The southern folk music, like all Italian folk traditions, has its roots in a remote legendary past, when the sounds and dances were the primary forms of communication and represented important steps in the life of the community.
Today southern folk music (la musica meridionale), in fact never completely abandoned, is living a kind of renewed interest in many respects.
A note of caution for the listener. Southern italian music harks back to ways of performing songs that were current throughout the peasant Mediterranean in ancient times.
Some of the songs you will hear will remind you more of the Arab world or of North Africa. High-pitched, tense, and, at times, strident voices.
Once accepted, their expressiveness becomes evident. (North Americans have learned to understand a similar phenomena in the singing of the mountaineers of Kentucky and Tennessee).
Check the videos we selected for you in the next pages.( other selections and sound files coming soon)
Today southern folk music (la musica meridionale), in fact never completely abandoned, is living a kind of renewed interest in many respects. 
