del dio che danza’ (the spider of the god who dances)
at the Salentine university’ (Nocera 2005: 45).
11. This term literally means ‘painted arch’ and was the name Tanya gave to the
group of artists referred to here.
12. Tanya mentions a phenomenon commonly associated with experiences of
so-called altered states of consciousness in which cross-sensory impulses
are triggered: ‘a colour can be heard, a sound can be seen’ (Lapassade
1996a: 169). This neurologically based phenomenon, also known as
synaesthesia or synethesia, literally meaning ‘joining the senses’, implies
that one type of sensory stimulation elicits the automatic, involuntary
stimulation of another.
13. Tanya refers to the late Salentine artist Edoardo De Candia, known for his
unconventional lifestyle and choice to partly live in nudity (Massari 1998).
14. 27 January 1998.
15. 2 July 2001.
134
16. 19 August 1999. The account presented here is a summary of Ada’s

responses to my question about the impact of dancing on her life.
17. Ada, just like the tarantato Francesco Greco, uses the term il mio male to
refer to her crises.
18. 25 July 2001.
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Part III
From Ritual to Limelight
Moving on to a comparison of the tarantula’s music and dance in

historical and contemporary contexts reveals underlying factors
influencing self-perceptions, human relations, power issues and
visions of reality sabotaging or nourishing well-being. Chapter 6,
‘Spider WoMen Transfixed’, explores what labels and world views
defined and diagnosed the tarantate and what criteria can be seen to
characterize their contemporary namesakes. This shows how, in the
modern Salento, the tarantula’s music and dance leave their imprint
on forms of deeper-lying suffering existing under new headings today.
Chapter 7, ‘Tarantula Threads and Showbiz Airs,’ is a tightrope walk
between past and present performative places, times, props and
techniques, balancing out what were and are subtle clues to
performative success. The right music, in the sense of appropriate
and efficacious, had and has to be found. The aim was and is to
facilitate participation. The props were and are communal and entail
the potential side effects of manipulation and exploitation. Yet key
differences stand out, as Chapter 8, ‘SpiderWoMen Transformed,’
reveals. In the past tarantism rituals allowed for the expression of
extreme emotional crises. Although this is rarely the case today, the
tarantula’s music and dance may affect participants’ daily lives,
fostering a sense of ‘magic’, rhythmic synchrony, sensuality and well-
being through exposure to new experiences and insights, perceived to
beneficially influence perceptions of the self, others and the world at
large.
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Figs 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 Paintings by Tanya Pagliara, Collezione Arcu Pintu, 1997
(6.3 © Tanya Pagliara. Reproduced with permission of Daniele Durante).
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Chapter 6
Spider WoMen Transfixed:
Negotiating Crisis and Cure
The NEO-TARANTATA … could be concealed inside your sister, cousin,

supermarket assistant, dentist’s secretary or university colleague.
As a remedy to quotidian life, they have decided that there is nothing
better than to toss themselves about in the centre of a circle of tambourines
or in front of a hi-fi system in public to help them remove the stress of
everyday life. We are dealing with girls … from good families,
without any psychological problem or social drama behind
them other than the tragedy of having too much free time on their hands.
Francesco Patruno (2003)
With his conspicuous sense of humour, Patruno (2003) takes a

provocative stance, stressing that the focus on recovering well-being
through the tarantula’s music and dance brought into relief in this
study is highly ambiguous. This view questions whether and to what
extent we may compare those transfixed by the tarantula spider in
past and present times.

In this context, anthropological studies on health and illness have
increasingly challenged the contours and assumptions of
biomedicine, revealing that ‘non-medical healing is empirical in the
sense that it is often based on systematic observation and
interpretation of symptoms, suffering, cause, effects and response to
treatment’ (Csordas and Kleinman 1996: 5). The tarantula’s ritual
too was grounded in experiential knowledge, transmitted, tested, re-
evaluated and adapted over many generations.
Acknowledgement of such experience-based knowledge relies
heavily on a recognition of the body as both objectively and
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subjectively – and therefore also socially and politically – founded.

Increasingly, anthropological work on the body and embodiment has
revealed the phenomenological, social and political dimensions of
the human organism (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987), and
underlined the need to consider bio-medicine as one culturally
specific system of cure, whose basic precepts are fundamentally
challenged by anthropological stances: ‘Whereas biomedicine, in
theory if not always in practice, presupposes a universal, a historical
subject, critically interpretative medical anthropologists are
confronted with rebellious and “anarchic” bodies – bodies that refuse
to conform (or submit) to presumably universal categories and
concepts of diseases, distress and medical efficacy’ (Lock and
Scheper-Hughes 1996: 41–43). As the human organism is engaged
on a phenomenological, social and political level, an analysis of
healing practices, such as the tarantula’s cult, must include a
consideration of the negotiative process that takes place between
these various dimensions. How does this process weave threads of
meaning and relations that re-anchor the individual in their own
body, as well as in the social and natural worlds?
Answers begin to emerge if we explore, first, how individuals came
and come to be characterized as someone who was ‘bitten by the
tarantula’; secondly, what world views and perceptions of affliction
and well-being underlie such a definition or diagnosis; and, finally,
how treatment options concern choices that were and are available
and – just as important – acceptable.
Diagnosing Spiders: Identifying

Tarantula Cases
First, I look into the eyes and, if it’s there, the poison can be seen. Secondly,
vibrations show whether a person is stirred up or not. Thirdly, you look at
the tips of the toes, because the toes don’t remain still. You feel a sense of
electrification, different from a nervous attack, which is temporary. If I
don’t notice these things, it is pointless to go and play.
In this way, Luigi Stifani, musician of the tarantate, identified those

under the tarantula’s spell (Chiriatti 1995: 49).
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Spider WoMen Transfixed
In the past, moments of affliction varied: on rare occasions, a

physical bite was actually registered. Alternatively, a spider, or other
venomous creature, was encountered, in waking life or in a dream. At
times, it was enough to be brushed by the breath, il soffio, of a snake.
Moreover, someone may have been ‘infected’ by the contagious
influence of others. The physical rhythms of trembling, shaking and
convulsions of one tarantata appeared to create a vibrational impact
on others. In the absence of a clear cause, meanwhile, cases were
identified in a process of auto-diagnosis or with the help of those
familiar with the symptoms involved.
Without doubt, these criteria depend on experiential know-how.
De Martino (2005: 58) adds the intolerance of some tarantate to
certain dishes or smells, frequent dreams of serpents or of St Paul,
and an overall heightened sensitivity to music. Moreover, popular
opinion characterized the tarantula’s victims as possessed by an
‘irresistible urge to dance’, as musical and chromatic explorations
established the tarantula’s involvement. Clearly, an identification of
symptoms required a basic agreement between the afflicted and
others about what kind of problem was at hand and what kind of
treatment was deemed appropriate.
Language gives another avenue of access to how the tarantate
perceived and described themselves. While the term tarantism
belongs to the jargon of scholars, Salentine people speak of someone
who holds the tarantula (tiene la taranta), was stung (è stata pizzicata)
or is a tarantata (è una tarantata). They are those, De Martino (2005:
37–38) tells, whom the tarantula fa scazzicare, excites or arouses.
Uncontrollable erotic impulses are often referred to in this way. ‘This
summer I will become a tarantula!’ a young Salentine musician told

me fervently in June 1999, expressing his frustration about never
having had a sexual encounter with a woman.1 I ask what he means
by this. He explains: ‘Qualcosa che mi scazzica!’ (Something that
excites me!) Evelina’s grandson uses the same word to describe his
grandmother when taken over by crises: ‘Si scazzica!’2 ‘Scazzicare
also denotes a difficulty in standing up (mi scàzzicu, I stand up with
difficulty)’, De Martino (2005: 38) specifies, and ‘appears to
symbolize the state of inertia, prostration and weariness which,
together with a disorderly motor release, makes up the “crisis”
moment of tarantism’. Feeling bored (annoiato), injured (leso),
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fractured (spezzato) or broken (rotto) were other ways the tarantate

described their afflictions (De Martino 2005: 56–57, 91).
One informant talked of her tarantulated grandmother as
consistently tense, bearing a weight on her shoulders.3 Yet others
speak of a state of tedium or boredom, un stato di noia. One tarantata
reported spiders crawling underneath her pillow at night.4 Another
talked of feeling ants in different parts of the body,5 while a male
tarantato claimed that there was a spider in his right testicle. In May
and June, the sensation of having a swarm or ants’ nest, un formicolio
(‘pins and needles’), inside this testicle was at its worst, preventing
him from having an orgasm. However, eventually the spider travelled
down the leg, remaining in the right big toe until its resurgence the
following year (Nocera 2005: 45–64). Most tarantate, Maurizio
Nocera argues, moreover, do not see their bodies as something
pleasing.6
Anthropological work has widely considered how humans perceive
animals in relation to how they experience their bodies or themselves
(Douglas 1966; Sperber 1996). Spiders, like insects, are generally
seen to fall into ambiguous or anomalous categories, defying any
clear distinctions. Although much confusion exists about exactly
what spider was the culprit in the case of tarantism, perceptions of
the tormenting tarantula, Ioan Lewis (1991: 516–17) argues, draw
from the zoological characteristics of two types of spiders that were,
and to a minor degree still are, part of the Salentine fauna: Lycosa
tarantula and Latrodectus tredecim guttatus. Latrodectus, more
commonly known as Malmignatte or European black widow, is a
small spider, which awaits its prey in its web.7 The female’s bite
causes severe, although rarely lethal, general reactions afflicting the

entire body and these are the symptoms on which the acute crises of
the tarantate appear to be modelled. Meanwhile, the visually
impressive Lycosa tarantula is a large, black, hairy spider, which lives
underground and is equipped with threatening claws to hunt its prey.
It stands, according to Lewis, as a key contestant for the spirit spider
believed to be responsible for the tarantate’s affliction, on the basis of
its appearance and the striking local symptoms of its bite. Although
its poison causes no discernible general effects, the Lycosa’s bite
leaves a large, red, swollen mark on the skin surface. The mythic
spider thus incorporates, as social anthropologist David Parkin
142
observes, a dual ambivalence derived from the small but spiteful

Latrodectus and the large, aggressive but harmless Lycosa.8
Spiders and their poisons penetrate and jeopardize bodily
boundaries, threatening the safety net of perceived stability. ‘They
appear as the symbols of creative formlessness, of loss of control;
they have the power to overturn the established order’ (Berman 1990:
81–82), bringing to the surface further analogies: the liminal status
of the spider may be a metaphor for the liminal experience of illness
(poised between health and death) itself. Views of illness as externally
caused, moreover, create phenomenological associations between
subjective experience and broader social and cultural landscapes,
making family and community members – as significant actors in this
broader play – intrinsic to the healing process. Music, meanwhile,
equally liminal – in the sense of ephemeral – and capable of
penetrating the body, embodies the potential for recovery.9
But what about today? Can we speak of a diagnosis, in the sense
of identifying criteria characterizing the modern tarantati? Various
terms are used in the Salento today (at times seriously, at times
jokingly) to forge a link between today’s pizzica fans and the tarantate
of yesteryear. People speak of the neo-tarantati, nuovi tarantati,
modern tarantati or attarantati. Some distinguish today’s tarantati
from the tarantolati of the past, but these definitions are by no means
unanimous. Often meanings are conflated, without much thought
for underlying epistemological implications. ‘I don’t know how to
define myself,’ music teacher, dancer and self-acclaimed tarantata
Maria Antonietta Epifani (1998) wonders. ‘Perhaps it’s simply the
need to dance; the inability to remain still when I hear a tambourine
play.’10 ‘I always dance’, one skilled singer and dancer adds, ‘with all
kinds of music: the pizzica, Arabic music, African music. I’m a
tarantata: an international tarantata!’11 Such an ‘urge to dance’ may
inevitably refer to a spectrum of motives and meanings. According to
this criterion, most young children are contemporary tarantati as
they are generally the first, least inhibited and most persistent
dancers at pizzica concerts. In fact, the group Canzoniere Grecanico
Salentino dedicated one of its lullabies – with lyrics evoking the
tarantula – to ‘all the children of the Salento, who are tarantati like
ourselves’.12
Others subtly differentiate possible affinities with the tarantate of
the past.13 Daniele Durante writes: ‘The new “tarantati” are not
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Dances with Spiders
possessed by anything or anyone, but nevertheless are in search of a

god (or demon?)’ (1999: 188). The modern tarantati are musicians,
artists, dancers and researchers of all ages and walks of life, often
with unrelated full-time professions. For some the pizzica and other
Salentine music are about amusement, a form of distraction to pass
their summer nights following days spent on the beach, or just a
passing fashion. For some it is a source of boredom, if not irritation,
due to the endless repetition of the same songs. For a few it is more
than that: a life philosophy, a message of love, a way of life.
Francesco Patruno (2003), meanwhile, has – on a less serious note
– put together a list of categories of pizzica fans, emerging from what
he calls ‘the laws of the market that have cleared the piSSica through
customs for the general public’.14 For example:
The Ubiquo (Ubiquitus Sempervirens Gramignicus): the nightmare par
excellence. Ever since the piSSica phenomenon has reached such heights of
diffusion, the UBIQUO is omnipresent and implacable. Anybody could be a
ubiquitous piSSicophile, from your boss at work, to your neighbour, your
newsagent, your friend, who, unexpectedly, from interests in entomology
and butterflies coming from the mouth of the Orinoco has discovered that
the piSSica pleases women, ergo it’s a way of picking up a girl.
Patruno brilliantly shows how the use of the notion of tarantism and
associated terms is motivated by many intertwined and contradictory
facets: some broadcast via loudspeakers and every imaginable
medium of communication, others restricted to closed circles or
never even voiced.
‘What does the pizzica mean to me?’ Giorgio Di Lecce repeats my
question to gather his thoughts. ‘First, it is a form of self-expression.

I am drawn to it because of my love for dance and theatre. Secondly,
the pizzica provided a way of returning to my roots and of gaining
knowledge of my own people. Thirdly, I found myself playing the
tambourine for a tarantata in the chapel of Galatina from 1993 to
1995.’15 Others, too, present the pizzica as a key to their origins, roots,
grounding and identity. Director of the music group I Tamburellisti di
Torrepaduli Pierpaolo De Giorgi asserts: ‘Tarantism is about the
consciousness of oneself. Tarantism, that’s us, ourselves, as Apulia, as
the Salento.’16 Another passionate tambourine player reflects for a
moment too: ‘I’m not really sure why I’m attracted to this music and
tarantism. Some things I just do because they feel right. I have always
144
been very aware of the Church, its economic power and the influence
it has on people and I’ve always tried to support those who are poor
and powerless.’17 A sense of empowerment emerges: music as
rebellion, as a voice for the voiceless. One Salentine writer,
meanwhile, speaks of his ambivalent feelings:
I grew up in a small village with my grandmother. There were two tarantate
who lived in her house; De Martino wrote about them. At first I was
fascinated by this phenomenon. Then I hated it for many years, because I felt
that those who were performing were putting on a show to gain attention.
Then I became older and I began to realize the importance of this tradition.18
Meanwhile, music may speak for itself: on 14 February 2008, the

funeral procession of Pino Zimba, much loved tambourine player,
leader of the group Zimbaria and protagonist of the film Sangue Vivo,
was accompanied by the rhythmic pounding of dozens of
tambourines. This last passage of his life, too, was guided by the
pizzica’s beat. His body was laid to rest while the tarantula’s music
was evoked, linking the living and the dead.
Although performance contexts vary greatly, a continuum of
neither exclusive nor exhaustive motives shapes the tarantula’s music
and dance: first, a small number of performers actively choose to
draw on the system of tarantism to alleviate their suffering. They are
unlikely to speak euphemistically about tarantism, as the current
pizzica fashion occasionally risks doing. Secondly, others participate
on stage, screen, canvas or paper, motivated by a desire to
intellectually understand or artistically express past rituals. These
participants, although aware of the distress underlying the lives of
the tarantate and some nuovi tarantati, generally tend to close an eye
to this aspect of suffering and may speak, instead, of tarantism as a
feature that makes the Salento and its people unique. Thirdly, a large
number of fans, including tourists, have been swept along by the
recent boom in local music. With varying degrees of knowledge of the
historical and contemporary meanings and experiences of the pizzica,
their participation is motivated primarily by a desire for fun, pleasure
and sensual gratification. Fourthly, there are those who find
themselves attending a pizzica performance by chance, perhaps
oblivious of its past links to tarantism, joining in as they would in any
of the many entertainment programmes abounding during the
summer season. Finally, some look on the tarantula’s music and
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Dances with Spiders
dance with suspicion and contempt, as one elderly woman explains:

‘Especially the older women keep a stern face, saying that the devil is
near. The older generations, like myself, are very aware of the force
of the phenomenon of tarantism.’19
Clearly, today’s tarantati are impossible to freeze into one or other
fixed frame. Often self-definitions go hand in hand with definitions
imposed by others and vary according to understandings of the
tarantula’s music and dance. It appears that, where an individual
accepts this definition and others acknowledge it, a first step is taken
to capturing the spider and its potential to promote well-being or
discord: a glimpse of its outline as a shadow puppet made visible in
conceptual and verbal form. How this form is then interpreted is
tightly linked to broader conceptions of what is seen to make
somebody ill or well.
Views on Venom: Interpreting the

Spider’s Bite
Inevitably, diagnoses of spider venoms depend on the cultural matrix
of the viewer. Seventeenth-century views drew on the classical ideas
of Hippocrates, Plato and Pythagoras and the ‘humoral theory of
correspondence’ to explain the therapeutic potential of music: the
four natural elements (earth, water, air and fire) linked to four bodily
humours (blood, lymph, yellow and black bile) were seen to be
rebalanced, in the case of affliction, by four basic corresponding
musical modes (Mixolydian, Dorian, Lydian and Phrygian) (De
Martino 2005: 223–36). Medical views of the same period,

meanwhile, focused on the expulsion of venoms through perspiration
(Katner 1956: 19–22).
Eighteenth-century religious discourses on the metaphysics of evil,
instead, identified bodily impurities, such as spider poisoning, as
signs of divine intervention: a punishment for sins committed,
indications of St Paul’s wrath or the devil’s interference. Treatment
involved seeking out the Apostle Paul and making offerings in
exchange for grace, while recovery was equated with repentance and
freedom from sin (Turner 1992). Enlightenment views, in the
meantime, adopted Descartes’s positivist approach, differentiating
body and mind, and defining the tarantate’s symptoms as
146
psychological disorders, such as epilepsy, hysteria or schizophrenia

(Di Mitri 2006). Treatment subsequently included electric shocks
and pharmaceutical drugs.
Each rationalization was boosted by philosophical underpinnings,
revealing the relativity of each view and the difficulty, if not
impossibility, of pinpointing the multiple dimensions of experience
and consciousness the term tarantism served to describe.
Importantly, popular belief stated that the tarantate were not ill.
There was nothing wrong with them. They were ‘normal’ people
periodically subjected to the tarantula’s whims.
Contemporary categorizations of Western medicine, meanwhile,
entail risks of pathologizing the tarantate’s condition. Robert
Bartholomew (1994) contests widespread classifications of tarantism
as one type of ‘mass psychogenic illness’, emphasizing the political
advantages of making reference to the myth of the tarantula. A
naturalistic explanation functioned to sanction personalistic
explanations (Littlewood 1990: 313). In this way, non-Christian
rituals could be pursued without risking persecution by the Church
and, at the same time, ‘revived the fledgling careers of many
musicians restricted from performing by Church leaders’
(Bartholomew 1994: 288).
Others have classified tarantism as a ‘culture-bound syndrome’
(Gentilcore 2000; Horden 2000), as an illness ‘associated with
culturally unique patterns of meaning superimposed on diseases that
are universal’ (Kleinman 1980: 77). This notion, however, easily
serves as a standard label covering up culturally specific forms of
expression, and attempts at defining it further (Simons and Hughes
1985) have revealed the danger of reducing it to one of various

classical disorders of Western psychiatry, assuming that cultures
variously impose meaning on universally identifiable biological
conditions. Social anthropologist and psychiatrist Roland Littlewood
(1990: 319) stresses:
Western neuroses too are ‘psychomedical’ models of distress, and here the
notion of ‘disease’ has a similar role to that of ‘spirit possession’ in less
medicalized societies; both legitimize distress by removing personal
responsibility while compelling others to act. Both express certain core
social antagonisms in the personal situation of individuals and might
perhaps be considered less as illnesses than as solutions.
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Dances with Spiders
It is useful, Littlewood adds (1990: 318), to consider such

afflictions as part of a spectrum bridging the two poles of biomedical
and sociological paradigms. Past cases of tarantism tended towards
the sociological pole in their diagnosis. Precise biological causes may
have been involved, but these appeared to act more as a final drop
topping up an already full glass, as their direct relation to the
tarantate’s symptoms was not always clear. At times, an actual spider
bite was recorded (De Martino 2005: 48). One of De Martino’s
informants was ‘bitten’ just after an operation in which her ovaries
were removed, while another was suffering from an ear infection at
the time of her affliction (ibid.: 56, 263).
Meanwhile, sociological paradigms were more easily identifiable in
connection with the tarantula: bites generally happened in the
summer; mainly women at specific life stages (especially puberty)
were afflicted; several cases were often found in one family;
tarantism was largely restricted to the region of Apulia; and, lastly,
cures seemed to expire after one year (De Martino 2005: 25–27).
Initial crises of tarantism commonly coincided with work – collecting
peas, cutting vines, picking tobacco – or significant events such as
driving over a snake (ibid.: 53), being bewitched by one (ibid.: 62) or
inadvertent curses against St Paul (ibid.: 52).
Significant coincidences, concurrent with associations with a
poisonous animal or the Apostle Paul, were generally established as
causative incidents. Whatever the cause may have been and however
this was interpreted, affliction by the ‘mythic spider’ appeared to
involve extreme experiences, sharply cutting into and radically
transforming the lives of those affected. As an aspect of the tangible
and natural world, the tarantula was drawn upon to embody subjective
dynamics, anchoring chaotic individual experience, materialized as
poison, within the social and natural environment of the Salento.
But what acts as an explanatory framework now that the spiders are
– apparently – gone from the fields? One modern tarantata explains:
The tarantati of today are not ill. Suffering is involved, if you broaden its
definition to include any state of unease, but De Martino’s model is no
longer valid for the new tarantati. I am not poor. I am not from a repressive
society. I manage to have good relations with the people around me. And yet
music touches me and I need to dance. The tarantati must be seen as
depressed or melancholic, and the ritual and music are a way of providing
a new consciousness, even if not on a rationally conscious level.20
148
‘The affliction?’ asks a young female dancer speaking of ‘trance’

experiences while dancing the pizzica. ‘It’s difficult: stagnant energy
related to recent or ancient suffering? … For many years, I prohibited
myself consciously or unconsciously from expressing things … from
expressing myself in general … in order to accommodate other
people’s demands. The need to communicate, first and foremost, is
not satisfied (now more than ever) … and the possibility to love and
let yourself be loved’ (Nacci 2004: 53–58). Maurizio Nocera
confirms:
Many individuals today actively choose to draw upon the system of tarantism
to alleviate their suffering. There are many among the young who suffer in
silence, but there are also many who are part of the world of tarantism. Do
you know Giuseppe Marra? He frequently dances for three to four hours
and, when you ask him why, he’ll say that life isn’t worth living.21
A deep-seated sensation of distress and a desire for meaning in life

are evoked, calling for attention and leading Vittorio Lanternari
(1995: 89) to identify a need
to consider among the types of ‘affliction’ affecting the psychophysical
organism of man, no longer only those illnesses catalogued in clinical
repertoires, but also those ‘states of being unwell’ with no clinical
denomination, that ‘obscure affliction,’ that indeterminable sense of
emptiness, of a loss of points of reference and support, in sum, ‘that
suffering’ which becomes concrete in definite and recognizable ‘neuroses’
or in particular psychosomatic syndromes.
We may ask to what extent such experiences of lacking roots and

points of reference in life may relate to the ‘crises of presence’ De
Martino (1956, 1961a) diagnosed among the tarantate. Such crises

involved threatening situations in which individuals were unable to
cope. Anthropologist Mariella Pandolfi (1990: 270) writes:
To avoid this catastrophic outcome – the ‘loss of presence’ or failure of
subjective identity in individuals and groups – people attempt by their
choice of behaviour to manipulate psychic states through activities and
practices which allow them to control the emergence of destructive
impulses and to calm them, by channelling them into ritual performances,
both individual and collective.
Inevitably, the notion of ‘crises of presence’ groups together a vast

