The pizzica is the dance of Salento, descended from the tarantism ritual in which a woman said to have been bitten by a spider danced for days to be cured. The festival revived it from near-extinction in 1998 and has made it a mass form: the Concertone in Melpignano, free, runs from late evening until dawn in front of a crowd that fills the ground in front of the former Augustinian convent.
A guest maestro concertatore arranges the orchestra each year, and the fortnight before tours the Griko-speaking villages of the Grecìa Salentina.
The Fondazione publishes attendance for the Concertone; we have not collected a dated figure here.
It is anchored to the last Saturday of August. Melpignano is a village of 2,000 and has no capacity; Lecce, forty minutes away, is the base, and the roads out afterwards are slow until dawn.
PlanningAnchored to the last Saturday of August, not July — and the preceding fortnight tours the villages.