Friday, March 28, 2025 at 5:00 pm
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 Salento in Puglia. Italy’s fascinating dichotomy of tradition and modernity comes together in the music of CGS. The seven-piece band and dancer are the leading exponents in a new wave of young performers reinventing Southern Italy’s pizzica music 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 that 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 tarantula spider’s bite with its frenzied trance-like dances. CGS shows are full of energy, passion, rhythm and mystery, bringing the audience from the past into modernity, and back. This is their first time at Savannah Music Festival.