gamut of circumstances and experiences and, moreover, risks
essentializing conceptions of the notion of presence itself. De
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Dances with Spiders
Martino himself (in Pandolfi 1990: 255) warns that ‘there is no such
thing as presence … an inborn immediacy safe from all risk and
incapable of … history’.
We may query further to what extent social and political causes of
affliction identified by De Martino, such as extreme poverty, harsh living
conditions, excessive demands of labour, sexual repression or exclusion
from public life, particularly of women, apply to the modern tarantati.
The impacts of socio-economic development and the introduction of
psychiatric care, identified as two key elements that have brought about
the end of tarantism, are unlikely to safeguard against new problems
that have emerged in the modern context of the Salento: high
unemployment figures; large-scale emigration rupturing cultural and
family ties; generational differences marking close-knit communities, to
name just a few. Many women, moreover, have taken up professional
careers, while continuing to bear the brunt of domestic tasks and the
duties of caring for children and elderly family members (Goddard
1987, 1996; Goddard et al. 1996).
In these contexts, states of deep individual turmoil, reminiscent of De
Martino’s notion of ‘crises of presence’, may be triggered by a wide
range of factors, including those with primarily biological foundations
deflating the body’s overall resistance, such as illness, accidents,
operations, extreme physical exhaustion or persistent lack of sleep.
Deeply emotional experiences such as childbirth or the traumatic loss of
close personal relations may equally act as initial stimuli, as may the use
of drugs. Such crises can, moreover, also be related to the lack of an
explanatory framework, providing containment by pointing to
customary problematic behaviour and how this may be dealt with.
Whereas in the past the model of tarantism provided a socially

acknowledged existential framework, the modern tarantati may create
or re-create their own model of this kind, engaging in a process of
inscribing meaning, which inevitably risks incoherence and
superficiality. This alerts us to Marianna Torgovnick’s (1996: 176)
warning about so-called New Age practices:
On the basis of what I have seen, heard and read about the New Age, I believe
that many of its participants are trapped in a rather moving contradiction.
They adopt rituals and other aspects of cultures that depend fundamentally
upon collective, communal experience – and sometimes on voiding or
subordinating the autonomous self … But New Agers almost invariably put
these traditions and groups in the service of a thoroughly modern world view
150
that takes the self as a thing to be owned, cultivated and coddled – the
veritable hub of the universe.
Such risks may apply equally, if not in an accentuated form, with the
appropriation of the tarantula’s music elsewhere, outside the Salento
and Italy. There has, for instance, been a strong interest among Italo-
American women in dancing the pizzica as a way of connecting with
their Italian roots (Ciuffitelli 2005a).22
The controversial influence of Alessandra Belloni, New York-based
percussionist and dancer, comes to mind. Her ‘Rhythm is the Cure’
workshops involve re-enactments of tarantism rituals and encourage
women participants, often of Italian-American background, to self-
identify as tarantate.23 Belloni’s work is generally viewed very critically
among Salentines. Similarly, the case of a young Frenchwoman, seen to
be a tarantata in need of ritual music by a number of Salentine
musicians who played for her in a series of encounters during the 2000
summer, evoked strong criticism, particularly among women, regarding
the manipulation of the tradition of tarantism and the musicians
involved.24
Although the tarantula’s music and dance are, generally speaking,
performed today in contexts that do not re-create a feasible milieu in
which those afflicted can rely on the social support of a group to express
and process their afflictions, the experiences of Ada, Tanya and others
nevertheless present examples of how these performance practices
indicated one possible way out, allowing – to various degrees – for a
recovery of a sense of balance within the individual and within their
larger network of relations.
These examples stress not only the risks involved in re-appropriating
perceived healing practices, both in the area of their apparent origins or

elsewhere, but also how such processes of re-appropriation inevitably
depend on the availability of options seen to be beneficial – and
acceptable – to the recovery of well-being.
Tarantula Alternatives: Choosing

Treatment Options
In the Salento, therapeutic options have multiplied. What did people do
when they were ill in the past? ‘They died!’ a woman in her eighties told
me, without any thought to my question or emotion to match her
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Dances with Spiders
response.25 Illness categories have also proliferated. ‘There are a lot

more illnesses today,’ says another elderly woman. ‘Everyone
immediately goes to the doctor. I myself only take something for my
blood pressure. Illnesses in the past were cured with the available
means. Coffee was used when someone fainted. Then it was a luxury.
Today, even I have coffee every morning.’26 A comparative look at past
and present means of treatment shows that, although facilities have
greatly changed and expanded, their application depended and depends
on a process of negotiating choices.
In earlier decades, hospitals were non-existent or kilometres away.
Transport problems and expense stood in the way of consulting medical
staff. Psychiatry, in particular, was never an option until some decades
ago. Other specialists, including priests, doctors, traditional
practitioners known as macare and snake-handling sanpaolari, were
resorted to, as tarantism rituals were one alternative in a spectrum of
treatment options within broader magico-religious belief systems (De
Martino 1960; Gentilcore 1992, 1998).27 Historical documents,
meanwhile, reveal a broad gamut of cures applied to cases of tarantism
beyond the use of music and dance.28
The English traveller George Berkeley (1717) tells how some
tarantate were administered a concoction of wine prepared with a
fossilized snake-tongue after their third day of dancing. The serparo, or
snake-handler, once widespread in Apulia, could offer related
treatments. His expertise was in drawing poison out of wounds using
conjurations and such verbal incantations (Chiaia 1887; Turchini 1987:
165) as the prayer formula ‘Io ti esorcizzo da ogni morso’ (I exorcize you
of every bite), apparently dating back to the ninth or tenth century (Di
Mitri 1995: 222). For the tarantate such formulas were at times
combined with the drawing of a cross above the bite mark and the
drinking of water from the holy well in Galatina (Caputo 1741: 228).
The tarantula’s victims may also have consulted a macara, with expertise
in magical affairs, to assess whether causes such as the ‘evil eye’ were at
stake. One case from 1627, recorded by the ecclesiastical tribunal,
reveals how a woman named Catarina Palazzo treated a tarantata with
a conjuration, incense, sacred water and by touching painful body parts
with her prescriptive books (Tamblé 2000: 106).
Catholicism provided further options for relief. Exorcist priests were
conferred with to identify whether the devil’s influence was at hand and
152
sanctuaries of saints credited with healing powers were visited.29 In the

Salento itself, the case of St Donatus shows that tarantism was only one
of various related phenomena that provided a therapeutic option in the
face of hardship and suffering. During his lifetime, legend goes, St
Donatus cured those possessed by the devil, and epilepsy became
known as il male di San Donato, St Donatus’s illness, or il morbo sacro,
the sacred disease. On his feast day, 7 August, pilgrims still come to his
chapel in the town of Montesano Salentino. In 1998, when I attended
this festival, hundreds of devotees came to say their prayers and leave
offerings of money. Numerous 100,000 lire30 notes decorated the saint’s
statue and one elderly female informant told of inexplicable things she
had seen, reminiscent of the ‘miraculous’ deeds attributed to the
tarantate at Galatina: ‘In the past, the number of devotees coming here
was much greater: everyone afflicted by St Donatus’s illness came. You
recognized them because they jerked their limbs all over the place. I
remember seeing one woman, dressed all in white, dancing on top of
the saint’s statue. It seems impossible, but I saw it with my own eyes.’31
Similarly, the opinion of doctors, when available, was sought out by
the tarantate, although their symptoms often escaped diagnostic
categories. ‘The doctors didn’t find anything wrong with me,’ the
tarantato Francesco Greco explained. ‘They say that we are mad and
putting on a show, because our bodies are essentially healthy.’32 In more
recent decades, many tarantate were taken to psychiatric specialists.
What options of treatment and support, meanwhile, cater to those
who define themselves as nuovi tarantati in relation to experiences of
affliction in the contemporary Salento? Biomedical practitioners,
especially those working in the fields of psychiatry and psychology, may
be a key source of reference, although the stigma associated with

mental health care may inhibit many from seeking their help. Ada, who
danced for the TV cameras in June 2001, tells of undergoing
psychoanalysis but eventually abandoning this while continuing to
dance. Other factors will have played their part, but clearly the
tarantula’s music and dance provided a perceived benefit not accessible
through conventional health care. Complementary medicine, including
music or art therapies, has been a little-known alternative until
recently.33 Now these professions are growing, as art therapy courses,
homeopathy schools and other forms of complementary medicine of
various types and degrees of professionalism proliferate.34
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Dances with Spiders
However, widespread public opinion in the Salento tends to remain

critical towards complementary medical treatments available, as
techniques and explanatory models may be taken from non-Western
contexts, rendering them alien to potential clients (Lüdtke 2003). Rita
Cappello, music therapist at the rehabilitation clinic Casa di Cura ‘Villa
Verde’ in Lecce, explains that one of the greatest difficulties she faces
with music therapy patients is a resistance to play, expressed in such
defensive reactions as: ‘I’m no longer at the age to play around or sing!’35
Play and artistic expression are rarely recognized as methodologies with
therapeutic potential.
Clearly, views of treatment options, forged largely by a widespread
familiarity with biomedicine, may not correspond with the practices
proposed. An extreme example of this emerged in a 1999 music therapy
workshop I attended near Lecce. This included the use of an Australian
didgeridoo to show how acoustic vibrations directed at different body
parts could ‘stimulate specific organs’. One participant later described
this event as bringing up associations of satanic reunions.36 Such issues
as the use of out-of-context practices; the commercial exploitation of
what Lanternari (2000: 133) calls ‘multinational religious industries’; or
the exaltation of individual development in preference to communal
and social welfare are all familiar criticisms levelled at the New Age
movement. All of these may act as obstacles to those in search of
therapeutic alternatives.
Similar discrepancies in belief and practice may prevent many who
live in the Salento today from considering ‘traditional practitioners’ as a
therapeutic option.37 I talked to one such practitioner who treated a
variety of ailments, including burns, benign tumours and dislocations,
but when asked about tarantism vehemently insisted that these were
practices of the devil.38 Religious healers practising within the context
of Catholicism may be another point of reference, with a small number
of priests apparently still performing exorcisms and saints attributed
with healing qualities being central in this respect. Votive offerings
present another socially condoned option of religious healing practices
available to devotees. Nevertheless, rejection of the Catholic Church at
large, especially among younger generations, may discourage the
modern tarantati from considering this option.
It becomes clear that an alternative route to well-being, possibly
tucked away within the rave-like, delirious movement of the pizzica, is
welcome to many. The pizzica is socially accepted, if not glorified, and,
154
rather than excluding and stigmatizing, draws participants into its circle,
into the limelight. Something more than celebrity is at stake, pointing
to the need for careful, case-by-case consideration of past and present
spider dances.
A first step may be taken by comparing the case of the modern
tarantata Ada Metafune with that of Maria of Nardò, a tarantata in
the historical sense of the term. Whereas individuals afflicted by the
tarantula in the past were likely to be assigned their role as tarantate
by others and through the process of undergoing rituals of tarantism,
Ada’s view of herself as a modern tarantata appears to be self-assigned,
even if in relation to the re-valorization of the pizzica in the Salento
and elsewhere. Moreover, for the tarantate of yesteryear, music was
deliberately applied for healing within the context of an acknowledged
belief system and considered to be the only way out. Meanwhile, Ada
retrospectively views her involvement in the music and dance of the
pizzica as curative, in the light of her own acquaintance with
therapeutic alternatives such as psychoanalysis. Likewise, past
performances were determined by a ritual context focused on the
symbolic complex of the tarantula spider, whereas Ada has re-enacted
this ritual on many occasions for theatrical purposes or television
cameras and her motivations for doing so may be questioned. Many
tarantate in the past, too, were accused of putting on a show. Such
persisting questions of authenticity may become secondary, however,
if we acknowledge that the impacts of cultural performances, even if
staged, may be real in their effects on a level of experience and,
moreover, that the healing power of the pizzica was acknowledged in
the past, not only in ritual performances, but equally in its
performances on manifold festive occasions (Lüdtke 2005a).

Despite major discrepancies between the performance contexts of
the tarantate and the neo-tarantati, the dances of both must be
considered in relation to the negotiative processes involved, bringing
into play individual, social and political aspects of recovering well-
being. Performances may transfix participants by imposing out-of-
context beliefs and practices. At the same time, they may also provide
a way of integrating and making sense of difficult experiences in the
lives of those seen to be transfixed by the tarantula.
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Dances with Spiders
Notes
1. Gallipoli, 12 June 1999.
3. Soleto, 4 April 1998.
4. Lecce, 4 December 1997.
5. Lecce, 24 November 1997.
7. ‘The term widow spider originated from the idea that the females devour the
males after, or during, mating. This mate devouring behaviour is somewhat a
myth; while it may occur in captive situations, where the male cannot escape, it
is uncommon in the field.’ Retrieved on 19 July 2007 from http://www.srv.net
/~dkv/hobospider/widows.html.
8. Personal communication.
9. I thank Damian Walter for bringing these links to my attention.
11. Scorrano, 12 July 1999.
12. Teatro Paisiello, Lecce, 15 May 1998.
13. Maurizio Nocera (2005: 10) identifies tarantati: ‘those who feel the suffering of
the bite or re-bite for having entered into competition with a divinity (the Greek
Athena, the Latin Minerva, the Christian St Paul), which “punishes” them by
inflicting their body with possession by the spider’; attarantati: ‘those who
simulate the tarantate in spectacularized and dramaticized theatrical scenes’; and
attarantanti: ‘intellectuals (though not alone) who, for reasons of study or other
particular interests, were or are interested in this phenomenon, and as a result
remain strongly influenced up to the point of taking on related forms of
behaviour.’
14. Patruno’s choice to use the double ‘s’ rather than double ‘z’ spelling here is
intentional. Perhaps a deliberate hint at ‘taking the piss’ in the sense of making
fun of or ridiculing someone or something?

17. Tricase, 27 November 1997.
18. Lecce, 4 December 1997.
22. See the video Pizzica with a New York Accent (Ciuffitelli 2005b).
23. Italian-American cultural project manager Mary Ciuffitelli has looked into
Belloni’s influence in more detail (Ciuffitelli 2005a), as has Italian scholar and
singer Laura Biagi (Biagi 2004).
24. See Collu (2005: 59–73) for a description of this case.
25. Montesano, 16 November 1997.
156
26. Tricase, 2 May 1998.

27. The dialect term macara or maciara is translated as strega in Italian, meaning
witch or sorceress (Rohlfs 1956–1961). The sanpaolari, meanwhile, were seen to
be inheritors of St Paul’s healing powers, and were often viewed as charlatans
tainting the reputation of those with honest motivations (Turchini 1987;
Montinaro 1996). Their antidotes included holy water and earth, la terra di San
Paolo, taken from St Paul’s grotto in Malta and used to sculpt medals, amulets,
vases, cups, tablets or model statues of the apostle. Fossilized serpent teeth or
tongues, glossopietre or lingue di San Paolo, of Maltese origin were also part of
their remedy kit.
28. Remedies suggested for cases of tarantism include: ‘a prescription containing
twenty-four herbs and spices’ (Caputo 1741: 133); Alexipharmaca, a treatise
dealing with poisons and their antidotes (Sigerist 1948: 110); healing saliva
(Vallone 2004); crushed garlic mixed with treacle spread onto the bite to
neutralize the poison; diaphoretics (administered to produce perspiration);
draughts of lemon rind, parsley, mint, wild thyme and berries; alcohol mixed with
treacle or rosemary (Russell 1979: 411–14). Treatment techniques involved:
scarification, cupping and cauterization (Sigerist 1948: 110); la cura del forno
caldo, the warm oven cure (Vandenbroeck 1997: 101; De Martino 2005: 215);
blistering of feet and bathing in warm water; hydrotherapy; the use of cloths
warmed and moistened in wine and wrapped around the naked body; bandaging
of the bite with a ligature (Russell 1979: 411–14).
29. The sanctuary of San Cosimo della Macchia just south of Oria, attracting
numerous pilgrims and holding an enormous display of votive offerings, still
stands as a contemporary shrine dedicated to St Cosmas, one of the key healers
in the Catholic tradition.
30. The approximate equivalent of 52.00 euros (using the conversion rate of 1,936.27
lire to one euro from 1 January 2002, when the euro was first introduced).
31. Montesano, 6 August 1998.
32. 11 August 1999.

33. Between 1997 and 1999, I followed the work of Rita Cappello and her group of
music and art therapists, Musicarte, working with the method la globalità dei
linguaggi (Guerra-Lisi 1987), who were very much pioneering this work at the
time.
34. Giuliano Capani’s (2004) film Un ritmo per l’anima: tarantismo e terapie naturali,
A Rhythm for the Soul: Tarantism and Natural Therapies, is a recent
cinematographic document comparing and contrasting tarantism with present
treatment and meditation practices involving rhythmic interaction.
35. Lecce, 21 July 1999.
36. Lecce, 20 July 1999.
37. I use this term to refer to practitioners using traditional healing modalities
generally including herbal treatment and spiritual care.
38. Lucugnano, 13 May 1998.
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Dances with Spiders
Fig. 7.1 Graffiti painting

of the ‘dancing god’, Porto
Badisco, July 1998
(photo: Karen Lüdtke).
Fig. 7.2 The ‘dancing god’ on stage on a tambourine skin during a concert of
the group Arakne Mediterranea, Galatina, 29 June 1999 (photo: Karen Lüdtke).
158
Chapter 7
Tarantula Threads and Showbiz Airs:
Fine-tuning Performances
Two people dancing in the centre of a circle

are like a fire heating everyone looking on.
Tambourine player, Ostuni, 21 May 1998
A girl no more than ten years old writhes on a white sheet. A young
woman circles its perimeter, waving a red scarf at her in an elegantly
tamed bullfighting fashion. It is a mild summer night in September
1999 and a crowd has gathered in the town of Casarano for a concert
of the Alla Bua. The musicians had announced the young dancer’s
request to repeat a piece rehearsed for her school performance. One
of them kneels close to the dancer on the tarmac sports pitch, the
concert venue, beating a large, cymbal-less tambourine (a ‘shamanic
drum’, as he specifies) with a wooden drumstick, and spectators
enclose the performance space.
The girl dancer, dressed in a white dress and white sandals, moves
rhythmically, rolling back and forth across the bleached linen sheet
before coming to her feet to dance steps of the pizzica within the
sheet’s contours. Eventually, she collapses gently to the ground only
to repeat this sequence several times until the musicians come to the
end of their piece. Flashes of Maria of Nardò’s performance filmed in
1959 (Carpitella 1960) come to mind, with this perfect rendition of
the main dance cycles of tarantism rituals as described by De
Martino. The applause is enthusiastic. Clearly, it appears, this is what
parents, schoolteachers and other onlookers want to see: a
performance infused with the aesthetic criteria of a school ballet
production; a depiction of the socially desired grace and gentleness of
a well-brought-up young girl; an enactment of femininity as docile
159
Dances with Spiders
and compliant, all the more pleasing when perceived as the

spontaneous wish of a young community member wanting to show
and share what she has learnt.
Technically, a ritual of tarantism has been re-enacted. Yet I am left
with the sense of an empty shell of reproduced movements. On the
level of performative expressivity, there was little, if any, connection
with the tarantate’s dance of bygone years. There was no hint of the
crises and conflicts women (and men) conveyed through this ritual,
no glimpse of the aggression and transgressive eroticism breaking
social and sexual norms of the time. Considering this disjuncture,
what tools can be applied to compare what was a ritual embedded
within a magico-religious belief system and what is predominantly a
show or (well-dusted) museum piece?
A focus on four key aspects: places, times, props (or performative
devices) and techniques brings to the fore the tangible – musical and
choreographic – aspects of performances, as well as principal factors
seen to promote efficacy.1 Like the musicians of the tarantate, today’s
musicians have to ‘tune in’ to a place and its people, finding the
rhythms that stir, excite and stimulate. This relies on a maximum
number of participants agreeing to collaborate in the collectively
acknowledged reality and rules of a performance. No single element
determines success. Instead, it is the appropriate combination of
various elements that brings out ‘the magic’ people marvel at. Such
appropriateness relies on specific knowledge acquired through
experience, and is constantly open to negotiation and change.
Existing studies in anthropology and performance provide a
valuable backdrop here. Theatre scholars searching for tools to
understand performance in Western contexts have always been

concerned with theatre’s relation to the intangible spheres of human
existence, the metaphysical, invisible, supernatural, ethical or holy
(Artaud 1958; Brecht 1964; Grotowski 1976; Stanislavski 1980a, b,
1981; Brook 1998; Barba 2001). Their work highlights the social
and potentially spiritual and moral side of theatrical performance,
suggesting parallels to religious or ritual practice. Anthropologists, in
turn, have aimed at overcoming simplistic distinctions between
theatre and ritual, as well as ethnocentric interpretations of
performance, by taking culturally specific contexts into account
(Grotowski 1976; Beattie 1977; V. Turner 1982; Schechner 1988,
2002; Schieffelin 1996). This has brought to the fore the importance
160
Tarantula Threads and Showbiz Airs
of performance in regard to other human institutions or social

constructions, such as religion, politics, gender or ethnicity.
A shift in the consideration of dramatic practices, from being
viewed ‘largely in terms of structures of representations to being seen
as processes of practice and performance’ (Schieffelin 1996: 59), has
placed attention on the socially and individually constructed nature of
such practices. Ethnomusicologists and dance ethnologists (Williams
1991; Stokes 1994; Reed 1998; Buckland 1999, 2006; Farnell 1999;
Guss 2000; Kaeppler 2000; Thomas 2003; Peterson Royce 2004; Post
2006) have contributed fundamentally to such an understanding of
performance as a ‘vital form of social creativity’ (Stokes 1994: 24)
able to generate, negotiate and control meanings and experiences; as
intrinsically political and paradoxical (Cohen 1993); and as ‘part of
the very construction and interpretation of social and conceptual
relationships and processes’ (Seeger 1987: xiv).
Without dismissing major differences, the conceptual gulf between
the notions of theatre and ritual becomes less straightforward when
considering the phenomenological level of experience:
‘Performances – whether ritual or dramatic – create and make present
realities vivid enough to beguile, amuse or terrify. They alter moods,
attitudes, social states and states of mind. Unlike texts, however, they are
ephemeral; they create their effects and then are gone, leaving their
reverberations (fresh insights, reconstituted selves, new statuses, altered
realities) behind them.’ (Schieffelin 1996: 59)
Moreover, as David Parkin (1996: xxi) writes: ‘Cultural performance

is real in its effects but, because imagined, gives its creators and their
audiences a freedom of invention and interpretation that does not

exist with regard to structured or positive reality.’ Performances,
whether theatre or ritual, become an experimental platform exposing
participants to new roles and experiences, providing a means of
contesting, manipulating and creating social constructions of the
self, others and the world around.
With a focus on the processual nature of performance practices,
how did and does the Italian spider’s dance beguile, amuse or terrify?
What alternative realities were and are created? Perceptions of
performative efficacy, and how this is negotiated, provide a helpful
guideline. A look at places that characterize first past and then
present dances posits an initial step to explore what factors may be
variously seen to distinguish a hit from a flop.
161
Dances with Spiders
Spider Sites: Performance Places

