47 OI magazine get rid of was often associated with “a demonic possession”. The dance had no end, it lasted day and night, until the “bitten one”, almost as if reborn, began to stamp his feet on the ground with force, as if to crush the “spider”. Trying to free himself from the unbearable pain, he performed acrobatic movements, which are nowadays among the most sought after and difficult to perform in this dance, which has become a real artistic exercise, as we will see below. I would add that problems of a psychiatric nature have also been associated with this disease, since the victims were mainly women, i.e. the famous “tarantate”. Frustrated by the conditioning of a strongly phallocratic and patrilineal society, they “shouted “ their malaise by falling into epileptoid paroxysms, contortions, trances, passionate attitudes, etc. One of the most important studies conducted on female Tarantism is due to the distinguished anthropologist Ernesto De Martino. In the summer of 1959, he arrived in Salento to study the complex phenomenon of the “tarantate” as no one had ever done before, with a team composed of a doctor, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a historian of religions, a cultural anthropologist, an ethnomusicologist and, finally, a film documentary maker. The result of his work was collected in a book entitled “The re-bitten’s land’”, as the extensive essay also referred to the fact that very often bitten people could be “re-bitten” even throughout their entire lives. Since there was no medical treatment at the time, every 29 June, Can pain be turned into music? Can we transform our fears, our anxiety, our malaise into lively sounds and, why not... even learn to dance on them at a wild pace? As in the famous movie in which Gene Kelly is “singing in the rain”, could the music of the Taranta become a happiness’ symbol? I am willing to bet that at least once in your life music has healed your soul. Here are some examples among the thousand that I could list: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, which magically manages to smooth out the obstacles and disagreements of the not always so “United Europe”...; The timeless song “We are the champions” by Freddie Mercury leader of the Queen, which led 72,000 spectators at Wembley Stadium to singing its refrain for the 1985 Live Aid; the Disco music punctuated by the bass on whose frantic rhythm youngsters stamp their feet, as to “escape” from this crazy world ... the success they decree to the life stories told by rappers ... well, to all this I add my knowledge of a dance music capable of saving human beings from pain, the “Taranta”. Taking its name from one of the most terrifying spiders in the world, the tarantula, this dance is a medicine for the soul! To understand how this up-down Kafkaesque “metamorphosis” works, how a poisonous beast can be a relief for the soul, we must go back to some Salento countryside’ s legends. Here, spiders symbolize the Mother Earth resurfacing with her implacable primordial instincts, and with the force of ancient pagan rites. It can therefore be said that, in the hot season, the hairy animal with a decidedly repulsive appearance proliferated dangerously in the Italian Puglia region, where it used to bite the farmers during the wheat harvest. Its venomous bite triggered real psychomotor crises that could last for days; people felt palpitations, abdominal cramps, delirium, even hysteria, confusional states and unconsciousness, a set of symptoms that led to a real disease, known as “Tarantism”. In particular, the Apulian tarantism born in the Middle Ages was maintained with an intensity of popular participation and a variety of mythical ritual forms until the end of the 18th century, starting its decline and ending in the following century. As traditional medicine in those times gave poor results it looks like the only way to give relief to the bites by Lycosa tarantula, (this is the Latin name given by the Swedish naturalist Linneus in 1700) was to obsessively play the tambourine, a common musical instrument to all ancient civilizations, from Sumerians to Hittites, from the Jews to the Egyptians, which accompanied traditional music during banquets and other ceremonies. Archaeologists have unearthed ancient statues of Sumerian women holding tambourines as early as the 21st century BC. and in Salento some rock graffiti depicting the instrument have been found in the Porto Badisco’s caves, dating back to about 6000 years ago. The ancestral peasant culture of the inhabitants of these areas made the tambourine a symbol of the Salento region’s music and dance. In addition to the Taranta, let me open a parenthesis and recall the “Spizzica”, (Pinch) another typical Apulian dance recalling a courtship between partners with more sensual, almost erotic body moves. Returning to the Apulian tarantism, the melody played was that of the “tarantella”, a simple rhythm with a few notes, obsessively repeated by tambourine players in search of the right melody, able to ward off the devastating effect of the tarantula’s poison. During this healing process the patient was made to lie down on a sheet in the open air. With the musicians around him, all of a sudden his outburst started, in a sort of “musical exorcism”, so nicknamed because the disease to
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