Instrumentation in the Folk Music of Italy

Instruments is an integral segment of all facets of Italian traditional music, there are many instruments that retain older forms even while models have become widespread elsewhere in Europe. Several Italian instruments are tied to certain rituals or events like the zampogna bagpipe, typically heard only at Christmas. Italian folk instruments can be divided into three the wind, percussion and string categories. The common instruments include the organetto, an accordion most closely associated with the saltareloo; the diatonic button of organetto is most common in central Italy, while chromatic accordions succeed in the north. Many municipalities are home to brass bands, which perform with roots restored groups; these bands are based around the clarinet, accordion, violin and small drums adorned with bells.

source of picture: www.translationdirectory.com

Italy’s wind instruments include the main prominently variety of the folk flutes. These include the duct, transverse flute and globular as well as diverse of the pan flute, the double flutes are mainly common in Campania, Calabria Sicily. A ceramic pitcher known as the quartara is also used as a wind instrument, by blowing across the opening in the narrow bottle neck. It is found in the eastern Sicily and Campania. Single (ciaramella) and double-reed (which is the piffero) pipes are commonly played in orchestras of two or three. Many traditional bagpipes are popular, including the central Italy’s zampogna; dialect names for the bagpipe differ throughout the Italy like beghet in Bergamo piva in Lombardy, musa in Alessandria, Geona, Pavia and Piavenza etc.

Several drumming instruments are a part of Italian folk music that included the wood block bells castanets, drum. Many areas have their own different form of rattle, including the raganella cog rattle and the Calabrian conocchie, a rotating or shepherd’s staff with permanently attached seed rattles with ritual fertility important. The Neapolitan rattle is the triccaballacca, created out of many mallets in a wooden frame. Tambourines (tamburini, tamburello), as are different types of drums like the friction drum (putpu). The Tamburello, while appearing very small to the current western tambourine, is actually played with a much more articulate and sophisticated method (influenced by the Middle Eastern playing), giving it a wide range of sounds. The mouth-harp, scacciapensieri or the care-chaser is a different instrument, found only in the northern Italy and Sicily.

Cord instruments differ widely depending on the area, with no nationally prominent representative, Viggiano is a home to a harp culture, which has a historical base in Abruzzi, Calabria and Lazio.

Calabria alone has 30 traditional musical instruments, some of which have rigidly archaic characteristics and are largely extinct elsewhere in Italy. This is a home to the four or five corded guitar known as the chitarra battente, and a three-stringed, bowed fiddle known as the lira, which is also found in similar forms in the music of Crete and Southeastern Europe. A one-stringed, bowed fiddle that is known as the torototela, is also common in the northeast of the country. The largely German-speaking region of South Tyrol that is known for the zither and the ghironda (hurdy-gurdy) is found in Emilia, Lombardy and Piedmont. Existing rooted and widespread cultures confirm the creation of ephemeral and toy instruments made of bark, reed (arundo donax), leaves, fibers and stem, as it appears for instance from Fabio Lombardi’s research.