‘Once we followed a tarantata down this road playing our instruments.
She was crawling on her stomach imitating the serpent that had bitten
her,’ explained Luigi Stifani, well-known violinist of the tarantate, as
we walked through his hometown of Nardò, towards his barber’s
shop.2 On the front door, there was a sign reading Studio di cultura sul
tarantolismo marking this salon, too, with the spider’s imprint.3
Up until De Martino’s research in 1959, public spaces, village
squares, streets or courtyards and, arguably, even churches became
stages for the tarantate’s rituals, as did private spheres, closed homes
and secluded bedrooms. Historically, picturesque natural sites were
favourite choices: fields, country roads and shady spots abundant in
vegetation and water (De Martino 2005: 87). At first glance, it
appears that almost any spot could be carved into a stage. However,
a location’s association with the initial ‘bite’ or ‘crisis’ most frequently
determined decisions.
Today, the chapel and grotto of St Paul in Galatina and Giurdignano
remain two publicly accessible sites evoking the tarantula.4 Although
many are oblivious of these places, they stand as testimony to powerful
tensions between the Catholic Church and popular religious or
spiritual needs. Although long since deconsecrated officially, devotees
continue to come here and others insist that they are preserved.5
Early manuscripts and maps, meanwhile, conflated the tarantula
spider with the Salento or Apulia as a whole. European travellers
documented these practices with disbelief and suspicion (Boyle
1685; Burney 1771; Swinburne 1783), often taking them as proof of
the ignorance and backwardness of southern Italy at large.6 Burney

presents scientific experiments disclaiming the views of believers:
‘Dr. Cirillo assured me that he had never been able to provoke that
tarantula either to bite himself or others upon whom he had
repeatedly tried the experiment. However, the whole is so thoroughly
believed by some innocent people in the country’ (1771: 313). He
adds an apologetic footnote in the name of scientific progress: ‘This
account may perhaps diminish the honour of music, by augmenting
the number of sceptics, as to its miraculous powers; yet truth requires
it should be given’ (ibid.).
It was also often claimed that the tarantula’s bite was harmless
beyond Apulian borders and poisonous only to those of Apulian origin.
162
Other southern Italian case studies contradict these views (Pitré 1894;
Zanetti 1978; Rossi 1991), but the concentration of tarantism in Italy’s
heel cannot be explained as mere coincidence. De Martino tells of a
Sicilian woman who became a tarantata after moving to the Salento
and of a young Salentine who apparently continued to perform
tarantism rituals while committed to military service in northern Italy
(2005: 65). Others felt the tarantula’s bite as they settled back in the
Salento after years of working abroad (Miscuglio et al. 1981; Mingozzi
1982). Spider threads inevitably reached beyond Apulian ground and
infiltrated foreign bloodstreams, but always maintained conceptual
connections with their perceived southern Italian source.
The region of Apulia was also seen as inseparable from the
indigenous music and dance of the tarantella. Dancing in the
contexts of merrymaking at weddings, festivals and other social
occasions is likely to have provided a training ground for ritual
choreographies. ‘The old musicians’, one Salentine musician in his
fifties confirms, ‘all have a sensitivity for places.’7
Tarantism is something that leads you to feel things, to feel the air, the
particles which vibrate, such as the wind, for instance. The wind has a
sound. To me, for example, it communicates a great number of things. To
play the pizzica well you need a lot of training, a lot of resistance, because
you begin to feel well only after three to four hours of playing. That’s when
energy begins to circulate and there’s resonance. And then there are many
other things, you travel, you see everything. The sound becomes one, until
you don’t feel anything any more, and you begin to see everything from
above; these things are all part of the experiences you have.8
The harsh reality of bygone training contexts was seen to further

this ability. Luigi Toma tells how he learnt in the ronde, or circles, of
Torrepaduli: ‘if you didn’t keep in time with a circle, you were thrown
out with a kick – bam! Certain times were established. People from
each town kept to specific rhythms and to specific people. If you
entered their circle and wanted to play but at a certain point no
longer kept up, they threw you out!’9 Another musician adds:
I began playing when I was a child. At the popular festivals you played non-
stop from evening until morning. There were no breaks for a minimum of
eight to nine hours. This gives you the capacity to play when you grow up.
The organism, the body, is made for playing. Now this isn’t the case any
more. The young people no longer manage to do this, they don’t have the
physical resistance.10
163
Dances with Spiders
Playing the pizzica demanded physical endurance and stamina,

which past generations are likely to have gained through hard manual
labour as well as long hours of music making and dancing. However,
not everyone played and danced. One elderly woman in her eighties
emphasized that there was no time between work in the fields,
factories and home.11
Just as skills in music making and dancing were passed down the
generations, cases of affliction often predominated in a single family, as
if inherited or acquired through the process of socialization. Difficult
living conditions and problematic relationships were perpetuated, as
was a familiarity with devices – both technical and conceptual –
required to enact rituals. In this sense, the actual process of growing up
in the Salentine environment sculpted individuals, both physically and
perceptually, to be able to perform if and when the need arose.
Moreover, as Damian Walter points out: ‘If the Salentine peninsula was
as harsh as it seemed to be – and if tarantism further expressed peasant
women’s frustrated sexuality and anxieties about fertility (deaths of
young children, etc.) – then it seems possible that tarantism’s
association with “naturally picturesque sites” reflects a broader concern
with the natural rhythms and fecundity of the landscape itself.’12
Others have similarly stressed the links between ritual procedures
and natural surroundings, as well as working life. A tambourine player
from Ostuni suggests a link between the rhythm of the pizzica and the
song of the cinciarella (blue tit), a migratory bird found in southern
Italy, marked by a lively ‘tee, tee, tee’ followed by a scolding ‘chirr’.13 I
have not heard others make this connection, although some identified
animal behaviour in dance moves. One dancer showed me how a male
performer might imitate a cockerel, with a stretched-out hand

quivering above his forehead, or a bee or serpent moving to sting or
bite: with the index and middle fingers curved slightly downwards to
simulate a poisonous needle or tongue, the male dancer approaches
his female partner and, using his fingers to draw figures of eight in the
air in front of her face and body, suddenly launches forward, stings, so
to speak, without touching and retreats immediately while closing his
outstretched fingers into a fist, as if to retrieve and carry away some
invisible essence.14
Another musician adds that everyday working life may have provided
further inspiration, as his hands stretch upwards to illustrate the
motions of picking fruit or vine twigs.15 The tambourine, the musicians’
164
key prop, provides a further link to work. It is made of animal skin

(usually goat or cow hide) stretched over a circular wooden frame to
which metal cymbals are attached. This frame was, and to a lesser
extent is, also used by artisans to make work tools: covered with a metal
netting or pierced animal skin it becomes a farnaru (sieve), used with
rhythmic movements to sift flour. Associations with other forms of daily
work come to mind, raising questions about the rhythmic nature of this
work (and its daily tedium) in relation to the rhythms of dancing and
playing. The crafts of weaving or spinning, in particular (central to the
legend of Arachne), played a prime role in women’s tasks in bygone
days, creating analogies to the weaving of relationships on a social level
and the spinning of fate – by the three Fates or goddess Aphrodite in
Greek mythology, for example – on a cosmic level (Kinsley 1995:
193–94).
In twenty-first-century Italy, meanwhile, spider webs continue to
merge with Salentine (as well as Apulian) longitudes and latitudes.
Assertions of local identities foster views of this region as home to the
unique tradition of tarantism (Apolito 2000). In 2000, the local tourist
board’s postcards, decked with a tambourine and a couple dancing the
pizzica, proclaimed the Salento as: ‘Aperto tutto l’anno’ (Open all year
round) [see Fig. 4.1]. The music and dance of the tarantula make
front-page material, attracting thousands to this region. An influx of
one hundred thousand tourists was estimated solely in the period
around the 2005 Notte della Taranta (Maruccio 2005). Most come for
the summer concerts, but have no illusions of (or desire for) stumbling
across a healing ritual of bygone days. Yet claims that these may persist
at sites hidden in the Salentine countryside create expectation
(Santoro 1982: 75). Any spot on the peninsula might still be a sacred
stage for the tarantula: perhaps insider knowledge, not kept as secret as
it could be, creates a halo of mystery and, in any case, good publicity.
Village squares, closed-off crossroads, seaside promenades and
countryside venues are preferred contemporary showcases for the
tarantula’s music and dance. Abandoned farmhouses or rural
chapels, widespread in the Salento, are other favourite sites. With
generators fuelling light bulbs and loudspeakers and traffic signs
attracting and directing crowds, deserted and silent places become
temporarily infused with life. Props – such as flames lining the track
leading to a performance or flickering on buildings around a stage –
set the scene and mark places as out of the ordinary.
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Dances with Spiders
Although brightly spotlighted public stages with powerful hi-fi

systems, including discothèques (Bruno 1999; Maruccio 1999), rule
the popular music and dance scene, more enclosed, private spheres
and celebrations also frequently host the pizzica. Birthday parties
and other social gatherings held in the privacy of homes are welcome
excuses to pull out the tambourine. The Pizzeria Lu Puzzu in the
Griko town of Sternatia has become famous for its Tuesday-night
pizzica sessions staged among the restaurant tables as an after-dinner
digestive. Similarly, in autumn 2002, the Thurn und Taxis Pub in
Lecce promoted weekly pizzica jam sessions. In verbal rather than
musical form, conferences, book presentations and theatre
productions bring the tarantula alive, on both outdoor and indoor
stages. Art exhibitions and film productions throw its sounds and
images onto canvas screens in galleries, cultural associations and
cinemas, while workshops introduce it to school syllabuses and
university auditoriums.
Students are animated to rediscover their roots, while tourists are
invited to explore the exotic. The Salentine peninsula collapses into
the tarantula as a poster promoting the 2004–05 season of the Lecce
football team shows. Above the slogan Terra di Serie A, League A
Country, a spider crawls over Italy’s heel painted in the team’s red and
yellow colours, ironically precisely those that were seen to most affect
the tarantate of the past. Far from soccer stadiums, a select number
of intellectually inspired friends and followers of the late Salentine
poet and artist Antonio Verri have identified certain sites in the
Salentine countryside as representative of the contemporary world of
tarantism, sites that express the sibilo lungo or deep murmur.16
Although perhaps previously irrelevant to the tarantate, these

landmarks – St Paul’s grotto in Giurdignano, the Porto Badisco cave
paintings, Torre St Emiliano [see Figs 0.3 and 3.1–3.3] and others –
have acquired contemporary meanings through the historical,
religious or mystical import assigned to them (Chiriatti 1995; Lüdtke
2002). They are sites of devotion where the much-used phrase la mia
terra – my homeland, my earth, my roots – appears condensed into
material form, instilling and reconfirming an awareness of the self as
linked to the Salentine territory, especially when infused with music
making and dancing. Fernando Bevilacqua put it this way: ‘There are
certain places where I need to go during the year. It’s like an exorcism,
as if to wish myself to continue to live.’17
166
People and places conceptually shape each other. The tarantula

becomes a matrix for the Salento and its people and vice versa. Each
one creates and moulds the other. Meanings are projected onto a site,
like a movie onto a screen, and the greater the sense of reality of this
projection the greater the perceived efficacy of the performance.
Anyone doubting, questioning or criticizing bursts this bubble of
projection, cutting through the movie screen. With the Church’s
attempts to prohibit tarantism rituals, the tarantate increasingly
performed behind locked doors. Today, too, success is jeopardized if
the associations ascribed to a place deviate from those ascribed to a
performance. Likewise, performance times play a key role in
determining success.
Spider Schedules: Performance Times

The tarantula’s venom could strike at any time, day or night, and in
any season of the year. However, initial crises coincided mostly with
the hot summer months, under the auspices of the burning sun.
Everyday life was at its harshest and the spider abundant in the
fields. This was also the time of St Paul’s festival. The anniversary of
a first bite often provoked crises anew, as did other festive or social
events. States of emergency could be treated at any time, but the
hottest part of the day was seen as most conducive to recovery.
Francesco Greco, who danced to the tunes of the tarantula in the
1960s, confirms this: ‘The musicians came around 11 a.m., because
that was the time, more or less, when this animal started to show its
effects, the hot hours, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.. Those were the three
peak hours.’18 Sweating was most profuse then, facilitating – as was
believed – the expulsion of the spider’s venom.
Ritual phases lasted ten to fifteen minutes on average, followed by
short breaks of another ten minutes or so. Generally, recovery
required a minimum of three to four days of dancing, with rests at
night-time. Moreover, De Martino was told, St Paul gave his grace
either at 12 noon, 1 p.m., 3 p.m. or 5 p.m. (2005: 42). Although
these claims are hard to follow up, rituals were wrapped into the
sun’s twenty-four-hour cycle and annual rhythm: when the sun was
at its highest and most intense, the tarantula’s bite was most profuse
and its dance likely to be most efficient. It also generally hit at
167
Dances with Spiders
specific points in a life cycle, most often during puberty or early

adulthood, or in moments of major transitions, such as childbirth,
marriage or loss of a spouse (De Martino 2005: 83). While some
tarantate never repeated their initial performance, others, like
Evelina, continued to do so for over half a century on every
anniversary of their ‘initial bite’.
Nowadays, meanwhile, the pizzica escapes the burning sun, as
pleasantly air-conditioned summer nights are its main showcase.
Village festivals and sagre, food fairs, have in recent years rarely been
complete or truly traditional, so to speak, without this music’s stamp.
Although summer nights still hold the strongest spell, the pizzica may
heat up any night of the year. The winter bonfire festival of St Anthony,
for instance, celebrated in the small suburb of Villa Convento on 22
January 2005, was set to its rhythms. Although just a small gathering
with a few sausage and chestnut stands, the pizzica was not missing.
While seasonal and religious cycles still influence the tarantula’s
beat, other cycles equally hold it in their grip. In spring 1998, during
the local election campaign for Lecce’s new mayor, pizzica concerts
followed political speeches of all inclinations: spider music turned
into political catchphrase and voting trigger. Meanwhile, annual
events, such as the Night of the Tarantula or the Pizzicata Festival,19
follow the examples of major world music initiatives counting on the
perennial pilgrimage of fans. Workshops and seminars organized by
schools or the University of Lecce offer an intellectual or artistic
tone according to the academic calendar. Likewise, my own
neighbourhood in Lecce became the inadvertent audience to a
didgeridoo, ringing out through the open balcony doors of a nearby
flat, in tune to pizzica songs on summer nights in 2007.

Such one-off happenings may have few immediately evident links
to broader temporal patterns anchoring these events within the
rhythms of daily life. Moreover, although the tarantula’s music and
dance come alive mostly at night, no specific hours can be allocated
to their performances. Where events mix verbal, visual and musico-
choreographic elements, a temporal hierarchy emerges: lectures and
films, representing the tarantula’s case in words, images and
recordings, set the scene and mood, creating a gradual build-up to
the actual music making and dancing. Finally, a few hard-core
performers often hang around after the official performance is over
and microphones have been unplugged. Spontaneous circles, at
168
times lasting into the early morning hours, provide time to improvise
and unwind.
When a show, whether of past or contemporary spider dances, is
embedded into larger acknowledged social and natural cycles,
participation is legitimized and encouraged. Through correspon-
dence and repetition it is anchored into the passage of time, as
defined by everyday life. In cases of tarantism, symptoms often
involved responses of withdrawal from temporally specific
circumstances, a means of periodically propelling individuals into a
sphere that was free from the influence of cyclical patterns and the
hardships these may have entailed. Rituals, meanwhile, could guide
the individual within this sphere through the imposition of
performative rhythms rooted in the socio-natural rhythms of daily
life, thereby aiming to draw the individual’s sensory perception
outwards and to coax the afflicted back into the present time and
place. In modern circumstances, performances may still be linked to
seasonal and religious cycles, but detachment from these cycles – be
it, for instance, through air-conditioned and centrally heated lives or
a lack of common belief systems – gives more credit to other cycles,
such as those of commerce, politics and tourism, often boasting their
closeness to nature and the authentic past as a catchphrase.
Respecting the cyclical process of a performance may be seen to
boost efficacy. Rituals were characterized by phases of preparation,
exploration, climax and repose. Staged shows equally benefit from a
gradual build-up of rhythm and atmosphere, a variable period of
intense playing, and an improvised and more laid-back time to finish
off, without amplifications or schedule of any kind. Accordingly,
participants are required to surrender to the continuity and unity of

the performance rhythms for efficacy to take its course. This requires
being sensitive not only to places and times but also to the props and
techniques engaged with.
Tarantula Threads: Past Props and

Techniques
‘If you didn’t find the tarantula’s thread,’ an elderly tarantato from the
town of Acaya explained (Di Lecce 1994: 191), ‘they didn’t manage
to dance, they didn’t manage to move.’ Il filo della taranta, the thread
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Dances with Spiders
of the tarantula, had to be found: that stimulus, be it a rhythm,

melody, colour, image, scent or object, which would instigate the
bitten woman (or man) to react and, most importantly, to dance. I
tempi giusti, the ‘right’ tempo or rhythms, had to be established in
order to provoke an irresistible urge to dance. Musical exploration
aimed at finding a trigger, an emotional button that would move the
tarantata to express her crisis.
Luigi Stifani explained how he had once played for a tarantata for
hours and hours without being able to elicit any kind of response.
Eventually, following a hunch, he struck up Chopin’s funeral march
and, to his own and everyone else’s surprise, the afflicted jumped up
and danced. ‘When she recovered,’ Stifani concluded with an
indignant smile, ‘she asked me why I hadn’t played Chopin’s piece
straight away!’20 In some cases, rhythmic stimulation, not intended
as music, was sufficient to bring about a response and, with it, a
resurgence of symptoms: footsteps on the floor of a tobacco factory
incited one tarantata to dance; a spoon hitting the sides of a bowl
provoked another (De Martino 2005: 56, 58). Many, I was repeatedly
told, avoided social occasions at which the pizzica was played during
periods in which they felt particularly sensitive, and hence at risk of
falling into a crisis outside a contained ritual framework.
Music helped identify the cause of affliction. ‘You no longer saw a
man, but a scorpion instead. It brought tears to our eyes to see him
like this.’ Luigi Stifani relates his experience of playing for a tarantato
bitten by a scorpion.21 The tarantate were said to become their
predator: mostly a spider, sometimes other poisonous animals. Where
everyday roles faltered, the spider and its counterparts provided role
models catering to extremes of behaviour. In fact, diverse tarantula

types existed in the context of tarantism rituals, providing scope for
individual and historical variation. Each spider carried its own name
and traits, determining the conduct of its victims. Dancing and
singing tarantulas were most common. Others were angry or
promiscuous, pushing the tarantate to aggressive or lustful
behaviour. Yet others were sad and silent, responding only to funeral
laments. Some were sleepy and even deaf, showing no reaction to
music at all (Mina 1997). A varied costume cupboard of characters
existed, determining the behaviour, wishes and whims of the
tarantula’s prey.
170
But what was it about the music that made it ‘right’? For centuries
this question has intrigued researchers interested in the link between
music and healing (Kircher 1641/1654; Katner 1952; Rouget 1986;
Franco and Zuffi 1996). Was it the type of instrument or rhythm
used, the melodic range or musical mode? Some musicians informed
De Martino (2005: 299) that the tonality of the music played was
crucial. The tarantate apparently responded mainly to musical pieces
in specific keys: A major, D major, B minor and A minor. De Martino
himself did not observe this, and I am equally unable to provide any
confirmation. It seems clear that some highly subjective associations,
as well as cultural conventions come into play, as, ‘by itself, music
cannot alter the consciousness of those who are neither sensitized to
it nor expectant of its results’ (Laderman 1996: 132).
However, a general preference for fast rhythms established the
pizzica as a favourite. Luigi Stifani (2000: 39) spoke of three types he
used most in his career: la tarantata indiavolata and la tarantata
sorda, the ‘possessed or devilish’ and ‘deaf ’ forms, played in a major
key; and la tarantata minore, performed in a minor key. The basic
beat of the pizzica was also said to hold clues to ritual efficacy.
Despite its 4/4 rhythm, varying accents give it a 6/8 feel, making its
structure dual and ambiguous: four counts per bar overlaid with
uneven triplets create a jumpy feel, characteristic of the skipping
steps for which the tarantella dance is famous. The name pizzica
pizzica itself gives a sense, moreover, of the triple rhythm of this
music and dance form. Generally speaking, a continuous rhythm,
diversely accentuated, came with melodic variants, improvisational in
character. The instruments reflected this duality: the musical beat,
set by the tambourine, was accompanied by an interweaving offbeat,

generally provided by the violin. Accordions, harmonicas or guitars
contributed further sound variety, although already a reduced
selection from bygone centuries, in which musettes, shawms,
trumpets, bombardons and other wind instruments were equally part
of the game (De Martino 2005: 97).22
Importantly, moreover, not all music was instrumental. Singing
tarantate required vocals: declarations of love, funeral laments,
religious hymns, and, most of all, evocations of the tarantula or St
Paul through prayers or verbal dialogues, expressed aloud or silently.
What is more, definitions of musical props were put to the test by the
soundscape inside St Paul’s chapel. Musical instruments were
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Dances with Spiders
officially forbidden, but personal accounts contradict this (Di Lecce

1994: 242). The apostle’s brides became their own musicians. Their
screams and sighs mixed with the singing of songs and the clapping
of hands. Recurring cries of just two syllables, ‘A-hi’, punctuated
their efforts at ritualization.23 Images transported in the words of
songs were said to provide other steps towards identification and
recovery.24
Yet other props helped to re-evoke the tarantula, including the
reconstruction of the setting and scene of the first bite. Objects
present and clothes worn at the moment of the initial crisis became
crucial props, as did icons of St Paul, mirrors, leaves, twigs or water.
Swinburne (1783) adds ribbons and grapes to this list. Fragrances
provided yet other tools: a young man believed to be a tarantato was
seen to place a bunch of wild flowers close to his nose as if ‘trying to
obtain a stimulation through smell which did not come through
hearing or sight’ (De Martino 2005: 50). Another tarantata reported
how, under the tarantula’s spell, she became intolerant to certain
smells (ibid.: 58).
Chromatic explorations provided further clues, as the case of the
man ejected during Maria of Nardò’s ritual recalls. Coloured props
acted as both magnets and repellents, determining the colour of the
afflicting spider. Most important for this were coloured ribbons,
nzacareddhe in the Salentine dialect. These are still sold as signs of
devotion at religious festivals. De Martino (2005: 106) writes of
diversely coloured bits of material suspended from a string tied across
the ritual perimeter. The tarantate chose those that most affected
them. According to Kircher’s text (1641/1654), some ravaged pieces
of cloth with their teeth or embraced them lovingly.

