Tammurriata

The tammurriata is the song-and-dance tradition of Campania in southern Italy, driven by the tammorra, a large jingled frame drum from which it takes its name, and performed at the region's Marian feasts. Couples dance to castanets and drum while singers trade narrative and devotional verses over an accelerating compound-time cycle. Rooted in the peasant culture of the Neapolitan hinterland, it was carried to national attention in the 1970s by the *Nuova Compagnia di Canto Popolare* and *Roberto De Simone*, whose stagings made it the emblem of the southern Italian folk revival.