THE NIGHT OF TARANTA

It is the largest festival in Italy and one of the most important popular events in Europe that takes place in Salento on the first three weeks of August, and is dedicated to the discovery of traditional Salento music. First held in 1998, in fifteen years the festival has seen incredible growth in size, affluence and cultural prestige. A new festival was born in 2000, the Itinerant Festival: an exhibition of the most representative pizzica groups, which today involves fifteen municipalities of the Salentinian Greece, the towns of Lecce, Galatina, Alessano and Cursi, and draws nearly a hundred thousand spectators. The great end of the Night of Taranta is the Big Melpignano Concert, on August 20 /22, involving about one hundred fifty thousand spectators and characterised in a very original way for the presence of a Concert Master that reinterprets the "classics" of the local musical tradition thanks to a group of about thirty of the best Salento musicians, along with guests from the national and international scenarios.

For more information www.lanottedellataranta.it