Moreover, every move was made in the tarantula’s name. A
conceptual jump was taken to establish dramatic or ritual distance.
The tarantata both was and was not herself. Choreographic ritual
cycles, initiated by musical rhythms and the tarantate’s identificatory
actions, generally began with a slow section and then broke into a
faster rhythm. In the first phase, performed on the ground,
widespread interpretations suggest that the spirit of the tarantula, or
offending counterpart, was called upon and brought alive through
the process of embodiment. The spider was made visual and tangible
through identification with its shape and movements: the tarantula-
tarantata would arch her spine into a ‘hysteric arc’, shuffle across the
172
floor on her back and shoulders with her limbs stretched out
spiderlike, dance with a cushion above her shoulder, apparently
representing the arachnid torso, or swing suspended from a rope.
Alternatively, she was known for the feat of threading her entire body
through the legs of a wicker chair, in simulation of the spider’s
weaving skills.
Other movements characterizing rituals were seen to foster
identification, as well as a sense of disorientation and a loss of
balance, common to dance forms found in other regions of the world
associated with so-called altered states of consciousness, often
compared to the spider’s dance (De Martino 1961a; Lewis 1971;
Bourguignon 1973; Rouget 1986; Lapassade 1994, 1996a; Ardillo
1997; Daniel 2005). These included throwing the head from side to
side; moving the pelvis rapidly up and down; running or dancing in a
circle; or spinning around in a pirouette.25
In a second dance phase performed in an upright position, the
spider dancer was said to enter into battle, as some interpretations
relate. She had to face her predator, fight and eliminate it. Dance
steps of the pizzica pizzica were seen to trample and crush the spider,
as the heel hit the ground rapidly and forcefully, until the dancer
collapsed from exhaustion and rested before recommencing another
cycle. The performance ended when the spider was pacified. A
complete and permanent cure, popular opinion states, was obtained
only when the spider was killed.
In more recent centuries, the role of the spider has merged with
that of the Apostle Paul, a further protagonist in the tarantula’s
dance. Luigi Chiriatti writes of how some, drawing on this
association, were known to say prayers to St Paul whenever they

came across a spider web (1995: 56). The apostle is frequently
described as lo sposo delle tarantate, the spouse of the tarantate,
providing one explanation for the white dress, the colour of a bride’s
gown in recent centuries, identifying his female devotees. Their
costume and money offerings became dramatic media to seduce the
saint at Galatina, as moments of identification and antagonism
continued to emerge. Allusions to sexual intercourse, especially
during the initial dance phase on the floor, as well as the erotic
connotations of some lyrics, evoked St Paul’s presence, as did other
dramatic techniques: many approached the altar on their knees; one
tarantata was filmed pounding on the door behind which St Paul’s
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Dances with Spiders
statue stood; others climbed onto the altar to be closer to the

tapestry that bore his image. In the second phase, the saint was
challenged: one tarantata was captured on celluloid as she circled
the altar in Galatina’s chapel, whipping a white handkerchief
through the air as if to chase away her aggressor [see Fig. 1.3], while
others used moves of the scherma to fight invisible counterparts
(Chiriatti 1996: 12; De Martino 2005: 103).
Props and techniques provided key clues to ritual efficacy, but so did
the active participation of others. De Martino (2005: 104) presents the
musical performers as exorcists, medics and artists all in one,
mentioning how – apparently – ‘in seventeenth-century Taranto, the
musicians were public officials paid with regular salaries’ (2005: 183).
More commonly, musicians were remunerated and fed by the victim’s
family, causing major expenses. In the past, both men and women
played for the tarantate, and rituals relied on their dexterity: not only
their technical skills but also their ability to instil the performance
with an emotional charge and to let go of any compulsion to control in
order to submit to the needs of the tarantata involved. At some point,
one elderly musician reported, the musicians themselves were taken
over by the music. Something else played through them.26
Vital knowledge about how to safeguard the ritual sequence was
often provided by close family members or others who had extensive
ritual experience. Luigi Santoro (1982: 81) points to the centrality
of the figure of the macara, while Turchini (1987: 162) refers to the
capo-attarantati, the head of the attarantati, who ensured that
appropriate action was taken and organized ritual practicalities.
Friends and relatives also took on responsibility for the safety and
well-being of the afflicted: catching the tarantate when they

collapsed, supplying food and drink, securing the scene from
potential intruders and paying the musicians’ fees. Moreover,
bystanders or other tarantate could be invited to join in the dance.
In fact, historical documents tell of large groups of afflicted dancers
dressing up and dancing in crowds (Baldwin 1997).
Representatives of larger institutions have been equally
influential within the complex play of tarantism, often restricting
performative efficacy. Priests were encouraged to dissuade the
tarantate from coming to Galatina, although others were invited to
perform exorcism rituals. De Martino mentions how one tarantato
was stopped in mid-dance because the collection of money during
174
rituals was no longer authorized (2005: 53). During St Paul’s festival

the police curbed proceedings, calling the tarantate to order,
keeping crowds at bay, or placating relatives enraged by journalists
and photographers.
Following the publication of La terra del rimorso, journalists and
researchers arrived with their props of cameras, tape recorders and
microphones. Their dramatic techniques often implied trickery, as
some hid on the balcony inside St Paul’s chapel to film from behind
a concealing curtain or smuggled themselves inside the chapel on
the pretence of being relatives or musicians. Gianfranco Mingozzi’s
film Sulla terra del rimorso (1982) documents how a film team lured
the reluctant and infuriated Maria of Nardò into her doctor’s
practice to interview her, while the narrator justifies this as
legitimate for the sake of documenting ‘the existence of a subaltern
class which in many cases has not as yet acquired a sense of self-
consciousness, and is unable to provide a direct testimony of itself
without external mediators’ (Barbati et al. 1978: 142).27 Such
patronizing views justified invasive techniques. These may explain
the antagonism towards film cameras expressed by the tarantate,
beyond questions about the extent to which this antagonism may
have been triggered by class issues, in so far as those using the
cameras may have represented a particular level of technological
development and the inadvertent display of the financial means to
acquire such technology.28
In sum, ritual efficacy in bygone ritual contexts required both
physical and conceptual containment. Although the afflicted
essentially directed proceedings through their reactions, everyone
present played an active role as a witness: as potential critic or

accomplice. No matter what motive pulled them into the circle – be
it curiosity, reverence or condemnation – any act of observing
reconfirmed what was happening. As long as those present were
willing to acknowledge the performative reality of the ritual setting,
or at least refrained from denying it, they played a crucial role in
promoting ritual efficacy and safeguarding the acceptability of this
tradition. Where in past rituals the right thread had to be found, the
‘right air’ needs to be struck in contemporary performances: that way
and intensity of playing which binds the audience’s attention and
compels participants to dance and applaud.
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Dances with Spiders
Showbiz Airs: Present Props and

Techniques
With the 1990s’ pizzica boom, the new or neo-tarantati emerged. ‘All
are looking for a state of grace,’ Daniele Durante (1999: 172) writes,
‘almost of trance, which can put them in relation with their own
divinity, or demon, or the tarantula or St Rocco.’ This is not the only
motivation, but one that highlights the persisting star position of
symbolic and spiritual counterparts. Images of these counterparts
abound and the tarantula still holds prime position, unchallenged at
the ‘top of the pops’, on tambourine skins, billboards, posters,
ashtrays or book and CD covers. In 2002, a bar on Galatina’s main
square displayed sweets shaped as spiders, calendars of the tarantate
and T-shirts with their perpetrators. A market vendor with a spider
sticker on his chest pocket sold others, at one euro each, among his
selection of nuts and olives.
Meanwhile, the newsagent across the road had a large selection of
postcards with tambourines, some smeared with blood, and verses of
songs addressing St Paul and the tarantula, while the spider
advertising the 2007 Night of the Tarantula on billboards throughout
the region also sold at 30 euros as a silver pendant in an elegant
jewellery shop in Lecce’s old city centre. The tarantula remains a
buzzword, a magnet, a label. It has become history and memory
inscribed on human skin: Pino Zimba, recently deceased leader of the
group Zimbaria, had a spider tattooed onto his shoulder at the point
where his father was bitten.29 Sometimes actual spiders have become
inadvertent actors in a show, as one musician told how he had caught
a tarantula and taken it to every performance of his band.30

Saints, such as Paul or Rocco, maintain a more marginal role.
Some nuovi tarantati visit St Paul’s Galatina chapel on his feast day
and hundreds make their annual pilgrimage to St Rocco’s festival
without, however, necessarily entering the chapel safeguarding the
saint’s relics. The documentary film San Paolo e la tarantola
concludes with the final acknowledgement: ‘Mit besonderem Dank
an San Paolo’ (With special thanks to St Paul), as director Edoardo
Winspeare, then a film-school student in Munich, resurrected the
tarantate’s patron on cinema and television screens.
Meanwhile, the ‘dancing shaman’ of the Porto Badisco caves is
another favourite embellishment [see Figs 7.1 and 7.2]. In the eyes
176
of some, the longevity of this cave painting outweighs that of the

spider, symbolically making it a predecessor, a kind of source, with an
archaeological halo of mystery augmenting its charisma. In the 1998
summer, a bright-red graffiti design of this figure stood out on the
walls of a small, makeshift bar erected next to the largest inlet of
Badisco, just a few strides from the iron-barred cave entrance [see
Fig. 7.1]. The following year, this bar was turned into a regular brick
building at the expense of the shaman, as his image was torn down
with the initial walls. However, his graffiti-style presence is alive and
kicking in the Salentine music scene. ‘This figure,’ Daniele Durante
(1999: 189) explains, ‘has struck the imagination of the Salentine
people to such an extent, as to identify it with the divinity which they
consider to be at the origin of their … culture … it is in the pizzica
that they see its “still-beating heart”.’ While many Salentines would
not grant the shaman such a monopoly, such historical associations
provide perfect tools for grounding today’s performances in the past
and in the territory of the Salento itself.
Although the ancient Greek roots of tarantism are widely defended
by academics (Salvatore 1989; Lapassade 1994; Di Mitri 1996), few, if
any, images relating to the Greek world are visible within the
contemporary manifestations of tarantism, although the lyrics of many
songs in the Griko dialect – and Greek radio channels picked up across
the Otranto channel when driving along the Adriatic coast – are a
constant reminder of the Salento’s (cultural) proximity to Greek shores.
The tambourine remains a key prop loaded with free-floating
meanings not necessarily shared and not necessarily rooted in
everyday life. Students participating at the 1998 University of Lecce
pizzica course directed by Giorgio Di Lecce spoke of these

associations: ‘It’s an expression of energy inside … an extension of
our own voice … something that carries you away.’31 ‘I check my
pulse prior to starting to play the tambourine,’ another musician
asserts, suggesting an intrinsic link between the tambourine’s rhythm
and human heartbeat.32 Fabio Tolledi (1998: 4) takes up this thread:
‘The tambourine, symbolic form of the cosmos, holds in its beat the
relation that exists between the heart and the world.’ ‘The secret is
the tambourine,’ yet another player affirms:
It is round, like the moon. It is a feminine instrument. Its skin is generally
made from the stomach of an animal, the stomach being at the centre of all
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Dances with Spiders
living things, where the emotions are, where children are formed. The hand
is used to play on this skin. Stretched out open wide, it has the shape of a
spider. The spider beats the tambourine, in the centre, in the stomach,
giving it a strong, continuous rhythm, following the beat of the heart.’33
Such associations connect instruments, spiders and players,

jeopardizing frequently expressed exclusive links between the pizzica
and those born and bred in the Salento.34
Part of the tambourine’s secret is believed to lie in the experiences
it is seen to provoke. Hands are generally bound with protective strips
of cloth, but these may loosen and the skin below the thumb is
frequently cut open from the friction of beating the instrument.
Many players tell how they continued playing with a bleeding hand
because they felt no pain and, in fact, many tambourine skins are
smeared with dried blood. Voices express marvel at the fact that pain
is annulled and this too is charged with broader meanings, as Tolledi
(1998: 8) reveals:
There exists among tambourine players a cruel and childish kind of pride
with regard to the ‘baptism’ of those who play this instrument. This sonic
virginity is broken by admission into the sphere of adult players by the
blood which bleeds from the hand, and by the red … which colours and
signs the tambourine. The hand becomes a sign, many signs, a wound
which opens and bleeds, a red mouth, an open sex.
From this perspective, bleeding becomes an initiation and rite of

passage facilitated by playing the tambourine and a means of
inscribing a change from youth to adult status. Associations are made
with women’s loss of virginity, a highly charged bodily metaphor for
the vulnerability of social boundaries. Yet one might wonder whether

past performers went to such extremes when hard manual labour was
awaiting them the next day and their hands were, moreover, much
more resistant from work.
Meanwhile, the human voice too remains a central device, as
Daniele Durante (1999: 175) stresses:
Used as an instrument with tightly stretched chords … verses lose their
original significance; they are extrapolated from other songs and
interspersed with cries, exclamations, which at times seem animalesque
verses. Often ‘mamma’ is added to the ‘A-hi’ to obtain ‘A-hi mamma!’, an
ancestral exclamation which, each time it is pronounced, produces an
inexplicable excitement in the players with a subsequent increase in the
sound volume.
178
Lyrics are also highly significant. One dancer explained how these
vary between the pizzica pizzica and scherma: ‘When the pizzica is
danced for courtship, lyrics speak of love, encouraging dancers to
give of their best, but, when it is performed for the scherma, words
are much more aggressive, aiming to inspire anger, tension and
courage.’35
Inevitably, money is also a prime prop, often determining whether
a performance will be staged at all. In 2006, one of the key groups of
the tarantula’s music and dance was asking between 1,000 euros and
2,600 euros for one night’s concert, depending on whether they were
playing locally or elsewhere, with events outside the Salento
generally being a better bet financially. One well-known and
charismatic elderly musician, is said to ask up to 2,500 euros for a
single appearance, even when playing in the Salento. Specific events
may be bigger scoops, such as playing during election campaigns, for
EU-funded projects or on the Night of the Tarantula, while other
occasions may involve voluntary participation, often linked to an
exchange of favours. For most, playing is a sideline income,
considering that these sums are shared among group members and
may or may not include travel expenses. Many groups have brought
out their own CDs, involving average expenditures of 300 euros per
day for the use of a recording studio, not to speak of the time invested
by group members, although sales subsequently contribute to
concert incomes and publicity. Yet others have specialized in book
and music sales concerning the tarantula and spend the summer
months touring concert venues.
City and regional sponsorship have made certain events highly
attractive for participants: in 2002, the first Salentine edition of

Estadanza, a rich one-week programme of practical and theoretical
courses on the tarantula’s music and dance, directed by dance
ethnologist Giuseppe Gala in collaboration with various local
associations, cost no more than 100 euros including accommodation,
with further discounts available for those resident in the Salento.
Meanwhile for participants, concerts are generally free in the
Salento, whereas abroad entrance fees are frequently charged:
London’s Rhythm and Sticks Festival sold £15 (22 euros) tickets for
the performance of Salentine group Ghetonia on 20 July 2004.
Meanwhile, the audience at the Beijing Night of the Tarantula on 2
May 2006 paid 30 yuan (almost 3 euros) each (Indennitate 2006).
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Dances with Spiders
The Provincia di Lecce’s expenditure of 100,000 euros for this latter

event inevitably created polemical reactions, with a spokesman for
the Lecce town council provocatively offering a piazza in Lecce at
only 20,000 euros for the same concert (Meis 2006).
The role of technological advances is equally important to the
success of contemporary performances. ‘Not only must acoustics be
good for the audience,’ one musician stresses, ‘but it is just as important
that performers hear themselves and each other.’36 In this sense, today’s
groups are often in the hands of more or less skilled sound technicians
and their show is influenced by other factors such as the amplification
system available or sound pollution from elsewhere. At the same time,
technology amplifies communicative means. The group Alla Bua was
one of the first to play to the backdrop of their music video, while the
Night of the Tarantula has involved huge screens duplicating and
zooming in on what was happening on stage, while the entire concert
was broadcast worldwide on satellite TV. Internet sites and forums
provide other virtual performance spaces and avenues for venting
opinions, creating contacts, exchanging information.
Moreover, the importance of the immediacy and flexibility of the
musical source is spotlighted. The interaction or mutual ‘reactivity’
that is possible between live players and dancers, and was transmitted
from older to younger generations in the past, is less direct when a
mechanical source of music is used. ‘A good performance’, another
musician points out, ‘depends not only on the sound being good both
on and off stage, but also on a circuit of attention and enthusiasm
between audience and musicians.’37 Although technological devices
may record and fix musical pieces on discs and digital files, and many
DJs master the technical possibilities of interacting with their crowds

of fans, they cannot make up for a live performance’s creative and
improvisatory emotional charge and rhythm.38
A tambourine maker and maestro player from Ostuni expands on
this point:
The other day, a music group from further south came to give a concert
here in my hometown, but nobody was dancing. The group leader shouted
to me to come and play with them. We began to play the pizzica of our
town, slowly, gently, not in an unrestrained way … The pizzica is life, it has
its own rhythms and if you don’t speak the same language you must find the
way, the air, the intonation to speak. You might have the instrument and
everything else, but the right air is missing, the right motive.39
180
The ‘right air’ has to be found, that rhythm and intention, that way
of playing which will engage those present to take part, beginning
with the tapping of toes on the piazza pavement or the barely visible
swaying of shoulders.
The right air must be adapted not only to the individual and group but also
to the place where music making takes place. Someone may enter a circle
limping and then begin to take in the air, to gain confidence, to let go and
to show themselves in all their grandeur. But, if the right air is lost, the
pizzica no longer makes anyone dance.40
With the contemporary pizzica boom, ‘official’ (and often disputed)

pizzica courses abound, but these aspects of performing may not
always be addressed. Many become involved in the pizzica world,
moreover, without ever seeking out a tutor: ‘A typical introductory
route is through friends: you take part for the first time, you get
carried away by the music and dance, you continue to dance and
begin to read books without giving it too much thought. Then you
learn to play the tambourine and so on.’41 In either case, there are no
guidelines or guarantee that implicit rules alluded to by the elderly
are acquired. Another musician elaborates further on the
transmission of the pizzica:
The dimension of experience, trance for instance, is an individual thing,
which is then transmitted. We exchange experiences. We talk about them
afterwards. Trance takes you into superior situations, it puts you into
contact with another world, with another universe, it’s a magical fact and
therefore a bit difficult to explain scientifically, technically. But, for us who
have lived these things, it’s almost a natural fact. However, to arrive at this
point, it’s necessary to respect certain rules: the contact with the earth, the
natural terrain, the circle, players who are all keeping to the same rhythms.
Also, a minimum of two hours of playing is needed before accessing any
state of trance. Then you arrive at this energy, which rotates, which engages
first one person and then another.42
Sufficient stamina, perfect rhythm and lengthy playing are said to

be required. ‘It’s not only a matter of studying the tambourine, of
learning about harmony,’ the same musician continues. ‘It’s a matter
of understanding what happens around you. These things the old
people transmitted to you, both by speaking and by placing
themselves next to you, by playing beside you’.43 The importance of
creating an emotional charge is emphasized, as is the need to
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Dances with Spiders
maintain a ‘sonorous flow’. In line with this, Luigi Toma explains that
nowadays his group rarely inserts a break during concerts: ‘If I stop
playing, I find it very difficult to start up again. It becomes an
enormous effort, because this state in which the rhythm takes over
ceases and then you have to work hard to return to it again. That’s
why I almost always forego a break.’44
Clearly, ways of performing vary widely, influencing what may be
defined as a successful performance. Such success, in turn, depends
on the criteria applied and who defines these. Inevitably, gender
issues are brought into play too. Once a fellow female dancer
corrected one of my dance steps, specifying that it was a man’s step:
‘The pizzica is danced in an unchained but never in an unseemly way.
It mustn’t become vulgar. You don’t show your legs. There must
always be elegance and composure.’45 Not only do gender differences
appear but also generational ones, as Ada’s description of her eighty-
four-year-old mother’s way of dancing shows [see Fig. 5.1]:
She moves proudly, and at the same time with great humility towards her
male partner. It is a way of dancing the pizzica that is entirely female. We,
the new generation, have learned that we also have a masculine side and
how to express this. Elderly women, however, will never take on masculine
modes, as we do. They have a proud comportment, making sure to keep
their legs very closed, taking tiny but very sensual steps. This was the role
of women at the time, and they could not move beyond it.46
Changes inevitably jeopardize implicit rules once associated with

the pizzica, and attempts at reinforcing these are often in vain, as Ada
recounts:
I tried … but realized that nothing could be done. It’s not possible to say:
‘Look, it’s not done like that, it’s done like this,’ because in that moment
they’ll tell you: ‘I want to dance, move out of my way, I have to dance and I
want to enter the circle.’ In this way, twenty, thirty people dance in one
circle and there is too much energy, it’s not channelled in any way, it’s
chaos.’47
Tradition dictates that only one couple dance in a circle at one time.
They become the nucleus of attention, holding each other’s gaze and
dancing without ever touching beyond slight brushes of the skin.
Stimuli – whistles, applause, cries of admiration, laughter and more
– are directed at the dancing couple from the audience, creating
constant interaction. Yet, inevitably, the open and improvisatory
182
character of the pizzica steps and gestures easily overrides any

disciplinary structures at its base, leading Giuseppe Gala (2002b:
46) to cynically describe the pizzica (or pizziche) today, as involving
‘a television-like emphasis on representing the relationship of
couples: the exaggeratingly honeyed female role and the sugary gaze
of men who drone around their prey’.
Clearly, no essentialized pizzica exists. Intentions vary, as do ways
of performing. Obvious performative similarities between past and
present spider dances, based on sounds, steps and lyrics, are
permeated with deeply rooted differences, which go beyond the
dynamic and continuously re-creative character that applies to any
performance genre. Modern technology provides a vast new gamut of
virtual, rather than live, stimuli. Moreover, the human organism, the
key prop of the tarantula’s music and dance, is exposed not only to
highly varied individual experiences, but also to disparate
sociocultural contexts. Contemporary performers not only may lack
stamina, but also play in a context that lends the tarantula’s music
and dance to whatever interpretation is at hand, making a ballet-
school ritual copy the highlight of a night. Knowing about roots and
rhythms cannot replace the experiential knowledge of appropriate
relations assuring containment that the elderly talk about.
Ritual set-ups guaranteed a minimum of support: perimeters were
clearly demarcated, musicians played in a circle, someone
experienced guided and secured the proceedings, throwing out
intruders if need be. Today, performance circles are often crowded
with participants ignorant of the value of someone directing
interactions. Stages and amplifying systems split participants, and
attempts at bridging gaps with performers descending into the crowd

or inviting audience members on stage may only underline and
deepen divisions. The tarantula’s music not only welds together but
also breaks apart, as the strong rivalry among contemporary music
groups repeatedly brings to the fore. Luigi Toma refers to this
emphatically: ‘Why is it that all of us who live in the Salento don’t
manage to work together? This is the basis of our music! At this
point, we’re all taking ourselves for a ride!’48
The comparative perspective adopted here may be criticized as
perpetuating wishful thinking regarding the continuity of those
performative features perceived as beneficial by whoever is
promoting these events. Although similarities emerge, these are no
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Dances with Spiders
guarantee of historical or cultural ties between bygone and modern

tarantati. What was right in the past is not necessarily right
nowadays. What is appropriate for one person is not necessarily so
for another. What is interesting, however, is how a focus on
continuity – and a demand for this – can both obscure and reveal the
inherent power of performances: that is, the creative potential, or
possibility for discontinuity and change, implicit in every new
enactment.
Inevitably, criteria of success depend on who establishes
these. Nevertheless, it appears that performative efficacy – despite
variations in past and present contexts and in participants (whether
Salentine or not) – is linked to a sensitivity towards places, times,
props and techniques gained through extensive experiential
knowledge. It is facilitated by the active participation of everyone
present; the anchoring of performances in social and natural rhythms
of everyday life; and the availability of performance techniques
related to the larger socio-natural context as well as containment,
sensory stimulation and emotional charge. A key to success emerges
in the way of playing and the intention behind doing so.
The importance of surrendering to the music in the circles of
musicians and dancers, moreover, comes into view, juxtaposed to the
management of music and dance through cultural politics and
policies, as well as artistic directives and arrangements: relinquishing
control as opposed to controlling; abandonment versus regulation;
letting go in the face of legislation; a paradox engulfed by the
tarantula’s web and, perhaps, an opposition inherent in the process
of recovering well-being.49
184
Notes
1. See Schieffelin (1996) for a discussion of ‘failure’ and ‘efficiency’ in
performance. The notion of technique, meanwhile, may be divided into two
overlapping categories, mutually shaping each other: daily techniques,
habitual ways of acting appropriated through socialization (Mauss 1979),
and extra-daily techniques acquired through performance training, which
‘literally put the body into form, rendering it artificial/artistic but believable’
(Barba 1995: 16).
2. Nardò, 29 July 1999.
3. The meaning of this sign remains ambivalent in Italian: it may be translated
as both ‘cultural study on tarantism’ or ‘workshop for the study of tarantism
culture.’
4. Other sites dedicated to the Apostle Paul include the towns of Acaya and
Alessano (Torsello 1997a; Nocera 2005).
5. In March 2005, the chapel of St Paul was selected by Il Fondo Ambiente
Italia, the Italian Environmental Fund, as a key site to be safeguarded from
ruin. Thanks to the initiative of the Centro Studi sul Tarantismo in Galatina,
the chapel of St Paul was elected in seventeenth position on a national scale
of Luoghi del cuore, Places of the heart, a campaign inviting citizens to
nominate places of particular beauty worthy of preservation but at risk of
being forgotten, in a nationwide census (Trono 2005).
6. For reprints of these documents, see Lüdtke (2000b).
7. Alessano, 10 August 2005. The speaker uses the Italian phrase una sensibilità
dei luoghi.
9. Casarano, 29 May 1998.
11. Ibid.

13. Ostuni, 10 July 1999.
14. Depressa, 4 May 1998.
16. See Chapter 4, ‘La Sagra dei Curli: a Community Festival’.
18. 11 August 1999.
19. The Pizzicata Festival was staged from 1999 to 2003, with the final concert
initially located in the idyllic surroundings of the rural church of Santa
Marina di Stigliano, near Carpignano Salentino. In 2000, it involved a trans-
European programme funded by the EU Leader II Programme, including
workshops with musicians and dancers from Ireland and Brittany. This event
was seen by some as a counter-initiative to the Night of the Tarantula.
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Dances with Spiders
20. Nardò, 29 July 1999.

