Global Tarantella : Reinventing Southern Italian Folk Music and Dances.

Tarantella, a genre of southern Italian folk music and dance, is an international phenomenon--seen and heard in popular festivals, performed across the Italian diaspora, even adapted for New Age spiritual practices. The boom in popularity has diversified tarantella in practice while setting it within a host of new, unexpected contexts. Incoronata Inserra ventures into the history, global circulation, and recontextualization of this fascinating genre. Examining tarantella's changing image and role among Italians and Italian Americans, Inserra illuminates how factors like tourism, translation, and world music venues have shifted the ethics of place embedded in the tarantella cultural tradition. The book reveals how the genre's changing dynamics contribute to the southern Italian identity. At the same time, tarantella becomes a different kind of performance that serves new social and cultural groups and purposes. Inserra shows that tarantella's global growth promotes a reassessment of gender relations in the Italian South.

226 p.; 23 cm.
Paper
Language: English
ISBN: 0252082834
ISBN13: 9780252082832
UPC: 9780252082832