About

Italy’s fascinating dichotomy of tradition and modernity come together in the music of Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. The seven piece band and dancer are the leading exponents in a new wave of young performers re-inventing Southern Italy’s Pizzica musical and dance traditions for today’s global audience.

Leadership of the ensemble was handed down to Mauro Durante by his acclaimed father, Daniele, in 2007. CGS has revitalized both the rousing and the introspective sides of Southern Italian song and dance. Durante continues to innovate and energize, bringing decades of experience playing with global artists (Ballake Sissoko, Ibrahim Maalouf, Piers Faccini), contemporary classical composers (Ludovico Einaudi), and pop mavericks (Stewart Copeland of The Police).

Artist Links:  Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Youtube

Areas of Representation: The Americas

Biography

Formed by writer Rina Durante in 1975, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) is regarded as Italy’s leading and longest-standing traditional music ensemble, hailing from the Salento, the heel of the Italian boot, in Puglia.

Italy’s fascinating dichotomy of tradition and modernity come together in the music of CGS. The seven piece band and dancer are the leading exponents in a new wave of young performers re-inventing Southern Italy’s Pizzica musical and dance traditions for today’s global audience.

The tens of thousands who often congregate for this Lecce-based band’s concerts in Italy know: Bandleader, fiddler, and drummer Mauro Durante and company can make an audience shimmy with the energy of the ancient ritual of pizzica tarantata, said to cure the taranta spider’s bite with its frenzied trance dances. CGS shows are a life explosion: full of energy, passion, rhythm and mystery, they bring the audience from the past into modernity, and back.

Leadership of the ensemble was handed down to Durante by his acclaimed father, Daniele, in 2007. CGS has revitalized both the rousing and the introspective sides of Southern Italian song and dance. Durante continues to innovate and energize, bringing decades of experience playing with global artists (Ballake Sissoko, Ibrahim Maalouf, Piers Faccini), contemporary classical composers (Ludovico Einaudi), and pop mavericks (Stewart Copeland of The Police).

Critically acclaimed with 19 albums and countless live performances throughout USA, Canada, Europe and the Middle East, in 2010 CGS was awarded Best Italian World Music Group at Italy’s MEI confab.

Line up: Mauro Durante (voice, frame drums, violin), Alessia Tondo (voice, percussions), Giulio Bianco (Italian bagpipes, harmonica, recorders), Massimiliano Morabito (diatonic accordion), Emanuele Licci (voice, guitar, bouzouki), Giancarlo Paglialunga (voice, tamburrieddhu), Silvia Perrone (dance) .

Tour Dates

Videos

News

• Mauro Durante and Justin Adams interview on PopMatters
  Mauro Durante and Justin Adams discuss making the new Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino LP, Meridiana, under Covid-19’s challenging conditions and suspended time.
  George de Stefano – May 13, 2021
  Like so many bands worldwide, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) were left stranded by the Covid-19 pandemic, unable to get together to record or perform concerts. For the Southern Italian ...
• Songlines Music Awards 2018 Nominees!
  Congratulations to two Riot Artists performers who have each been nominated in multiple categories for the Songlines Music Awards 2018!

  Oumou Sangaré: Best Artist; and Africa & Middle East
   

  Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino: Best Group; and Europe
  We wish them luck in the awards ceremony in October!

Press

“The album is the proverbial ‘all killer, no filler.’ Not a wasted moment. The sound is richer and fuller, yet it also manages to be more focused, sleeker and stripped back. They’ve taken everything they’ve done in the past and turbocharged it. This is urgent music, knocking on your door and demanding to be heard.”

“Meridiana is our July 2021 pick for Music of the Month for July, 2021”

— ROOTSWORLD

“Do they live up to all the hype they’ve received? Hell, yes! Are they one of the best bands in the world at the moment? Without a shred of doubt.” — FOLKROOTS

“Thrill with the explosive excitement of one of Italy’s hottest bands. This multi-generational group brings alive the music of Italy’s Puglia region—through atmospheric concerts ranging from tender love songs to pagan rites marked by frenzied dance and pizzica tarantata played on guitar, drums, accordion, and bagpipes.” — NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

“Despite the sound of the word, Salento is not silent at all. It has a bright voice which spreads around loud and clear, winning its place in the international music panorama. Like a marveloustree, its sound, deeply rooted in the local traditions, boasts a lusty crown of modern branches and projects itself into the future with continuous unexpected stems. In such a buzzing music scene, Mauro Durante and his group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino have been awarded the “Premio italiano Musica popolare indipendente” as best world music band.” — NUOVO QUOTIDIANO DI PUGLIA

“Much of the material the group performs is intended for a traditional courtship dance from the region called the pizzica, or, more recently, the taranta. Their intense and precise arrangements of it are utterly beguiling and trance-inducing.” — THE NEW YORKER

“The most traditionalist group at Globalfest was Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, from Salento in the Puglia region of southern Italy, and it was a whirlwind. It plays an ancient style called pizzica tarantata: ritual healing songs driven by speedy, triple-time tambourines and declaimed in sharp-toned voices. But even as they exulted in their heritage, they stretched it. For one song the group brought up a Lebanese trumpeter, and soon the tambourines were propelling a chromatic, zigzagging melody that was headed away from home.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Pizzica masters stomp into rapture. Smoothly updating the region’s folk traditions, the seven-piece band expertly blended trance-inducing dance with exhilarating rhythms”

“A brooding wash of synth effects suddenly gave way to an attacking, precise and edgy onslaught of harmony singing that sounded like the soundtrack to some ancient ceremony.” – THE GUARDIAN

“The superstars of pizzica are back. Brave and bold, ‘Canzoniere’ is the sound of pizzica opening to the world like never before”.  – SONGLINES

“Puglian stars pack a punch… The champions of southern Italy’s pizzica tradition have become an institution, though one that shows no signs of going stale.”  – THE OBSERVER

“CGS was a whirlwind” — THE NEW YORK TIMES

“The band has a few peers in contemporary world music” — THE NEW YORKER

“A triumph, and an extraordinary, exhilarating noise” — THE GUARDIAN

“L’énergie de CGS emporte tour sur son passage” — LIBERATION

Downloads/Media

Technical Riders:

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino’s Rider – Download (.pdf)

Press Photos (high resolution):