21. Ibid.
22. It is important to keep in mind that ‘the terms for instruments have
undergone numerous changes through the centuries, and the same term in
one period could also refer to very different instruments in different
geographical areas’ (Dorothy Zinn in De Martino 2005: 92).
23. A short record was sold with De Martino’s first edition of La terra del rimorso
(1961a), documenting sounds registered in St Paul’s chapel on 29 June 1959
and several musical pieces and songs performed during rituals. Likewise,
Brizio Montinaro’s collection Musiche e canti popolari del Salento, Vol. 3
(Edizioni Aramirè), includes two tracks of recordings (from 1974 and earlier)
of the tarantate in Galatina.
24. De Martino distinguished three such steps towards recovery in one of the
tarantate’s famous hymns ‘Santu Paulu meu de le tarante’: first, the
evocation of the presence of the causative agent: ‘Say where the tarantula
stung you’; secondly, the localization of the embodied crisis: ‘Underneath the
hem of the skirt’; and, finally, the presentation of a resolution by calling
upon St Paul, ‘who stings all the girls and makes them saints’ (De Martino
2005: 99–100).
25. Maurizio Nocera, Lecce, 24 November 1997.
26. Nardò, 6 July 1999.
27. The dialogue, narrated text and a description of this film’s image sequences
are found in Barbati et al. (1978: 115–44).
28. I thank Marina Roseman for bringing this point to my attention.
29. Aradeo, 10 September 1998.
30. Muro Leccese, 10 September 1998.
31. Lecce, 12 March 1998.
32. Cisternino, 3 May 1998.
34. Such connections between musical and cardiac rhythms are similarly drawn
elsewhere: Marina Roseman (2002: 119) stresses the central role of bamboo-
tube stampers in Temiar trance dances and how the rhythms of these
instruments are compared to the rhythms of heartbeat and breathing.
35. Casamasella, 16 August 1998. See, for example, the first two verses of the
song ‘Sta cala lu serenu’:
‘Sta cala lu serenu de le stelle, e quista è la notte ca rrubba le donne. Ci
rrubba donne nu se chiama ladru, se chiama giovanottu ‘nnamurato. Intra
sta curte nc’è na fina perla. Passu la riveriscu e nu me parla. Se ‘ncete
qualche amante la pretenda. Dinni cu se rigira a l’autra vanda. Ca ieu me lu
cumbattu cu la scherma. Percè me l’ha prumisa la soa mamma.’
(Evening mists are falling from the stars, this is the night to conquer women.
Whoever conquers women isn’t called a thief; he’s called a young man in
186
love … In this courtyard there is a fine pearl. I pass to see her but she doesn’t
speak to me. If she has a lover who wants her, tell him to go around the other
way. I will fight him with the scherma, because her mother has promised her
to me.)
36. Lecce, 19 October 2005.
37. Ibid.
38. A parallel can be drawn here to Katherine Hagedorn’s (2001) study of Cuban
Santería stressing how ‘spontaneity and improvisation, fundamental
components of sacred musical practice, often tend to be lost in the move to
regulate culture for consumption by a broader public’ (Moore 2003: 154).
40. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
46. Torrepaduli, 19 August 1999.
47. Ibid.
49. Drama therapist Sue Jennings (1995: 188) confirms: ‘It is the capacity of the
therapist/shaman/actor to allow “controlled abandon” that enables healing
potential within the therapeutic space.’
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Dances with Spiders
Fig. 8.1 Concert of the group I Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli, Galatina, June

1999 (photo: Karen Lüdtke).
188
Chapter 8
SpiderWoMen Transformed:
Celebrating Well-being
When you let go of your hand, the tambourine starts playing;

when you let go of your voice, the song starts singing;
and when you let go of your body, the pizzica starts dancing.
Giorgio Di Lecce, Lecce, 12 March 1998
In July 2004 the Rhythm and Sticks Festival, celebrating percussion

music from around the world, brought the pizzica to the South Bank
Centre, one of London’s major arts and culture venues. The well-
known Salentine group Ghetonia made its debut in the UK capital,
performing its repertoire of songs in the Griko dialect and pieces
featuring the rhythmic beat of the pizzica. The Purcell Room
auditorium with its black-curtained walls contrasted sharply with the
open-air settings of the Salento, but the concert was a huge success.
The musicians interacted humorously with the audience and their
pieces were enthusiastically received, with a standing ovation at the
end. What really stood out for me, however, was a split-second
interaction right at the end of the performance: as the musicians got
back on stage for an encore and were about to strike their
instruments, a member of the audience jumped to his feet, in a jack-
in-the-box fashion, brandishing between his outstretched arms a
bright red and yellow scarf – the colours of the Lecce football team
– which read: ‘Forza Lecce!’ (Come on, Lecce!).
Beyond its comic effect, this gesture pinpointed a Salentine
émigré’s strong sense of (or desire for) belonging, with his football
paraphrenalia, and, by way of association, may be seen to have rooted
this music and all it entails within the Salento. All the more potent in
the cosmopolitan setting of London’s South Bank Centre and in the
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Dances with Spiders
context of an international ‘world music’ festival, this gesture could

be viewed as creating and shaping not only geographical boundaries,
but also symbolic and imaginary territories, zones of inclusion and
exclusion, bringing to the fore questions of identity and the perceived
need for identity within the modern-day world. In order to consider
how identities are played out in relation to well-being in the contexts
of the tarantula’s music and dance, it is useful to gradually zoom
outwards from individual experiences, to social relations and, finally,
group identities. Such a widening of the focal lens reveals the mutual
influence between these various dynamic and entwined dimensions.
As the sensory modalities of touch, sound, colour, motion and
smell are engaged, participants in the pizzica’s rhythms may move
from one experiential state to another. Affliction may shape-shift to
well-being, addressing not only individual suffering but also ‘scars of
history’ (Roseman 1996: 234) on a communal level. In this sense, the
tarantula’s music and dance reveal themselves as one example of
how, in the context of modernity, both in the Salento and elsewhere,
‘people are mediating the simultaneous yet differentiated,
overlapped, and overlaid world of transnational communication and
global economies’ (Roseman 2002: 121). Performance circles seen to
evoke a sense of ‘magic’ are fundamental in this process.
Magic Circles: Allowing Music to Take

Over
A focus on magic circles, or ronde magiche, allows us to zoom in on
individual experiences seen to promote well-being.1 Such magic

circles may emerge on any occasion in which the tarantula’s music
and dance are performed.2 Generally speaking, however, big-time on-
stage shows appear less conducive to such magic emerging, due to
their highly structured nature, although even in these contexts
participants both on and off stage may allude to such experiences.
Two young female dancers relate what they have lived:
The experience of participating in these circles becomes something
mystical and fascinating. The circle creates a harmony of sounds, bodies,
emotions … everybody gives and takes energy in a quasi-symbiotic
exchange with the others and with the music. For those who dance, this
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SpiderWoMen Transformed
pursuit also becomes spatial and the arms, legs, head, every tiniest part of
the body, amplify their receptivity. (Negro and Sergio 2000: 1)
‘It’s a question of knowing how to create a circle, una ronda,’ stresses

one Salentine musician, ‘a question of going beyond tiredness. Then
you enter into a different dimension, a dimension of spirituality.’3
These views underline the fact that active participation and
personal experience – based on the gradual acquisition not only of
technical abilities, but also of experiential knowledge and implicitly
embodied rules – provide a key to gaining an ability of feeling and
finding the ‘right air’. Another musician explains: ‘It’s impossible to
say what exactly brings out this magic. It’s unpredictable. You just
have to be ready, without expecting anything.’4 Luigi Toma adds:
There has to be a real sense of explosion. Anybody can have a beautiful
voice and sing. Anybody can know how to play the tambourine, but the
emotional charge may not be there, this interior charge which is
transmitted. You feel the impact physically, directly. You have to let yourself
go when you play, without thinking about the people that are watching
you.’5
Daniele Durante (1999: 173–74) expands on this in his account of

playing in contemporary contexts, making a clear distinction between
on-stage concert settings and performance circles in which the
musician (more often than not a man) is immersed in the crowd of
dancers and spectators: ‘He mustn’t make himself noticeable, he
must “function” and that’s it! He must create a flow, which isn’t ever
interrupted, into which the dancers can enter, feeling themselves
carried away to perform gestures and movements without worrying
about who might look at or judge them.’ The musicians must place
themselves at the service of the music and the dancers – reminiscent
of ritual players who spoke of ‘music taking over’.
Such ‘circles of musicians, singers and dancers’, Daniele Durante
(1999: 168–72) continues:
are attributed a magical valence, which assured a cure from any kind of
illness to all active participants … What matters is not the technical ability
of the musician or the grace of a single dancer, but the total effect … that
of a cyclical music … of an incessant rhythm … instilling a magical process
with which it is possible to enchant and imprison certain forces and to
exorcize others.
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Dances with Spiders
So-called magical dynamics may be invisible to the eye, but are

nevertheless experienced as highly tangible and real by participants.
In the past, these dynamics were ascribed to the tarantula or St
Paul, as their victims appeared to be at the mercy of the tunes
preferred by their particular aggressor. Stephen Storace (1753) told
how he unexpectedly found himself playing his violin for a tarantata
despite his ignorance of the tunes required. As someone else sang, he
tried out the notes on his instrument and immediately impelled the
afflicted to dance. When, however, he stopped to listen and learn the
rest of the piece, the dancer helplessly collapsed to the ground, like
a marionette attached to his violin strings (Katner 1956: 19–22; De
Martino 2005: 93).
In pursuit of alleviation, the afflicted were said to resort to the
sounds (ricorrevano ai suoni), or to take up the sound (prendevano il
suono), while musicians were said to make the sign (facevano il segno)
with their instruments. Sensual stimuli worked to heighten the
tarantata’s perceptivity. Popular belief states that the tarantate
physically became their afflicting spirit and direct bodily experience
affirmed this reality, even if of a different order from that of everyday
life.
It is above all necessary to mimic the dance of the little spider – the
tarantella. Following an irresistible identification, it is necessary to dance
with the spider, indeed be the dancing spider; but at the same time it is
necessary to make an actual agonistic moment be felt – the superimposition
and imposition of one’s own choreutic rhythm upon that of the spider,
forcing the spider to dance until it is tired, pursuing it as it flees the chasing
foot, or squashing it and stamping it as the foot violently beats the floor to
the rhythm of the tarantella. The tarantato executes the dance of the little
taranta (the tarantella) as a victim possessed by the beast and as the hero
who subdues the beast by dancing. (De Martino 2005: 36)
De Martino portrays the dancing tarantata as both victim and hero

experiencing the ambiguous powers of the spider and St Paul, both
credited with the ability to curse and cure. The initial embodiment of
or union with the spirit counterparts may have enhanced and
aggravated the tarantate’s experience of themselves as passive
victims, as subjected to the bodily symptoms, social pressures and life
conditions afflicting them. Ritual enactment implied surrendering
the self. A sacrifice was involved, readiness to give in and let go, ‘to
allow the tarantula to take over’. The spider allowed for the
192
expression of that which could not be expressed otherwise. It

provided a door to new experiences, including the embodiment of a
heroine or hero.
In effect, little information is available on how the tarantate
experienced rituals, as many claimed that they did not remember
what had happened, perhaps tongue-tied by difficulties of verbalizing
their experiences or by feelings of being fenced in by social taboos.
Moreover, not remembering may also be a cultural norm,
emphasizing the belief that the spider takes over the afflicted, who,
consequently, cannot remember (Lapassade 1996a: 98). Scholars,
meanwhile, have frequently interpreted these experiences in terms of
trance or ecstasy, just as some participants in contemporary
performances do. Considering the frequent uncritical use of these
terms, others voice scepticism about their validity, suspecting the
strategic functions such claims may serve and bringing questions of
authenticity back on stage.
In spite of these reservations, ritual cases suggest that an
awareness of aspects of reality and perceptions of the self, alternative
or complementary to those of the afflicted role, were accessed. With
the ritual perimeter acting as an experimental playground, the
perceived choice of costumes delimitating the tarantate’s life to date
was stretched to include new self-perceptions, such as a sense of the
self as entailing authority and the ability to act and choose. Similarly,
contemporary ‘magic’ circles may bring out little-known aspects of
the self, as the accounts of Ada, Tanya and others suggest. Although
such ‘magical’ dynamics are likely to be experienced in diverse and
contradictory ways, new experiences of the self may surface as
participants tune into and abandon themselves to rhythms

synchronized with others and their social and natural surroundings.
Rhythmic Intervention: Choosing to

Entrain
The notion of rhythm brings into play conflicting definitions and
numerous associations.7 It may be seen to refer to something greater
than any one individual, which, at the same time, may become
embodied or physically manifest in any one person. In the context of
the tarantula’s music and dance, a look at rhythm proposes a view of
well-being as grounded in an individual’s ability to become ever more
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Dances with Spiders
aware of rhythmic dimensions and to move beyond automatic,

reflexive reactions to these, to the choice of whether, to what degree
and in what way to engage with a specific rhythm.
In tarantism rituals recovery was promoted by performance
techniques linked both to the physiological rhythms of the afflicted
and the existing social and natural cycles of the day-to-day
environment. Nowadays, pizzica rhythms may be seen as indicative of
social changes, though others dispute its links to daily life (Gala
2002b: 47). Manifold contradictory views and tendencies intertwine
as daily and performative rhythms reciprocally shape or contest each
other, negotiating identities and perceptions of reality.
As with music, daily performance relies on the continual
negotiation and creation of rhythm, ‘a future-oriented temporal order
… an activity (and action) that anticipates, expects or demands
something to come’ (You 1994: 363–64). Rhythmic repetition entails
an expectation of that which is familiar and, at the same time, the
possibility of something different emerging. ‘The act of repeating or
mirroring highlights the disjuncture between what is shared
(mimesis) and what differs (alterity)’, as it ‘moves through old
(repeatedly revisited) yet new (always encountered differently)
territory’ (Roseman 2002: 125).
This ambivalence is also embodied in the pizzica’s ambiguous
rhythm. According to Diego Carpitella (in De Martino 2005: 299),
the dual nature of the pizzica tarantata, characterized by its
beat/offbeat structure, reflected two typical instances of religious
healing techniques: the crisis was both accentuated through the
impact of the musical offbeat and controlled by the obstinate and
constant beat. A similar effect may be provoked through the

interrelationship of the tambourine’s insistent beat and the melodic
tunes of other instruments, such as the violin.8
In this way, as one musician confirms, the chaotic experience of
tarantism crises could be directed, channelled and transformed:
‘There are the cymbals, which take you to the beyond, they give you
access to another world. But the constant beat of the tambourine
remains. It ensures that you remain linked to the here and now. It
reassures you that you won’t be left alone, that you are safe and able
to come back.’9 Luisa del Giudice (2005: 249), meanwhile, points to
an alternative feminist interpretation, arguing ‘that the noise allows
the tarantata’s world-view to prevail temporarily, with its new and
194
subverted sense of “order”, while the steady beat recalls her back to
duty and patriarchal “order” – that is the very cause and substance of
her disorder and existential chaos’. In fact, the modern tarantata
Tanya emphasized that the state she found herself in when painting
to the pizzica didn’t leave her feeling unwell but was unsustainable if
she wanted to be part of society at large. However such experiences
may be lived and interpreted, what is clear is that the direct
experience of accessing a dimension understood as other than that of
everyday life appeared to be of fundamental importance.10
‘The power of the rhythmic message within the group,’ writes
Edward Hall (1983: 184), ‘is as strong as anything I know. It is one
of the basic components in the process of identification, a hidden
force that, like gravity, holds groups together.’ Rhythm accentuates
not only who is in but also who is out of synchrony, a point taken to
heart by the Sonaglierus Metronomicus (or circle leader) – as
specified by Francesco Patruno (2003) in his list of contemporary
piSSica types – ‘who claims to direct, in the manner of von Karajan,11
forty tambourine players, to make them all synchronize, by shouting
TEMPOOO when he hears one of the players deviating by 1/32’.
Patruno adds that this ‘species’ of the Sonaglierus Metronomicus is
‘on the road to extinction – by heart attack’.
Beyond von Karajanesque efforts, the manipulation or conscious
use of rhythm entails power, giving or quenching vitality.12 Human
beings, like all other organisms, perform according to internal
rhythms, which regulate such automatic body functions as the
heartbeat, respiration, circulation and metabolism. At the same time,
human interaction relies on an awareness of rhythm and the ability
to entrain, to ‘become engaged in each other’s rhythms’ (Hall 1983:

177). As a phenomenon of resonance, entrainment implies the
tendency of two oscillating bodies or two or more rhythmic cycles to
lock into phase, to vibrate in synchrony. It creates connections –
invisible ties between seemingly separate entities.
Performance techniques render such rhythms tangible, sensitizing
actors to their subtle influence and fine-tuning skills for perceiving
these rhythms. ‘An actor should be like a ping-pong player,’ says
drama therapist Steve Mitchell (1998: 6), ‘the attention is following
the rhythm of the game, but at the same time is witnessing the
process and by so doing is able to take notice of an unexpected
possibility’. An awareness of this realm of possibilities implies an
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Dances with Spiders
openness to new opportunities and a perception of the self as

exposed to an abundance of creative possibilities. These may include
incorporating fixed victim mentalities, previously seen to poison and
limit life circumstances, into a spectrum of diverse roles and
rhythms, including those of the ‘choreographer’ moving flexibly from
role to role and rhythm to rhythm.
Vibrating the Spider’s Web: Tapping a

Source of Vitality
One such role may involve accessing visceral experiences associated
with the sensual, sexual, erotic or orgasmic. Cases of tarantism were
often linked to forbidden or lost love, as the story of Maria of Nardò
indicates. The ritual itself abounded with erotic associations. Sexual
taboos and conventions were put aside. The spider was given full
lease. Social boundaries were transgressed, cultural limitations
overcome. Such experiences in which everyday disjunctures may be
seen to dissolve – of which the spider’s liminal, transgressive and
ambiguous nature appears but a preview – may be reminiscent of
religious experiences that contrast ‘finite humanity and its bodily
limitations with a sense of the infinite and supernatural possibility’
(Harris 2000: 306–13). These considerations draw attention to how
sexual associations and images are woven into historical and
contemporary spider dances and what resonances these may have.
Damian Walter points out that the performative cycle of the
pizzica (the slow beginning, increasing activity and rhythm,
‘orgasmic’ experiences and a subsequent period of cooling down or

rest), both in past rituals and some contemporary settings, may be
seen to mirror coital and post-coital activity, suggesting parallels
between the experience (or sexual arousal) of individual participants
and the communal structure of the pizzica itself. From this
perspective, even those participants who do not speak of so-called
altered states of consciousness may be affected by the communal,
intimate and rhythmic interaction of (shared and metaphorical)
sexual activity, tying in with ideas of the potentially beneficial and
therapeutic qualities of rhythmic experience in broader terms.13
‘Tarantism is also about sexual issues,’ a psychiatrist at the Centre
of Mental Health in Lecce confirms. ‘In some public performances
196
female tarantate chose a man they found particularly attractive in the

crowd and threw themselves at him.’14 Maurizio Nocera adds: ‘Those
affected by tarantism are generally troubled in their sexuality. Male
tarantati have a tendency to be more feminine and female tarantate
tend to be very masculine.’15 He suggests that in many cases latent
homosexual tendencies may have been at the heart of the matter, and
equates tarantism with la sofferenza pelvica, pelvic suffering:
This suffering comes from a spider that continues to aggravate its prey. It
sets out in the pelvic zone, where the spider moves without the person
being conscious of it. Although difficult to verify, it appears that this
paroxysmal movement drives the tarantata to auto-produce an
uncontrollable orgasmic release. This need for release is not satisfied by
making love and only becomes worse doing so. Only song, music, the
demand for grace, for a symbol, can calm and tranquillize this need.16
Nocera draws an analogy between such paroxysmal movements, in

the sense of spasmic contractions typical of an orgasmic climax, and
the vibrations of a spider on its web in moments of crisis or death.
This point also recalls allusions to sexual intercourse evoked by the
tarantate’s ritual moves while prostrate on the floor, the erotic
connotations of lyrics, as well as the tarantate’s designation as St
Paul’s brides.
Receiving grace, too, has been interpreted in terms of an orgasmic
experience. When asked how she experiences this moment, Maria of
Nardò responded: ‘Ma, che devo dire, si sciolgono le acque’. (But,
what can I say, the waters are released) (Mingozzi 1982). This
expression, Nocera explains, may refer either to the release of sexual
tensions or, taken more literally, to the act of urinating, once again
drawing a link to the role of fluids crossing bodily boundaries in
healing contexts.17 Other tarantate specified how they had to ‘release
water’ on entering Galatina, just as Evelina must urinate behind St
Paul’s altar during her annual pilgrimage.
Some of the tarantate’s symptoms (fainting spells and dizziness), as
well as the dramatic techniques used (running in a circle or
pirouetting), Nocera continues, involve a loss of control and a sense
of surrender often seen to characterize orgasmic experiences. Such
accounts suggest that a source of gratification and fulfilment, often
denied in everyday life, was tapped through performance. In fact,
Sandra Gilbert (1986: xi-xii) speaks of the tarantate’s dances as ‘an
interlude of orgasmic freedom’: ‘The illness or “anomaly” of
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womanhood in a culture governed by the invisible but many-legged

tarantula of patriarchal law takes multiple forms, but its one energy
derives from the singular return of the repressed.’ Although this view
presents women one-sidedly as sexually inhibited and as mere victims
to male dominance, it places spider rituals in a celebratory light:
evoked as a moment of respite in which the ‘true nature’ of the
tarantate surfaced, rupturing constraints and releasing passions.
Some tarantate were reported to abstain from sex and food prior to
the repetition of their rituals (Epifanio Ferdinando in De Martino
2005: 111). Both spheres, food and sex, serve as obvious sites of
cultural anxiety, considering particularly the harsh living conditions
in the Salento in bygone times, and resonate, moreover, with
concerns for bodily boundaries (through food intake, excretion,
sexual intercourse or childbirth).
Nowadays, life in the Salento is less physically demanding, but
both food and sexuality provide potent spheres of symbolic activity.
Experiences of dancing the pizzica today are still frequently linked to
questions of sexuality (and associated assumptions), and the pizzica
pizzica, too, continues to be a very public expression of sensuality
(Chiriatti and Lapassade 1985; Gala 2002a, b; Nocera 2005).
According to Daniele Durante (1999: 174), the tambourine’s role is
influential in this respect. Its constant beat, he argues, stimulates the
lower part of the listener’s body, leading at times even to sexual
arousal. Others link their experience of the pizzica to experiences of
sexuality as well. Fernando Bevilacqua recounts:
It was at a festival, I was playing the tambourine and I realized that a
woman began responding with her tambourine. This exchange between us

became stronger and stronger, completely absorbing me. Everything around
me disappeared, leaving only her and me. Then I found myself high up.
She’d lifted me up. I saw her and myself from above. We were united. It was
a very strong sensation, like an orgasm.’18
Similarly, passionate Salentine dancer and film director Edoardo

Winspeare (Nacci 2004: 31) says:
Personally … I was cured from my afflictions through the pizzica and
through my type of tarantism. I danced a great deal, three to four hours a
day, and discovered a lot of things about myself. I discovered my animal side
in the pizzica ritual, in the circle … when I danced with a woman, I
rediscovered my masculine side with respect to a female being; the ritual
controlled everything and in this way unexpected things came up that I
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didn’t even think I had, seeing as I grew up … with a very rigid, Catholic
education. The pizzica liberated me.
Although we may question what other factors were and are involved,
Winspeare directly pinpoints the pizzica as having a curative
influence on his life, in the sense that it allowed him to access new
experiences, which he identifies as surprising and liberating.
A young woman describes dancing the pizzica along similar lines:
You allow the music to pass through you, to enter inside and to do what it
wants with you. You become an instrument for something else. You are just
a channel and everything passes through you … when it’s over you feel
great. I could compare it, even if it isn’t similar in any way, to the best time
you’ve made love. (Nacci 2004: 55–59)
In this context it is important, however, not to presuppose a universal

physiological response to sexual activity, taking into consideration
that cultural, gendered and individual understandings of what
constitutes an orgasm may differ and, moreover, imply a
metaphorical use of sexual imagery, which does not necessarily
translate into experiential terms. ‘Ecstasy and joy are inseparable
from suffering and eroticized pain in most Christian iconography,’
Damian Walter suggests.
In the case of the tarantate isn’t it possible to argue that their use of
orgasmic imagery is associated as much with the pain of affliction as it is
with joyful release, rather than suggesting that it indicates some kind of
unconditional (although pleasurable) ‘flooding’ of the senses? Perhaps
describing their experiences in these terms allows them to articulate a more
positive and transformational response to the pain of affliction? They might
not be able to escape their pain, but they may be able to reshape the way
they integrate the experience of pain into their lives.19
‘Acute pain’, writes medical anthropologist Elisabeth Hsu (2005: 84),

‘evokes “presence” and alerts one’s “sensory attentiveness”,’ creating
an openness to potentially beneficial impacts from the social context.
Although the notion of pain is used to describe lived experiences of
diverse quality and intensity, acute (as opposed to chronic) pain ‘is
acute for both the person in pain and those surrounding him or her,
and it thus generates synchronicity, a situation in which all
participants involved are acutely aware of only one single event and
turn their full attention to it’ (ibid.: 85). Boundaries between self and
other collapse as ‘a state of trans-individual fluidity’ emerges and a
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sense of social connectedness is enhanced (ibid.: 87), reminiscent of

‘magical’ experiences in the context of the tarantula’s music and
dance, in both past and present contexts.
In this sense, a focus on notions and experiences of sexuality and
sensuality, of the erotic and orgasmic, brings individual and social
dimensions of spider dances into resonance: ‘“Boundary loss” is the
individual and “feeling they are one” is the collective way of looking
at the same thing,’ writes William McNeill (1995: 8–9), ‘a blurring of
self-awareness and the heightening of fellow-feeling with all who
share in the dance.’
Integrating Toxins: Connecting Self and

Other
Widening our focus from the level of individual experience in
performance situations to the broader contexts of everyday life stories
and relationships reveals how music making and dancing may
provide a means of integrating ‘poisons’ of all kinds – harsh living
conditions, restricting social relations, limiting self-perceptions. This
points to the links between the tarantula’s music and dance and how
participants related and relate to themselves and others.
Through music, dance and the performance of prescribed acts, the
tarantato Francesco Greco underwent profound changes in his
perceptions of himself, others and reality at large. Whereas prior to
ritual intervention he had felt extremely weak, he became capable of
doing inexplicable things and eventually recovered to a state of
general well-being. Where doctors had discriminated against him as

mentally ill, he became accepted as part of a larger community of
tarantate (even if as good as virtual at this stage in time). Finally, his
belief in his vulnerability to St Paul’s anger turned his initial
disrespect for religious saints into a deep-seated respect for the
apostle. Although circumstances may not have changed, new
perspectives and insights led to a greater sense of well-being.
The situation of women, and men, has changed in the Salento
since the tarantate danced and screamed, but the stories of Ada,
Tanya and others reveal that the tarantula’s influence is anything but
swept under the carpet. Daily lives are cross-cut by limitations of all
kinds – economic, social, political, as well as bodily – marked by
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views of the self as having little choice, as being subject to the whims
of life circumstances, others’ desires or destiny.
In the Salento, as in much of southern Italy, high unemployment
figures and low social security combine with little, if any, state
support for those without work, for single parents or for the care of
children or the elderly.20 Many Salentines have grown up in such
precarious conditions and are adept in finding strategies to cope on
a day-to-day basis. Inevitably, family networks play a central role in
this context, as do the supplements for daily needs provided by small
farm subsistence run by many families in the rural areas. Likewise,
young people are frequently restrained by financial restrictions from
moving out to live on their own. Those who do may still eat at home,
both to be part of family life and in order to live on limited incomes.
Such interdependence may, among other factors, accentuate other
prevalent limitations, such as those associated with gender relations.
At Torrepaduli, on 15 August 2005, I asked the middle-aged wife of
a musician beating his tambourine whether she would like to dance
with me. She declined, and after a moment of hesitation explained:
‘Poi lui mi fa storie’ (Afterwards he makes a fuss).’21 Her husband’s
potential reaction limited her moves, holding her in its clutches. This
reaction appears to reflect a much more widespread tendency, as
Luisa Del Giudice (2005: 250–51) notes:
Few women hold prominent musical roles today. One finds few women on
concert stages, other than in supporting roles (or as the ‘pretty face’, that is,
the singer in the ensemble). ‘Stanno lì … con le mani legate’ (There they
stand … with their hands tied), laments one female musician. They
continue, however, to constitute the majority of dancers on the public
piazzas, but they are surprisingly absent as cultural activists.
Slowly, this is changing, with a few female singers, such as Imma

Giannuzzi, Enza Pagliara and Cinzia Villani, leading their own bands.
Nevertheless, the predominantly restrictive roles of women in the
pizzica world may be seen as representative of women’s roles more
generally. In the Salento, a nineteen-year-old girl from the small town
of Uggiano La Chiesa has to be home by 11 p.m. at the latest to keep
to her father’s terms. Another Salentine woman in her mid-thirties
tells me of her difficult relationship with her father and how this has
limited her life. ‘Now I’m catching up on the lost years. I’ve learnt
through suffering,’ she says with tears in her eyes. ‘Now I’m
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travelling, studying, walking on my own feet.’22 Only recently, it

seems, has she cut through the fine threads of her own attitudes and
belief systems – no doubt shaped by guilt, duty, fear, economic
dependence, as well as social pressures – stepping out of her familiar
inculcated sense of self and its limitations and, making her own
decisions, moving into territory that she had not previously dared
tiptoe into, while inevitably jeopardizing existing family relations.
But men, it appears, are no less entangled. A Salentine medic gives
me his view, influenced by Jungian ideas:
Tarantism is linked to a regionally specific collective unconscious and
culturally specific archetypes: these women weave their webs around men,
entangling them. Men know they will become their victims. They already
have this propensity seeing that il mammismo is so widely diffused.
Mothers’ hold on men is extremely strong in this region and from their
mothers’ hands they pass into their women’s hold.23
Another middle-aged man asserts:
For me a woman is a spider. To tell the truth, once I was looking for the
ideal woman, but on my way I only met women as spiders. When I say ideal
woman, I’m alluding to the knowing woman, one who is able to understand
me, to tolerate me too. But, as I said before, I haven’t been lucky: on my
way I have always found spiders. (Nocera 2005: 62)
An implicit analogy with the myth of the female tarantula eating its
male partner after copulating springs to mind: the opposite sex as
temptation and condemnation combined, reminiscent of
assumptions about women, primitivism and sexuality more generally:
of how ‘entomologists’ anthropomorphizing descriptions of love
affairs of praying mantises and black widow spiders had proven to be

directly analogous to the effects of the sexual woman’s depredations
in the human environment’ (Dijkstra 1996: 212–13).
What emerges from both male and female accounts about gender
relations is a game of victims and tyrants, a sense of the self as falling
prey to the demands and expectations of those onto whom the label
of tyrants is projected. Such relations inevitably bring into play the
problematic and controversial debates on ‘honour and shame’ in the
Mediterranean context, distinguishing, in basic terms, divisions of
labour and morality according to gender (Goddard 1987, 1996;
Giordano 2002). Such relations, moreover, risk promoting
assumptions of male and female as clear-cut categories based on a
specific gender model. Both men and women use the idiom of
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tarantism to convey feelings of being helpless, powerless and at the

mercy of marionette strings pulled by others, whereas multiple
gender discourses and categories, conflicting and contradicting each
other, are likely to be at hand (Moore 1994: 824). In this sense, it
becomes vital to attend to the ‘multiple perspectives, shifting
purposes and reflexive and ironic commentaries’ (Raheja and Gold
1994: 9) among women, as well as men, that challenge normalizing
and essentializing discourses.
In fact, the tarantula’s music and dance have increasingly turned
into symbols of self-assertion, power and celebration.
The music of tarantismo has been recast as a celebratory practice of current
Salentine identity. It follows that the figure of the tarantata has also been
positively recast. Not only has the stigma been lifted from the tarantata’s
shoulders, there seems to be a growing positive reevaluation
(romanticization? glorification?) of this figure as it undergoes something of
an apotheosis. She has become a heroine, passing from something of a
feared outcast to shaman. Possessed by a spider god with whom she
becomes one, temporarily unbound by societal norms, she explores the
existential fringe via the dance, bringing spiritual and mental health back to
herself and to the community (which is literally standing around her). She
is not merely a passive receptor of musical vibrations that others played to
awaken her, therefore, but a spiritual leader, acting on behalf of those
incapable (though just as needy) of freeing themselves. (Del Giudice 2005:
253–54)
Ada Metafune, for example, gives workshops on the tarantula’s

music and dance in the Salento and throughout Italy and, at times,
finds herself transmitting her personal experiences to course
participants confronting her with problematic aspects of their lives,

sensing the insights and strength she has gained from her own life
crises. In this sense, women such as Ada may come to embody role
models for others, testifying to possibilities of transforming
perceptions of the self, from ‘powerless’ to ‘empowered’, from
‘helpless victim’ to ‘creative choreographer’. Clearly, however, such
views equally risk presenting essentialized categories, which are likely
not only to coexist and overlap, but also to shift among infinite subtle
nuances between these categories, as well as unforeseen possibilities.
Zooming out yet further from the impact of the tarantula’s music
and dance on individual life stories and relations draws attention to
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Dances with Spiders
the collective influence – and inherent risks – of this music and

dance on local discourses on identity.
Transforming Identities: Evoking a Sense

of Belonging
‘We have it inside’ is a frequently voiced stance, suggesting that the
pizzica and everything associated with it is ‘pulsing’ in the blood of
those born in the Salento, creating a sense of identity commonly,
unreflectively, voiced in the expression ‘We’re DOC Salentines!’
DOC, denominazione d’origine controllata, controlled denomination
of origin, is the unit of measure and quality assigned to regionally
specific products of the European Union and ascribed to the people
of the Salento as a (perceived) guarantee of originality, as an official
stamp of legitimacy. In this sense, the tarantula and the pizzica pay
lip service to social constructions of local identity voiced with
enthusiasm, becoming almost an expression of modesty, as the ability
to perform is ultimately seen as a heaven-sent gift not attributed to
individual talent, commitment or merit. Yet the criteria that make
one person DOC but not another are rarely clear, as the rhythm of
the pizzica is essentialized into a biological function, naturalized and,
inevitably, mystified.
‘If in the fifties and sixties tourist invitations to the Salento tended
to ignore, even hide the last “relics” of tarantism, today the same
invites express pride with reference to tarantism: come to the land of
tarantism … come to know the Salento, it has tarantism, with its
antique, Dionysian and perhaps even pre-Greek roots, in its blood,’

writes social anthropologist Paolo Apolito (2000: 140). He stresses
how the myth of the tarantula has taken on religious qualities, all the
more potent as this myth is not, like many others, delocalized but
has, instead, been reinvented within the region of its apparent
origins. Such a focus on what is perceived as ‘local’ can be observed
across Europe, and may be viewed not only as a counter-reaction to
‘globalization’, but also as a result of European funding incentives for
regional as opposed to national initiatives, aiming to promote
associations with a united Europe of regions beyond national
affiliations. The Salentine peninsula more specifically is a roulette
wheel of potential identities and fleeting points of reference, having
been exposed to a history of foreign domination and becoming a
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major gateway to Europe for refugees and asylum seekers in recent

years, as well as a newly prized tourist oasis and sought-after region
for northern Europeans seeking to buy a holiday or retirement home.
In the past, victims of the tarantula naturalized their afflictions
through spider poisoning and the tarantate were often severely
criticized for manipulating this link for personal and political
reasons. In the contemporary Salento, too, musicians and dancers, as
well as cultural administrators and intellectuals, are frequently
accused of wanting to enlarge their own name or bank account, of
exploiting the tarantula’s music and dance for manipulative purposes.
Clearly, other issues are at stake.
In recent years, social anthropologist Giovanni Pizza (2002a, b)
has contributed significantly to a critical discourse on questions of
essentialized and naturalized identities in the Salento. He writes:
‘Only the conscious or unconscious incorporation of hegemonic
stereotypes, even if widespread among the population, can incite us
to consider our sense of belonging to be inscribed in our blood, our
flesh or even in our genetic inheritance’ (2002a: 55). He repeatedly
warns against the passive incorporation of platitudes inseparable
from existing power structures and ideologies. The pizzica
exacerbates sensations, beliefs, attitudes and opinions, making them
more acute, amplifying the intentions with which it is performed,
acting as hi-fi systems for enacted beliefs and motivations. Voices,
instruments, microphones, not to speak of satellite television,
propagate rivalry and ambitions of becoming the latest star on stage
just as much as gestures of solidarity and friendship. Every actor in
this game faces the choice of whether or not to use whatever the
pizzica brings to the surface as a ‘methodological and ethical mirror

metaphor’ (Pizza 2002a: 53).
The rhetoric of conserving one’s own identity often hides not the fear of
looking at ‘the other’, but the fear of looking into one’s own face … out of
fear of reflecting oneself … of finding oneself in front of the recurrence of
a monstrous image … Obscuring the mirror is a precondition for an
essentialist discourse that conceives identity as objects, essences to
preserve ‘intimate’ and ‘profound’ truths; it is a political operation of
concealing motivations, intentions and the objectives of one’s own
discourses and actions. (ibid.: 52)
Obscuring potential mirrors of self-reflection may provoke

automatic reflexes to project onto ‘others’ (groups, individuals,
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Dances with Spiders
bodies) everything the self is not identified with, that which is

rejected and condemned, making personal ‘demons’ visible in an
amplified, tangible form. What is more, every minimal glimpse of this
mirror may create a further reaction of grasping yet more strongly
onto that which is accepted as part of the self ’s identity, that which
is seen as agreeable and amenable, including naturalizing
explanations diagnosing pizzica rhythms in bloodstreams and DNA
codes.
With regard to southern Italy these issues have been widely
discussed in terms of the ‘Southern Question’, attesting to the deeply
rooted differences between Italy’s northern and southern regions
(Schneider 1998). In his historical study of ritual cycles in the town
of Calvello in Basilicata, Hermann Tak (2000: 243) stresses how
‘“the North” became an imaginary “other” replacing one time fierce
antagonistic inter-town relations’. Such juxtapositions also emerge in
Christian Giordano’s (1992) discussion of a ‘culture of
superimposition’ characterizing regions such as southern Italy,
subjected to hundreds of years of domination by foreign powers,
resulting in the internalization of fatalistic attitudes such as the
‘image of miseria’, a belief in poverty as collective fate, or the governo
ladro (thieving government), involving perceptions of the state as
hostile and unreliable. Although these concepts need to be taken on
with care, cultural self-reification or essentialism in the context of
the tarantula’s music and dance today is likely to be a way of
reaffirming one’s values in the face of these broader socio-economic
power structures.24
With these considerations in mind, individual experiences of
performance situations inevitably mould and are moulded by social

relations activated in these contexts, as well as intentions and
interpretations that encourage or inhibit participation. As these pages
reveal, the tarantula’s music and dance hold the potential not only to
accentuate individual afflictions and social conflicts but also to
promote well-being and the reintegration of individuals in the larger
webs of everyday community lives. As a creative platform for new
experiences and perceptions, they hold the power both to exclude
and include other potential participants. They may deepen situations
and sensations of disjuncture just as much as those of belonging.
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In the past, identification with the toxic spider was facilitated

through music and dance, as well as such sensual stimuli as scents
and colours. This provided a basis for transformations (without any
guarantee, however), integrating the spider, and all rejected aspects
of the self it had come to embody, into a new, broader sense of the
self. In the same way, a confrontation with what is seen to be the
‘perpetrator’ today – be it globalization, the Italian state, foreign
musical directors, other music groups, the opposite sex or dismissed
desires – may provide a first step towards transformation.
As music is allowed to take over, the familiar and foreign may be
expressed and brought into communication, linking the self and
other and evoking a sense of belonging to humanity at large.
Fatalistic perceptions of the self as victim become redundant, and
ever more choices are created as additional outfits are integrated into
existing costume cupboards. What is fundamental to the recovery of
well-being, vitality and presence is the way of performing and
underlying intent – of finding the ‘right air’, its magical dimensions
and potential to rhythmically intervene – and whether these are
integrated and interpreted to either perpetuate or transform afflicting
self-perceptions. In this sense, spider dances today continue to entail
both golden cages and the keys to these.
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Dances with Spiders
Notes
1. See Fernando Bevilacqua’s (1995) video clip Stretti nello spazio senza tempo,
Tight in Space without Time, which aims to convey experiences of the
tarantula’s music and dance in visual terms.
2. An interesting link may also be drawn here to the use of circles as an
ancient magical formula (Dauterman Maguire et al. 1989).
3. Alessano, 10 August 2005.
4. Ostuni, 22 February 2008.
6. The English word choreutic, Dorothy Zinn explains, is a translation of ‘the
term coreutico, from the Italian noun coreutica – the art of dance’ (in De
Martino 2005: 29).
7. ‘There is not, and perhaps will never be a “precise and generally accepted
definition” of the term rhythm,’ writes Haili You (1994: 373), if we consider
rhythm as a category of human experience or mode of being (ibid.: 374).
Musicologists contradict such a relativist stance and, despite changing
definitions through time and disagreements in etymological foundations,
tend to define ‘duration and stress, constructions in time and gradations in
strength’ as its constituent features (Sadie 1980: 805).
8. Marina Roseman (2002: 125) observes similarities in Temiar music
generated by bamboo-tube stampers: ‘The sense of sameness yet différence,
embodied in the repetition and alteration of the continual tube beats, sets
the stage sensorially for heightened relationships between familiarity and
strangeness … This space is performatively constructed not only through
the tube-beats’ relationship to one another, but through the relationship
between constantly duple-rhythmed percussion, on one hand, and changing
melodies, on the other.’
9. Cisternino, 3 May 1998.
10. This also relates to Carol Laderman’s (1981: 488) reference to a ‘rich order’
in her discussion of the empirical reality of symbolic systems of food
avoidances among the Temiar in Malaysia: ‘The dynamic nature of these
symbolic systems provides a structure for the logical working out of
individual variability reminiscent of the musical structure of a chaconne.
Although the ground bass repeats endlessly through the piece … the upper
voices weave variation after variation above it. The effect is that of rich
order, rather than either chaos or stasis.’
11. Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–89).
12. Pierre Bourdieu (1977: 7) refers to the rhythms of society and politics in his
theory of practice relative to the manipulation of time: ‘“Synchronization” of
a social action not only reflects the collective spatio-temporal
representations but also maintains the symbolic order and revitalizes the
208
social existence of the group itself … There is unlimited scope for strategies
exploiting the possibilities offered by the manipulation of the tempo of
action – holding back or putting off, maintaining suspense or expectation,
or on the other hand, hurrying, hustling, surprising and stealing a march,
not to mention the art of ostentatiously giving time (“devoting one’s time to
someone”) or withholding it (“no time to spare”).’
13. Damian Walter, personal communication.
16. Lecce, 4 June 1998.
17. Lecce, 6 July 1999.
20. In 2001, unemployment in the Salento was at 17% among men and 27.9%
among women, as opposed to a national average of 11.58%
(http://dawinci.istat.it/MD/). Meanwhile, many businesses continue not to
declare their workers because of high social benefit costs and, in 2007,
salaries were as low as 25 euros per day for an eight-hour bar shift or 500
euros or less per month (for secretarial or factory jobs).
21. Torrepaduli, 15 August 2005.
23. Lecce, 24 August 2005. The speaker refers to the overprotective tendencies
characterizing mother-son relationships, particularly in southern Italy, with
men (and women) continuing to live in their parents’ homes well into
middle age and beyond, unless they marry and set up a household of their
own.
24. I thank Susanne Wessendorf for bringing Giordano’s work to my attention.
209
Part IV
Conclusion
In this final section, I draw together the threads that emerged in the
foregoing chapters, in order to return to the key questions that have
directed this study: how has the tarantula’s dance changed over time
and what does it reveal about the link between performance practices
and well-being? Major differences between past and present dances
have been spotlighted in preceding chapters while at the same time
bringing to light a common thread: the need to find the ‘right thread
or air’ and the intention of surrendering to it. Looking at this further,
the notions of rhythm and entrainment have emerged as possible
indicators linking experiences of well-being and performance, as have
processes of identification and integration, as well as the ability to
recognize the origins of conflict in day-to-day attitudes and
behaviour. Although this study may focus only on a small proportion
of those engaging with the tarantula’s music and dance today, these
features show how the individual experience of performance

practices can provide a learning ground for choices furthering well-
being, in the sense of vitality and presence.
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Dances with Spiders
Fig. 9.1 The pizzica

pizzica, Torrepaduli,
15 August 1999
(photo: Karen
Lüdtke).
Fig. 9.2 The scherma,

Torrepaduli, 15
August 1999 (photo:
Karen Lüdtke).
Fig. 9.3 A circle of

dancers, musicians
and spectators at the
festival of St Rocco,
Torrepaduli, 15
August 1999 (photo:
Karen Lüdtke).
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Chapter 9
Dancing Beyond Spiders
Rhythm is the most perceptible

and least material thing.
John Chernoff (1981: 23)
Evelina’s Story: Living with the Tarantula

In August 2005, together with my Salentine friend Patrizia, I arrive
once more at Evelina’s homestead. Walking into the courtyard through
the main gate, we see her standing, tiny and delicate, no more than one
metre twenty tall, framed by a pointed archway leading to the stables.
She greets us from a distance, with a firm, warm voice: ‘Ciao!’ and,
recognizing who we are, raises one hand in a joking, chiding gesture. We
kiss the cheeks of her beaming face in greeting. She is eighty-one years
old now and her back curves at the shoulders, but her eyes and stride
are full of vitality. She takes us to see the cows, chickens and pigs in
their stalls and then invites us to come through to greet Michela, her
daughter-in-law, la padrona di casa, the landlady, as she says, taking
herself out of the way, almost erasing herself with this gesture, small as
she is, seemingly unaware that it was her we had primarily come to see.
We greet Michela and, while she finishes what she was doing, sit and
talk with Evelina. Her story pours forth in significant episodes as she
speaks in dialect to my friend Patrizia. She tells about the death of her
father when she was just twelve and the loss, soon after, of her brother
killed in the war, a letter arriving to announce his death. Over the years
she has often told me about them, eager to communicate these incisive
snapshots of her life.
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Dances with Spiders
Michela joins us and begins to take over the conversation. Others

come too: two of Michela’s children, neighbours, friends, mainly elderly.
Most I know from my initial period of fieldwork (1997–98) when I
joined them on several occasions to pick tobacco in their fields. Now,
seven years later, memories come up of those times; jokes told then,
people passed away since. At this point, Evelina no longer goes into the
fields. At the time, she kept up better than I could with the fast-moving
group of harvesters, stripping the large, oily leaves off their strong stalks,
creating cracking sounds that mixed with the chit-chat and banter
linking the group partly hidden from one another behind the head-high
plants. Michela has stopped working in the fields, too. She hopes to
receive a disability pension due to her back and leg problems, and to run
only the big house and adjoining bed and breakfast on her own, now
that all of her children work in the north of Italy for most of the year.
We sit and chat. Only Evelina is silent. She has almost become
invisible with the back and forth of words and laughter, raising the
sound level in the room, flying over her head. Others answer questions
posed to her. She seems to have lost her voice as she sits, sunken away,
though aware of what is going on. I am struck by the way her bubbly
personality is tucked away within this larger group of people. She stands
out not only for her age and wiry, energetic body, but also for her lack of
frills in both manner and dress. ‘Per la nonna (for Gran), there’s no such
thing as fashion,’ her grandson points out affectionately, and Michela
adds that Evelina has insisted on wearing a black dress, headscarf, socks
and long sleeves ever since the day her mother died. There was no way
of persuading her to roll up her sleeves, even in the hot summer
months. She is so different, Patrizia remarks later, from the southern
Italian image of femininity and the elderly women around her, with
their permed and propped-up short hair, rounded figures and concerned
gossip.
Michela tells how she had always felt that Evelina was extremely
sensitive and had let her be to do her own thing, so as not to aggravate
her condition or cause her to suffer and fall prey to yet another crisis.
She tells how now she is tied to the house, not wanting to leave Evelina
alone, as she has refused to leave the perimeter of their homestead ever
since she fainted in their village church some years back.
Chained to each other by the implications of crisis and care, Evelina
and Michela share one rooftop, one family destiny: Evelina’s mother
had remarried and their move to the current homestead was marked by
214
the jealousy of others. Evelina had given birth to her son, Roberto, out
of wedlock, precluding any future marriage, falling into the socially and
religiously defined sin of being a single mother, cutting through social
taboos and expectations of the time, and even of today. No wonder the
tarantula had found her.
Michela had married into this entanglement. Once married to
Roberto, she had moved in with him, Evelina and her mother. Her life
has been one of hard work and dedication to the family. Her early
pension on the basis of physical disabilities seems likely to be linked to
all this. Every year she has accompanied her mother-in-law to Galatina,
together with her husband and, later, her youngest son, Paolo, named
after the fateful saint holding the strings of her mother-in-law’s life.
Paolo’s name was a promise fulfilled to the apostle when Evelina was in
the claws of extreme crisis. Michela, pregnant at the time, made a vow
to name her child after the saint if Evelina lived and returned to being
well.
Evelina’s family make no fuss about their fate. La nonna, Evelina, is
treated with the affection she radiates to others. Yet, when I ask whether
they would consider telling their story, Michela and her daughter’s
reaction is a firm, choral ‘No!’ ‘She will only start to cry,’ Michela
explains, and her daughter, now in her late twenties, adds, referring to
her mother and grandmother: ‘I’d prefer not to speak about these things,
especially if they’re things of the past. It’s better to let them be,
especially for them.’ There is no wish to stir up deep waters and, instead,
everything possible is done to maintain the delicate status quo.
Clearly, this family has come to terms with its lot in the form of a frail
balance within the tarantula’s web, governed by the tarantula and
requiring constant care and compromises. At times it holds Evelina in

its claws, turning her into a protagonist on St Paul’s ‘stage’ in Galatina,
putting the whole family into gear to fulfil its whims. At other times it
pushes Evelina into invisibility and silence, letting the family take over,
speaking for her in disregard of her physical presence.
As Patrizia and I leave, with gifts of home-grown vegetables, eggs and
home-made cheese, we greet Roberto, busy milking the cows. Michela
says she will go and help him now, as she hadn’t been able to assist him
during our visit. Earlier he had passed by briefly, welcoming us warmly
and cordially but without stopping in his tracks to continue his
afternoon chores. He has always struck me as a silent and hard worker.
215
Dances with Spiders
As we drive home I cannot help but think that although no dance,

music or straightforward curative rituals are involved in Evelina’s life
story, there is a subtle play at hand: a pendulum swinging between the
extremes of all-controlling domination by her tarantula through the
crises it is seen to provoke, with Evelina’s family playing to its tunes, and
self-annihilating surrender, with Evelina giving herself up to the
orchestrations of her family. In the chapel of St Paul, I have seen
Evelina collapse and her body turn rigid, immobile, frozen. In a social
context in her home, surrounded by family and friends, I see her fall
into a state of ‘absence’, her presence withdrawn, her participation
reduced to zero. Yet, at other moments, her vibrant and sensitive
presence radiates to everyone present. Such pendulum swings may be
seen to have characterized the lives of the tarantate more generally.
Tarantula Rhythms: Reflections on

Performance and Well-being
Historical documents reveal how the tarantate’s crises have always been
marked by symptoms oscillating between the extremes of hyperactivity
and lethargy. Their stories, meanwhile, reveal discordant relations with
others and the social context at large. Rhythms of breath, pulse and
motion snapped and went berserk: bodies became listless, drowsy,
paralysed, or were taken over by convulsions, shaking and trembling.
Interaction with others and the world around became jarred and
handicapped, dictated by taboos and social judgements, as well as
variables of pain, anger or fear.
Physiological, as well as social rhythms were thrown out of balance.

An infection of the afflicted individual’s skin surface and bloodstream
was metaphorically linked to an affliction on the level of social relations.
Likewise, the cases of some new tarantati, dancing to feel better, are
linked to a lack of rhythmic synchronicity, to fractured relationships,
feelings of fragmentation, emptiness and a desire for deeper meaning.
Leonardo da Vinci’s evocative phrase – ‘The bite of the taranta
maintains a man in his intention, that is whatever he was thinking when
he was bitten’ (cod. H. 18v. in De Martino 2005) – suggests that
traumatic experiences associated with the tarantula’s bite became
inscribed not only in the body, but also in the sense of self, safeguarded
ever after, leaving the afflicted individual suspended within the specific
216
perspective or web of meanings activated at the moment of the bite.

Time stood still though bodies aged and lives passed. A discrepancy
emerged, a sense of the self as no longer linked to the present.
Here performative acts intervened, providing an alternative code.
Even in the absence of music and dance, Evelina’s tendency to
withdraw may be remedied by her public appearance on St Paul’s
ground, dictated by the tarantula’s presence. Here she enters into
relational frameworks very different from those of her secluded everyday
life. Her family generally seeks to protect her, to cushion the impact,
pushing the chapel door closed against the weight of the crowd outside,
motivated by a wish for privacy, a desire to get through this unasked-for
but unavoidable visit as quickly and as calmly as possible. I have always
been struck by their matter-of-fact manner, suggestive of nothing to
prove and a lot to accept, their openness to the questions of curious
onlookers without overextending themselves. Evelina herself tends to
avoid anyone approaching her, but at times, walking with one arm
akimbo, appears anything but indifferent to all the attention she
receives. Under St Paul’s shield she finds her place once a year in a
social life outside the self-imposed perimeter of her homestead, taking
a step beyond her quotidian limits in the tarantula’s name. She
surrenders and makes her sacrifice.
My impression is, however, that if Evelina had the choice she would
not go to Galatina. If only she could, she would stay at home. Yet she is
compelled to visit St Paul’s chapel to maintain her delicate equilibrium.
Her pilgrimage remains her only way out. Here a fundamental
difference emerges from today’s tarantati. Those who participate in the
tarantula’s music and dance with the expressive desire to get better
based on previous experiences viewed as beneficial are driven by a

choice rather than compulsion: a choice based on the knowledge that
the tarantula’s music and dance may be one possible avenue to feeling
better, a means of letting go, a way of accessing experiences alternative
to those provoked by difficult situations their daily lives may entail. In
this sense, today’s tarantati appear to actively seek out the tarantula and
its ‘magic’ to free themselves from conventions and restrictions in their
lives, while Evelina, it seems, if only she knew how, would gladly cut the
spider’s threads.
Although she gains temporary release through her visits to Galatina,
ever since she was first bitten in 1953, over half a century ago, Evelina
has never completely recovered. In this sense, her pilgrimages may be
217
Dances with Spiders
seen to be placed at the service of her affliction. Underlying

circumstances – including belief systems, social relations and economic
conditions – may persist, as do her symptoms. A similar risk of
perpetuating afflictions may be equally inherent in attempts at engaging
with the tarantula’s music and dance to promote well-being today.
Dancing and music making may be a way to face ‘demons’, afflictions
and hardship, to express these and come to terms with them, just as
they may be a form of distraction, of addiction or compulsion,
propagating the means to look away.
This ambiguous nature of spider dances points to key reflections on
well-being and performance more generally. It alerts us to the value of
taking a sensitive approach to certain human conditions associated with
crises, which may be easily dispatched as pathological in contemporary
Western society, when in effect they may be inherently transformative
and therapeutic if protected and expressed within a socially accepted
explanatory and supportive framework. The tarantate were not
described as ill. They were seen as normal people under the tarantula’s
spell. Rituals accentuated their crises. Treatment involved enhancing
symptoms, by providing sensual stimuli that provoked crises further. It
also relied on containment, allowing for the expression of such crises in
a safe environment.
In this sense, symptoms were part and parcel of treatment, an initial
expression of the issue at heart, pointing to the potential inherent in
acute pain expression in a safe social context. As crises were aggravated
a homeopathic process was set in motion. Personal stories and
memories could be recomposed and re-conceptualized as new
perspectives and experiences of the self emerged through the
externalization of symptoms, the expression of crises, and the

possibilities of beneficial inputs, such as support, nourishment and
containment, from the broader social environment. At the same time,
such social frameworks of support could inevitably be exploited or
exploitative, thereby perpetuating crises. These inherent risks demand a
careful consideration of the intentions motivating any kind of
performance.
Spider dances further draw attention to the value of developing a
sensitivity towards entrainment and the choice of whether or not to
entrain. This challenges conceptions of the boundedness of individual
existence in favour of an amplified notion of the self, as being part of
and affected by broader societal circumstances, contexts and values.
218
Rhythm permeates perceived dualities of body and mind, biology and

society, self and other, demanding an openness to letting go of perceived
boundaries, self-perceptions, views of reality to leave room for the new
and unexpected. In performance contexts, this is facilitated not only by
a unitary and continuous rhythm, but also by the intensity or emotional
input of performers, who, in turn, must be willing to let themselves be
transported by the rhythms that emerge. Such surrender is further
promoted, when rhythms are recognized and legitimized as socially
meaningful, through a link to the socio-natural cycles and performative
rhythms of everyday life. Here too, however, underlying intentions are
fundamental and the extent to which these allow not only for ‘letting go’
in a safe environment, but also for reintegration into wider socio-natural
webs.
Finally, all the ‘arts’, as forms of creative expression, provide
potentially curative stimuli, creating alternative – imagined and
invented – realities. As rules and values of everyday life become
redundant, notions of good and evil are suspended and everything
becomes possible. Questions of authenticity (whether of crises, states of
consciousness or musical execution) may lose their pertinence, as
invention, in the sense of performative realities, may become a healing
device in itself. Although easily discredited as pretence and not free
from risks of manipulation and abuse, invention opens up new
possibilities and perspectives, which may be integrated into daily lives if
safeguarded by a protective framework. As such, imagined and invented
realities provide space for inventions, for creative interventions and
discontinuity: room for something alternative, unfamiliar, new to
emerge, in the face of claims for continuity, maintaining the status quo
of afflicting circumstances.
Dances with spiders suggest that well-being and soundness emerge
where the sense of self integrates ever more aspects of existence. In this
sense, healing becomes a form of art in itself, and a choice, aimed at
evoking new and ‘wholesome’, if inconsistent and ever-expanding,
experiences of the self. Rhythmic performance, meanwhile, reveals
itself as one potential means of regaining a sense of the ground under
our feet and the sky above our heads, by developing the ability to tune
in, with spiders and demons projected elsewhere, in order to draw them,
too, into the dance.
219
Epilogue
On 29 June 2007, around 5.30 a.m., Evelina once again steps into St
Paul’s chapel in Galatina. She gives a shrill cry, drops back into the
prepared arms of her grandson and, as if taken over by shock waves,
stamps her feet forcefully onto the ground. My stomach churns. She
is lowered to the floor. The chapel is filled to the brim with onlookers.
Outside, the pizzica circle, previously blocking the entrance, has
stopped resounding across the square. All night long, musicians and
dancers had (despite reprimands) selected this location to execute
their modern-day vigil, following the concert on the main square of
San Pietro piazza the night before.
After a few minutes, Evelina returns to her senses. She disappears
briefly behind the altar and is greeted by friendly questions on her
return. She answers without hesitation. My eye catches that of her
son and we smile at each other: the chit-chat seems to disperse the
tension of what had just occurred. As Evelina steps out of the chapel
a round of applause greets her. She waves back in acknowledgement.
By the year 2007, her crises have propelled her to celebrity. With her
family she moves on to the main church, following a route they have
taken for over half a century. I accompany them to ‘their’ pew and for
a coffee in the legendary – perhaps aptly named – Eros Bar. As we say
goodbye, Evelina lingers behind a little. She has something to tell me:
‘Abbiamo fatto pace’ (We have made peace).
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239
Index
For names of sites and towns/cities dance ethnologists, 6, 24n14,

see places 105, 161, 179
ethnography, 13
For names of performers see ethnomusicologists, 13, 18, 161
musicians, music groups Italian, 5, 65
medical, medical
actors, viii, 19, 45, 176, 187n49, anthropologists, 3, 18, 26n25,
195, 205 52n3, 70–72, 140, 199
Adriatic coast, xviii, 1, 9, 177 and performance, 74, 134n1,
affliction, 160–61
and depression, 15, 26n24, 97, and studies on dance, 18, 161
124 Apolito, Paolo, 75n11, 102, 165,
health and illness, 18–19, 61, 204
139, 143 Apulia, Apulian, 1–3, 42, 57–59,
and ‘modern ills’, 116, 124 62–63, 99n28, 102–103, 110,
and nuovi tarantati, 132, 149, 144, 148, 152, 162–63,165
218 see also history; Italy; Salento
and St Donatus’s illness (il Arachne, see Greek influence
morbo sacro), 153 audience, 45, 103, 115–16, 131,
and tarantate, 21, 52n10, 66, 161, 168, 175, 179–80,
80–81, 98n6, 135n17, 182–83, 189

141–42, 216 and spectators, 10, 103, 108,
understandings of, 19, 26n25, 110, 124, 191, 212
56, 149 authenticity, 17–18, 44, 73, 102,
see also body; crises; healing; 155, 193, 219
pain; well-being
animals, 32, 34, 59, 84, 142, 170 Baglivi, Giorgio, 3, 6, 60–61, 64,
scorpions, 80, 84, 170 70
snakes, serpents, 41, 56, 80, 82, Barba, Eugenio, 18, 121, 134n1,
84, 91, 113–14, 126, 141, 160, 185n1
148, 157n27, 162, 164 belonging, see community
see also spiders Bevilacqua, Fernando, 25n22, 34,
anthropology, 5, 11, 15–19, 64, 78, 100, 166, 198, 208n1
67–68, 204–205
241
Index
biomedicine, biomedical, 73, 96, and priests, 10, 31, 61, 82–83,
139–40, 148, 153–54 88–89, 96, 152, 154, 174
bite, and syncretism, 26n30, 49
first, 80, 126, 134n10, 148, see also Christianity; dancing
162–63, 167–68, 172 god
snake, 32, 80, 82, 91, 141 celebration, 2, 7, 13, 34, 47, 103,
spider, 3, 10–11, 23n9, 25n24, 107, 108, 118n12, 166, 203
47, 52n3, 56–63, 66, 70, celebrity, 2, 43–44, 51, 155, 220
75n1, 90–95, 141–43, 152, see also crises
156n13, 157n28, 216–17 Chiriatti, Luigi, 3–4, 7, 27n34,
see also spiders; intention 27n37, 71, 74–75, 86, 89,
black widow, see spiders 91–92, 99n23, 105, 107, 140,
blood, 23n9, 91, 146, 152, 163, 166, 173–74, 198
216 choreographers, see dance
and pizzica, 15, 116, 125, 176, Christianity, Christian, 26n29, 32,
178, 204–206 56, 88, 156n13, 199
see also tambourines and influence on tarantism, 58,
body, 41, 107, 145, 164, 195, 214 62–63, 69, 96, 147
and affliction, xvii, 33, 38, 90, see also Catholicism
142, 216 clothing, 45, 49, 52n4, 89, 108,
perceptions of, 80, 104, 114, 118n13, 153
130–31, 139–40, 142, and bright colours, 10, 35,
156n13, 163, 189, 191, 198, 45–46
218 and initial bite, 172
studies on, 18, 26n26, 66, 72, and nuovi tarantati, 124, 159
139–40, 143, 146, 150, and tarantate, 10, 36–37, 44,
185n1, 216 173–74, 214
see also affliction; embodiment; see also tarantate; senses
experience coincidences, see nuovi tarantati
Bourdieu, Pierre, 208n12 colours, 10, 37, 52n9, 58, 173,
bread, see food 189

and black widow, 35
capo-attarantati, see tarantate and dancing manias, 58
Catholicism, Catholic, 39, 62, and nuovi tarantati, 113–14,
118n12, 128, 152, 154, 125, 127–29, 178
157n29, 199 and ritual, 8, 46, 49, 55, 81,
Catholic Church, 10, 29, 32, 62, 128, 166, 170, 172–73, 190,
131–32, 154, 162 207
devil, Satan, 55–56, 88–89, 96, see also clothing; ritual; senses
146, 152–53, 154, 171 commercialization, commercial,
god, goddess, 85, 127, 129, 12, 14, 23n6, 101, 105–106,
134n10, 144, 165, 203 109, 124, 154
and prayers, 36, 39, 41, 47, 68, and market, marketing, 2, 17,
88–89, 152–53, 171, 173 63, 106, 110, 112, 144, 176
242
Index
community, 27n39, 66, 68, 96, and related dance contexts,

105, 143, 160 24n13, 25n23
and belonging, 77, 116, 133, and settling disputes, 7, 25n23
189, 200, 204–207 spider, 2, 16, 20–21, 47, 155,
members, as actors in healing 169, 173, 183, 196, 200,
process, 143 207, 218
and music and dance, 15, studies on, 3, 18–19, 25n23,
53n20, 113, 203 53n15, 53n18, 53n20, 63–64
conflicts, 2, 7, 9, 17, 20, 58, 62, sword, 6, 25n17
65, 77, 160, 206, 211 tarantella, 1, 6–7, 22n3, 54,
and controversies, 6, 93, 111 163, 171, 192
and rivalry, 106, 183, 205 and therapeutic potential, 12
consciousness, 73, 144, 149 traditional music and, 5–6,
states of, 3, 73, 126–29, 22n6
134n12, 173, 196, 219 see also community;
studies on, 3, 53n18, 53n20, consciousness; gender
68, 73, 117n5, 147, 171, dancers, interaction between
175, 186n34 musicians and, 46, 53n15, 191
trance, 24n14, 42, 114, 126–27, dancing god, dancing shaman,
129, 149, 176, 181, 193 59–60, 134n10, 158, 176
crises, 218–19 see also paintings
initial, 148, 167 da Vinci, Leonardo 216
as part of cure, 8, 186n24, 121, death, dead, 23n9, 39, 55, 61, 83,
194 118n24, 133, 143, 145, 164,
resurgence of, 35, 86, 167 197, 213
social, 58, 65 and funeral, 5, 24n13, 145,
and spider, 197 170–71
traumatic events, 4, 39, 65, 97, Del Giudice, Luisa, 3, 19, 23n10,
150, 216 75n10, 119, 194, 201, 203
see also affliction; celebrity; De Martino, Ernesto, 53n13,
emotions; presence; symptoms 64–67

and dance of little spider, 192
dance and origins of tarantism, 57–58
of arcu pintu, 128 and sociological paradigm of
and choreographers, 21, 196, tarantism, 148
203 and symbol of taranta, 55
cults, 26n30, 59, 63, 66, 70, 74, see also Terra del rimorso
75n3 depression, see affliction
epidemics, 58, 63, 72, 75n2 diagnosis, diagnostic, 70, 91–92,
ethnologist, see anthropology 140–46, 148, 153
and irresistible urge, 7, 68, 141, see also symptoms
143, 170 Di Lecce, Giorgio, 3–5, 7, 13, 74,
management of, 184 86, 99n24, 105, 107, 118n18,
potential of music and, 2 144, 169, 172, 177, 189
243
Index
Di Mitri, Gino, 58–59, 62, 66, 74, and fieldwork, 13, 64

75n3, 75n6, 88, 111–12, and history, 5
118n18, 147, 152, 177 and knowledge, 139, 160
doctors, 31, 57, 63, 70, 80–81, of nuovi tarantati, 43, 47–51,
90–92, 96, 132, 152–53, 175, 128–133, 153, 203, 217
200 of music, 2, 73, 122, 126, 145,
dreams, 47, 53n18, 141 149, 163, 178, 181, 208n7
dress, see clothing and performance, 16, 18–19,
drugs, 75n14, 105, 117n5, 147, 74, 155, 161, 200, 206, 211
150 of self, 8, 18, 43, 131, 137, 216,
Durante, Daniele, 3, 75, 104, 218–19
117n3–4, 117n6, 117n10, 143, of social affiliation, 27n39
176–78, 191, 198 of spider poisoning, 23n9, 58
and tarantism, 62, 65, 74, 90,
efficacy, see performance 92, 97, 121, 147–49, 155,
embodiment, embody, 7–8, 18, 170, 174, 183, 192–95, 216
25n23, 140, 148, 172, 192–93, see also body; magic; sexuality
203, 207
see also body family, 68–69, 132, 148, 164,
emotions, 48, 50, 65, 72, 85–86, 201–202, 214–17, 220
128, 131, 137, 170, 174, 178, members, 31, 38–42, 47, 81,
190 83–84, 86, 89, 92–95, 143,
and emotional charge of 150, 174
performances, 180–81, 184, festival, feast day, 13, 52n9, 85,
191, 219 101–102, 111, 115, 117n1,
and emotional crises, 10, 137, 118n12, 131, 163, 168, 172,
150 198
see also crises Pizzicata, 168, 185n19
environment, 39, 66, 148, 164, Rhythm and Sticks, 179,
194, 202, 218–19 189–90
ethnography, see anthropology of Spinning Top (La Sagra dei

ethnomusicologists, see Curli), 103, 113–16, 185n16
anthropology of St Donato, 153
Europe, European, 3, 15–17, of St Peter and Paul, see St Paul
24n12, 25n23, 50, 58, 61, 71, under saints
107, 109, 112, 162, 204–205 of St Rocco, 7, 102, 106–109,
EU funding, 185n19, 204 176, 212
see also Italy; Mediterranean of Tambourine, 107
context see also saints; tambourine
Evelina, see tarantate fieldwork, 10–11, 13, 37, 64, 214
exorcism, 57, 64, 73, 154, 166 film, 44, 75n14, 157n34
experience crew, 37, 47, 69, 175
of curative process, 18, 48, 51, and nuovi tarantati, 25n22,
72, 116, 133, 143, 150–51, 47–50, 117n9, 118n22, 166,
190, 211 168
244
Index
and tarantism, 10, 25n22, 32, healing,

44–47, 53n13, 69, 86, fluids, viii, 33, 35, 40, 52n3,
98n14, 159, 173, 175–76, 197, 200
186n27 and musical treatment, 58,
and video, 25n22, 53n13, 116, 70–71, 124, 143, 155, 171
118n11, 118n19, 124, and music therapy, 70–71,
156n22, 180, 208n1 75n4, 97, 154
see also photographs; and recovery, 42, 47, 69, 73, 90,
technology; Terra del rimorso 92, 130, 143, 146, 151, 167,
food, 46, 110, 114, 168, 174, 198, 172, 186n24, 194, 200
208n10 and remedy, 46, 139,
bread, 36, 63, 89, 99n20, 114 157n27–28
grain, 63, 80, 89, 93 studies on, 3, 17, 19, 26n26, 59,
football, 112, 166, 189 64, 67, 72, 139–40,
Fumarola, Piero, 3, 75n10, 104, 157n27–28, 171, 187n49
117n3, 117n10, 118n18 and therapy, 42, 69–72, 75n4,
funeral, see death 90, 124, 127, 129, 157n28
and transformation, 8, 102, 199,
Gala, Giuseppe, 6, 15, 24n14, 207
24n16, 105, 179, 183, 194, 198 and treatment techniques,
gender, 2, 72, 161, 182, 199 26n24, 52n3, 97, 133,
and dance, 182, 197–98, 139–41, 146–47, 151–54,
201–203 157n27–28, 157n34,
and honour and shame, 5, 202 157n37, 173, 194, 218–19
see also men; sexuality; women views on, 11, 14, 67, 187n49,
Gentilcore, David, 6, 32, 75n6, 219
147, 152 see also affliction; body;
globalization, 2, 16–17, 28n42–43, performance; well-being
105, 204, 207 health, see affliction
grain, see food history, 1, 4, 20, 29, 44, 59, 67, 150,
Gramsci Antonio, 5, 7, 25n21, 65 176, 190

Grecìa Salentina, 110, 113, Apulian, 9, 26n28, 102, 204
118n16 of medicine, 63, 67, 70–71
and Griko, 110, 166, 177, 189 notions of continuity and
see also Apulia; Greek influence; discontinuity, 14, 22n6, 59,
Salento 75n4, 109, 124, 184, 219
Greco, Francesco, see tarantate of tarantism, 55–64, 75n6
Greek influence, 26n28, 60, see also tarantism
70–71, 110, 134n9, 156n13, Horden, Peregrine, 14, 19, 59, 63–64,
165, 177 66, 70–71, 75n4, 75n13, 147
Arachne, 60–61, 75n5 Hsu, Elisabeth, 52n3, 199
Greek cults, 59, 66, 75n3, 204 hysteria, hysterical, 11, 63, 71, 73,
see also Grecìa Salentina 147
Griko, see Grecìa Salentina and hysteric arc, 53n16, 172
245
Index
identification, 15, 67, 141, Jennings, Sue, 18–19, 187n49

172–73, 192, 195, 207, 211 journalists, 17, 67, 175
identity
questions of, 2, 12, 190 Laderman, Carol, 18–19, 171,
Salentine, 77, 97, 102–103, 208n10
111, 121, 123, 144, 203–206 language,
sense of, 2, 15, 20, 121, 130 and dialect, 27n38, 47, 103,
studies on, 16–17, 27n41, 157n27, 172, 213
102–3, 105, 149, 205–206 scazzicarsi, 117n4, 141
illness, see affliction and tarantate, 141
Imbriani, Eugenio, 3, 75n10, see also Griko under Grecìa
118n18 Salentina
instruments, musical, Lanternari, Vittorio, 3, 72, 149,
and tarantism, 82, 98n7, 171, 154
186n22 Lapassade, George, 3, 24n10,
see also tambourine 26n30, 59, 66, 71, 73, 75n3,
intention, 44, 50 103–104, 134n10, 134n12,
and performative process, 44, 173, 177, 193, 198
48, 50–51, 122, 181, Lewis, Ioan, 2–3, 72, 142, 173
183–84, 205–206, 211, Littlewood, Roland, 147–48
218–19 Lock, Margaret, 18–19, 26n25,
and tarantula’s bite, 216 140
see also invention
invention, 44, 50 macara, see traditional
of meaning, 102, practitioners
notion of, 96 magic, 11, 40, 52n6, 61–62, 65,
and performance, 161, 219 98n19, 126, 129, 137, 152,
and tarantism, 93, 96–97 160, 181, 207, 217
of terminology, 6 circle, 21, 114, 190–93, 208n2
of tradition, 109 experience of, 20, 52n6,
see also intention 134n12, 190–92, 200

Ionian sea, 1–2, 48, 60 see also ronda
Italy, Italian, 1–3, 12, 26n28, 50, Maria of Nardò, see tarantate
103, 105, 108, 112, 123, 125, marriage, 48, 94, 132, 168, 215
151, 165, 203, 207 Matteo, see nuovi tarantati
southern, 3, 5–6, 9, 22n3, medical anthropology, see
24n12, 35, 65–66, 70, 98n7, anthropology
111, 162–64, 166, 201, 206, Mediterranean context, 1, 3, 5,
209n23, 214 23n8, 25n23, 57, 71, 75n4,
northern, 1, 15, 25n17, 31, 35, 113, 202
70, 163, 214 see also; Apulia; Europe; Italy
see also Apulia; Europe; men, man, 6–8, 22n4, 49, 64, 72,
Mediterranean context 89, 114, 131, 117n9, 125, 160,
170, 174, 182–83, 186n35,
246
Index
191, 197, 200, 202–203, Terra de Menzu, 27n37, 115

209n20, 209n23 Zimbaria, 27n37, 145, 176
as ritual assistants, 33, 36, 38 musicians, 17, 53n15, 73, 185n19
see also women and ability to ‘tune in’, 160, 163,
Metafune, Ada, see nuovi tarantati 184, 191
Mingozzi, Gianfranco, 25n22, 36, Annalù Sabetta, 33–34, 36, 38,
53n13, 69, 163, 175, 197 114–15
money, 17 Cinzia Villani, 201
and contemporary music scene, and contemporary music scene,
102, 106, 112, 153, 176, 4–5, 12, 24n13, 33–34, 43,
179–80, 185n19 47, 49–50, 107–108,
and tarantism, 42, 44, 67, 110–12, 114, 116, 122–25,
82–83, 94, 173, 175 133, 141, 144, 151, 159,
see also socio-economic factors 163–65, 176–77, 179–81,
under Salento 189, 205, 212, 220
Montinaro, Brizio, 3, 32, 67–68, Daniele Durante, see Durante
157, 186n23 Enza Pagliara, 201
music, Giorgio Di Lecce, see Di Lecce
contamination, hybridization, Imma Giannuzzi, 201
103, 106, 109, 111 intellectuals, 102–104, 117n3,
musical keys, 171 117n10,
world music, 15, 17, 28n43, Lamberto Probo, 107
105, 111, 168, 190 Luigi Chiriatti, see Chiriatti
see also community; Luigi Stifani, 33, 44, 140, 162,
consciousness; songs 170–71
music groups, 13, 27n37, 49, 110, Luigi Toma, 163, 182–83, 191
113, 117n6, 144, 180, 183, 207 musical directors of La Notte
Alla Bua, 27n37, 122–25, della Taranta, 118n17
132–33, 134n5, 134n9, 159, Pino Zimba, 75n14, 145, 176
180 Roberto Raheli, see Raheli
Arakne Mediterranea, 13, and tarantism, 8, 44, 46–47,

27n37, 105, 158 69, 81, 84, 140, 147, 163,
Aramirè, 27n37, 53n19, 101, 167, 171–72, 174–75, 183,
118n23 192, 194
Canzoniere Grecanico Uccio Aloisi, see Gli Ucci under
Salentino, 27n37, 117n3, 143 music groups
Ghetonìa, 27n37, 179, 189 see also dancers; gender;
Gli Ucci, 27n37, 104, 106, 109 researchers
Mascarimirì, 27n37, 38, 99n20 music therapy, see healing
Officina Zoë, 27n37, 107 myth, mythic, 1–3, 16, 44, 58, 92,
Sud Sound System, 103–4 96, 105, 142, 147–48, 156n7,
Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli, 202, 204
27n37, 144, 188 and mythical figures, 9, 61–62,
65–66
247
Index
mythology, 56, 60 Pagliara, Tanya, see nuovi tarantati

see also Greek influence pain, 199, 216, 218
absence of, 178
Nacci, Anna, 3, 24n10, 75n10, and spider poisoning, 23n9,
118n18, 149, 198–99 25n24
neo-tarantism, see nuovi tarantati and tarantism, 4, 98n6
New Age, 105, 111, 129, 150, 154 see also affliction
Nocera, Maurizio, 24n14, 27n34, paintings,
52n7, 53n17, 74, 86, 89, Byzantine, 88
98n14, 117n6, 134n10, 142, cave, 59–60, 158, 166, 177
145, 149, 156n13, 186n25, see also dancing god; Tanya
197, 202 Pagliara under nuovi tarantati
Notte della Taranta, 25n18, 100, Parkin, David, 142–43, 161
109–13, 118n17, 118n22, 165 Pellegrino, Giovanni, 107–108,
and Istituto Diego Carpitella, 110
111 performance,
foundation of, 112 cultural, 155, 161
Orchestra Popolare la Notte and efficacy, 11, 140, 160–101,
della Taranta, 110, 112 167, 169, 171, 174–75, 184
see also politics motives, 145
nuovi tarantati 22, 104, 132, studies on, 18–19, 28n44,
143–45, 150, 153–54, 176 53n15, 71, 74, 160–61,
Ada Metafune, 37, 40, 42, 185n1
47–50, 53n18, 69, 108, 120, techniques, 69, 160, 169–84,
122, 128, 130–33, 135n17, 185n1, 194–5, 197
151, 153, 155, 182, 193, and therapy, 42
200, 203 see also emotions; ritual; theatre;
attarantati, 143, 156n13, 174 well-being
and coincidences, 34, 38, 69, photographs, photographer, 13,
129, 148, 163 34–35, 45, 49, 53n13, 67, 89,
definition of, 22n4 99n21, 101, 114, 175

Matteo, 33–36, 38–40, 42–44, see also film, technology
50, 62, 87, 128, 130 pilgrimage, 17, 39, 41, 51, 52n10,
and neo-tarantism, 4, 13, 64, 86–87, 168
23n10, 32 and Galatina, 20, 29, 31–32, 67,
old and new tarantati, 21, 29, 69, 82–83, 86, 92–95, 173,
32, 64, 77, 103, 146, 148, 176, 197, 215, 217, 220
156n13, 197, 216–17 see also Montesano Salentino;
Tanya Pagliara, 113–16, 122, St Paul’s chapel and St Paul’s
125–30, 132–33, grotto under places
134n11–13, 138, 151, 193, Pizza, Giovanni, 15, 205
195, 200 pizzica,
see also sibilo lungo categories, 5–8, 24n14, 24n16,
248
Index
25n23, 124, 144, 171, 179, and recordings, 53n13,

212 186n23
definition of, 1, 5–7, 22n3, and theatrical acts, 95
22n6, 24n13, 24n15 see also festival; pilgrimage;
and DNA, 15, 206 St Paul’s chapel
origins of, 6 Galatone, 93
pizzica di cuore, 5–6, 25n23 Gallipoli, 48, 126
and pizzicare, 7 Giurdignano, 78, 87–89, 98n18,
pizzica pizzica, 5–8, 13, 22n3, 99n20, 162, 166
24n15, 25n22, 107, 118n11, see also St Paul’s grotto
120, 131, 156n22, 171, 173, Grotta dei Cervi, 59
198, 212 see also paintings; Porto Badisco
pizzica tarantata, 5, 7–8, 25n22, Lecce, 9, 12, 23n7, 61, 64, 97,
66, 194 99n25, 104, 110, 125–26,
and right air, 175, 180–81, 191, 134n10, 154, 166, 168, 176,
207 179–80, 189, 196
and scherma, 5–7, 24n15, Leverano, 93
25n21–23, 107, 109, 174, Maglie, 109
179, 186n35, 212 Melpignano, 109–110, 118n16
and taranta, 6 Montesano Salentino, 153
techno-pizzica, 24n14, see also pilgrimage
102–104, 117n5 Nardò, 93, 162
views on, 118n18, 133, 144–46, Oria, 157n29
151, 177–78, 183, 189, Ostuni, 41, 87, 159, 164, 180
204–206 Otranto, 9, 26n29, 59, 90, 94,
see also rhythm; tarantula’s 113, 177
music and dance; women Porto Badisco, xviii, 59, 158,
places 166, 176
Acaya, 169, 185n4 see also Grotta dei Cervi
Alessano, 185n4 Salice Salentino, 93
Baia dei Turchi, 9, 26n27 Sanarica, 56, 60, 75n5

Brindisi, 23n7, 37, 41, 94 Santa Maria di Leuca, 56
Carpignano dei Greci, 118n16, Santa Marina di Stigliano,
185n19 185n19
Copertino, 93–94 Scorrano, 43, 90
Galatina, St Paul’s chapel, 9, 30–33, 35,
and 29 June 2001, 32–47 41, 47, 52n7, 53n13, 62, 64,
and images, 30, 114, 158, 188 68, 87, 162, 171, 175,
and immunity, 9, 83 185n5, 186n23, 216–17, 220
last public performance see also Galatina; pilgrimage
platform, 32, 52n7, St Paul’s grotto, 78, 87–89,
52n10, 85–86, 144, 162 99n21, 157n27, 162, 166
San Pietro piazza, 10, 30–31, see also Giurdignano; pilgrimage
34–35, 45, 220 Taranto, 2, 23n7, 60–61, 174
249
Index
Tricase, 90, 91, 96 145, 163, 164–65, 168,

Torrepaduli, 106–108, 133, 163, 180–84, 190–96, 204,
212 206–7, 219
Torre St Emiliano, xviii, 166 rhythmic synchrony, 73, 137
Veglie, 93 and tarantism, 8, 26n24, 45–46,
Vignacastrisi, 113–14 49, 54–55, 141, 159–60,
Villa Convento, 168 164, 167, 169–72, 216, 219
see also Grecìa Salentina and well-being, 21, 151,
police, 37, 83, 175 157n34, 219
politics, 12, 161, 169, 184, ribbons, see ritual
208n12 risk, 11, 14, 22n6, 72–73, 80, 96,
and political, 8, 20, 22n5, 58, 145, 147, 149–51, 170, 185n5,
65–66, 68, 72, 112, 116, 202–204, 218–19
121, 140, 147, 150, 155, ritual,
161, 168, 200, 205 containment, 150, 175, 183–84,
possession, 3, 58, 67, 72, 147, 218
156n13 dance phases, 8, 47, 167, 169,
presence, xviii, 35, 39, 43, 69, 87, 172–74
89, 108, 134n10, 177, 215–17 props, 18, 56, 137, 165,
crisis of, 66, 149–50, 216 169–75, 184
evoking, 7, 15, 69, 98n11, 173, ribbons, 8, 46, 49, 172
186n24 roles, 170, 196
notion of, 2, 8, 149–50, 199, studies on theatre and, 3, 19,
207, 211 160–61
priests, see Catholicism techniques, 169–75
Puglia, see Apulia see also colours; men; theatre
rivalry, see conflict
Raheli, Roberto, 101, 106, 111, ronda, 5, 118n11, 163, 191
113, 117n2, 118n18, 119n25 performance circle, 8, 106–110,
remedy, see healing 139, 159, 163, 168, 181–84,
researchers, 24n10, 64, 67, 73, 190, 195, 198, 212, 220
86–87, 89–90, 92, 144, 171, see also magic
175 Roseman, Marina, 18–19, 52n6,
see also musicians 53n18, 53n20, 186n34, 190,
revitalization, see tarantula’s music 194, 208n8
and dance Rouget, Gilbert, 3, 26n30, 58, 63,
rhythm, 211, 213, 218 67, 73, 171, 173
definition of, 208n7–8, 208n12
and entrainment, 195, 211, 218 Sagra dei Curli, see festival
and heartbeat, 177–78, 186n34, saints, 115, 128, 153, 200
195 Cosmas, 157n29
and painting, 127 Donatus, 68, 153
and pizzica, 2, 5–7, 22n3, 66, Maria di Finisterrae, 55–56
103, 105, 108, 123–126, Pantaleon, 85
250
Index
Paul, see St Paul and tarantula’s music and

Peter, 30, 32, 37, 40, 52n3, 85 dance, 198, 200
Rocco, 7, 102, 106–109 see also spiders; tarantula’s
see also festival music and dance
Salento, show business, see tarantula’s
definition of, 23n7, 26n33 music and dance
and history, 9, 26n28, 88, 162, sibilo lungo, 115, 118n22, 119n25,
198 166
socio-economic factors, 1, 5, see also Verri
65–68, 150, 206 snakehandler (serparo), 114, 152
and unemployment, 24n12, snakes, see animals
116, 150, 201, 209n20 socialization, 129, 164, 185n1
see also Apulia; Italy; social relations, 190, 200, 206,
Mediterranean context 216, 218
sanpaolari, see St Paul socio-economic factors, see Salento
scazzicarsi, see language songs,
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 19, 140 and contemporary music scene,
scherma, see pizzica 5, 24n13, 33, 52n1, 99n20,
scorpions, see animals 101, 103, 111, 113–16, 125,
self, 17–18, 129, 150–51, 161, 144, 164, 168, 176–78,
166, 192, 206–207, 216, 186n35, 189
218–19 and tarantism, 71, 172, 186n23,
and other, 15–16, 199–207, 218 197
and self-perceptions, 8, 16, 18, see also music
66, 97, 122, 137, 146, 166, sound,
193, 196, 200–204, 207, 217 and nuovi tarantati, 33, 101,
sense of, 129–30, 175, 202, 216, 104, 108, 119n25, 127–28,
219 166, 178, 180, 190
studies on, 27n40 recordings, 12–13, 53n13, 69,
see also experience; presence; 104, 168, 179, 186n23
tarantula’s music and dance scapes, 18, 171

senses, 8, 18, 93, 134n12, 199, and tarantate, 39, 63, 66, 89,
220 163, 171, 192
and smell, 13, 141, 172, 190 of tarantula, 82
and synaesthesia, 134n12 see also senses
see also body; clothing; colours; ‘Southern Question’, 5, 206
ritual see also anthropology
sexuality, spectators, see audience
eroticism, erotic, 25n23, 66, 71, spiders,
124, 141, 160, 173, 196–97, black widow, 1, 2, 23n8–9, 35,
199–200 142, 156n7, 202
orgasm, orgasmic, 142, Latrodectus tredecim gutattus,
196–200 2–3, 23n8, 90, 142–43
and tarantism, 71, 164, 197 Lycosa tarantula, 2, 23n8,
142–43
251
Index
poison, venom, 1, 8, 11, 15, of tarantula spider, 4, 22n4, 55,

23n8–9, 40, 52n3, 66, 80, 65, 102, 132, 143, 155
84, 90, 104, 140–43, 146, of tarantism, 59, 63, 66, 71–73,
148, 152, 157n28, 167, 196, 75n3, 141, 197
200 see also spiders
poisoning, 57–58, 63, 65, 70, symptoms, 139
75n12, 90–92, 96, 146, 205 and nuovi tarantati, 97, 132
tarantula, xi, 1–4, 6–9, 12–13, of spider poisoning, 3, 70–71,
50, 65–66 90–92
belief in, 11, 56, 62, 80–87 and tarantate, 70, 72, 86,
cult of, 5, 19, 21, 31–32, 61, 96–97, 98n6, 141–42, 146,
140 148, 153, 169–70, 192, 197,
myth of, 1, 20, 44, 62, 147, 216, 218
202, 204 see also crises; diagnosis
notion of, 22n6, 25n20, 57,
102, 132 taboos, 4, 96, 193, 196, 215–16
syndrome of, 111 Tak, Hermann, 3, 22n5, 107, 206
thread of, 14, 21, 169, 175, tambourine
211, 217 and blood, 116, 178
see also animals; bite; sexuality, and festivals, 107–109, 126,
symbols; webs 158
St Paul, and nuovi tarantati, 13, 40, 49,
brides of, 10, 35–38, 47, 52n10, 75, 79, 101, 104–105,
89, 173, 197 113–16, 127, 139, 143–44,
encounters with, 34, 84, 89, 166, 171, 181, 198, 201
94–95, 141, 171 perceptions of, 165, 176–78,
feast day, 30–47, 86–87, 96, 189, 191, 194, 198
167, 175–76 players, 7, 75n14, 106–107,
image of, 49, 62, 172, 176 117n5, 123, 126, 144–45,
patron of tarantate, 9, 19–20, 159, 164, 178, 180–81, 195
40, 68–69, 85, 146, 148, and tarantism, 44–45, 81–82,

156n13, 167, 176, 186n24, 89
192, 200, 215–217 see also instruments
sanpaolari, 52n3, 71, 152, tarantate, 64, 91, 96, 200
157n27 and capo-attarantati, 71, 174
shadow of, 82–84, 98n11 and costume, 48, 170, 173, 193,
statue of, 30, 36–37, 40–41, 83 207
and terra di San Paolo, 157n27 cry of (A-hi), 37–38, 115, 172,
see also St Paul’s chapel and 178, 220
St Paul’s grotto under places definition of, 22n4
symbol, symbolism, 3, 56, 62, 190, Evelina, 3–4, 31, 35, 38–40, 43,
208n10, 208n12 50, 52n10, 130, 168, 197,
of nuovi tarantati, 103, 114, 213–17, 220
128, 176–77, 198, 203 Francesco Greco, 80, 135n17,
252
Index
153, 167, 200 37, 175

Maria of Nardò, 44–47, 49, and cameras, 34, 40, 49–50, 69,
155, 159, 172, 175, 196–97 111, 116, 130, 155, 175
see also clothing internet and world wide web,
tarantati, see nuovi tarantati 118n14, 105, 180
tarantella, see dance radio, 98n12, 177
tarantism, television, TV, 25n22, 38, 44, 47,
classical antecedents, 50, 56, 98n12, 110, 116, 124,
see Greek influence 153, 155, 176, 180, 183, 205
ethnographic parallels, 26n30, see also film; photographs;
53n15, 72–73 sound
European precedents, 58 terra, 105, 166,
feminist view of, 194 terra di San Paolo, see St Paul
and miracles, miraculous, under saints
94–96, 98n10, 153, 162 Terra del rimorso, 5, 24n11, 45,
origins, 2, 6–7, 20, 56–61, 66, 53n13, 64–7, 71, 91–2, 102,
151, 204 175, 186n23
see also film; Salento; sexuality; critiques of, 66–67
women see also De Martino; film; sound
tarantula, see spiders theatre, 3, 11, 14, 18–19, 27n36,
tarantula’s music and dance 74, 79, 87, 93, 95, 114, 134n1,
boom of, 2, 12, 48, 105–106, 144, 160–61, 166
132–33, 145, 176, 181 see also performance; ritual
definition of, 6, 22n6 therapy, see healing
experience of, 2–3, 21, 43–44, tourism, tourists, 1, 4, 12, 14–15,
77, 116, 137, 183, 190, 200, 17–18, 20, 24n12, 67, 77, 88,
211 102, 109, 145, 165–66, 169,
interpretations of, 102, 116, 204–205
146, 183, 190, 205–206 traditional practioners, 152, 154,
motives for performing, 145–46, 157n37
217 macara, 152, 157n27, 174

revitalization of, 14, 22n2, traditions, 16, 50, 53n15, 59, 66,
22–23n5–7, 68, 70, 102, 102–109, 111–13, 117n9, 121,
106, 113 124, 151, 175, 182
transmission of, 13, 48, 131, trance, see consciousness
139, 163, 180–81, 185n1, traumatic events, see crises
191, 211
and show business, 4, 43, 97, unemployment, see Salento
121 University of Lecce, 11, 13, 86–88,
see also experience; sexuality; 96, 105, 113, 134n1, 168, 177
spiders
technology, 24n12, 112, 175, 180, Verri, Antonio, 113–16, 118n24,
183 119n25, 166
and antagonism of tarantate, 35, see also sibilo lungo
253
Index
Walter, Damian, 73, 156n9, 164, see also affliction; healing;

196, 199, 209n13 rhythm
webs, 57, 122, 197, 202, 206, 217, Winspeare, Edoardo, 25n22, 74,
219 75n14, 176, 198
and Greek mythology, 61 woman, women, 55–56, 75n5, 84,
see also paintings; prayers under 126, 128, 182, 202, 214
Catholicism; spiders condition, roles of, 68–69, 133,
well-being, 121–133, 137, 146, 148, 150, 165, 200–201,
154, 189–90, 216, 218 209n20, 209n23
and affliction, crises, 15, 18–19, female voices, 113
86, 140, 174, 190, 206 Italo-American, 151
definition of, 2, 8, 19, 193, 207, small carnivals of (carnevaletti
219 delle donne), 62
and performance, 3, 122, 211, and tarantism, 22n4, 37, 72,
216–19 197–98, 202–203
recovery of, 2, 5, 19, 116, 139, see also gender; men; pizzica
144, 151, 184, 200, 207
254

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Dances with Spiders

Copyright © 2008. Berghahn Books, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

General Editors: David Parkin and Elisabeth Hsu: both are at

This series in medical anthropology will publish monographs and

First published in 2009 by

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-84545-445-6 hardback

Antonin Artaud 1958: 135

Introduction: Tarantula Territory 1

PART I. Past and Present Spider Webs 29

Maria’s 1959 Domestic Ritual: a Historical Performance 44

2. Webs through Time: Origins and History of Tarantism 55

PART II. The Spider’s Cult Today 77

4. Ads and Antidotes: Celebrity versus Conservation 101

5. Sensing Identities and Well-being: Personal

PART III. From Ritual to Limelight 137

Views on Venom: Interpreting the Spider’s Bite 146

7. Tarantula Threads and Showbiz Airs: Fine-tuning

8. SpiderWoMen Transformed: Celebrating Well-being 189

PART IV. Conclusion 211

0.1 ‘The tarantula with the method of curing those stung by

0.2 The Salentine peninsula and the region of Apulia

0.3 Torre St Emiliano near Porto Badisco on the

1.1 The festival of St Peter and Paul, Galatina, 28 June 1999.

1.2 and 1.3 The tarantate in Galatina in the early 1970s,

2.1 From Observations Rares de Médecine, 1758 (reprinted

3.1 Mass at the grotto of St Paul in Giurdignano, June 1998

3.2 and 3.3 The Giurdignano grotto with the fresco of

4.1 Salento ‘Open All Year Round’, 2001

4.2 Poster of ‘La Notte della Taranta’, August 2007

5.1 Ada Metafune and her mother Sabina Romano dancing

6.1, 6.2. and 6.3 Paintings by Tanya Pagliara, Collezione

7.1 Graffiti painting of the ‘dancing god’, Porto Badisco,

7.2 The ‘dancing god’ on stage on a tambourine skin,

8.1 Concert of the group I Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli,

9.1 The pizzica pizzica, Torrepaduli, 15 August 1999

9.2 The scherma, Torrepaduli, 15 August 1999

9.3 A circle of dancers, musicians and spectators at

Gino Di Mitri provided important academic support at various points

broader webs of anthropological studies on music and dance.

the Moroccan Gnawa, and in Germany. Gisela Schmeer told me

writing up was initially made possible by postdoctoral grants from the

A tiny, elderly woman, enveloped in black, leans against a stone pillar

road map. She has also repeatedly offered to find me a husband in

If we do not honour our past

The Salentine peninsula is an arid, rocky, olive-tree terrain exposed to

of Italy’s boot, at the southernmost tip of Apulia, that the European

Officially, but not quite in practice, tarantism became nothing but a

Salentine Tarantulas: Spider Dances and

(Latrodectus tredecim guttatus) is a petite three centimetres in length

2000; Del Giudice and van Deusen 2005). Meanwhile,

cultural belief system and when recomposed and reimposed within a

a large repertory of music, including work, love and funeral songs,

fun and to seduce, while the pizzica scherma (literally, fencing

widespread throughout the south of Italy’ (2000: 265). Generally,

characterize each of these dances.22 The pizzica pizzica marks

were summoned up through audio, visual, kinaesthetic and olfactory