n this globalization era minority languages are threatened with extinction.
In the last four centuries about thousand traditional idioms have disappeared.
Since a language is always affected by the society and culture in which it is spoken, when a language dies even a good part of its art, religion, medicine, music disappears.
Many ethnolinguistic minorities were present in Apulian society for a long time (Greek, French-Provençal, Croatian, Albanian) but the oldest is the Greek one, whose dialect is called
“grico” or grecanico”.
Nowadays in this cultural island, called Grecìa Salentina, located south of Lecce, in the Salento region, are included eleven towns: Calimera, Carpignano Salentino, Castrignano dei Greci, Corigliano d’Otranto, Cutrofiano, Martano, Martignano, Melpignano, Soleto, Sternatia, Zollino.
The “griko” dialect spoken by this Salentine minority derives from Greek, but its historical origins has caused a lively debate.
Some philologists claimed these communities derived from the initial Greek colonization, others asserted the Byzantine ri-Hellenization.
The theory that both dialect and “grika” culture are ancient could be supported by the same “grike” musical and poetic traditions.
For instance in the mournings (moroloja) can be found some traces of myths and legends of ancient Greece, which went out of use in the cultural centre (Greece) and were kept in the periphery (“Grecìa”).
In the twentieth century we find in the lyrics of mournings figures coming from ancient Greek mythology: Charon, Tanato, Parche or Fate.
Although the language obviously suffered from a decrease of people speaking it, Grecìa Salentina kept and developed around its dialect and culture a liveliness that makes both the Greek-speaking area and the Salento region a bridge over the Mediterranean Sea. Through “griko” tongue the linguistic minority is establishing new cultural and linguistic relationships both with Magna Grecia, which included Calabria and Sicily and with the same Greece.
This new liveliness and sensitiveness, mainly peculiar to young people, is enhancing the whole oral tradition of Grecìa Salentina which was made up of religious chants and the Chants of Passion
The Passion: I passiuna tu Cristù
T
he popular “grika” poetry reaches one of its highest expression in the events telling the life and death of Jesus Christ.
All the ways in which culture finds expression, singing, poetry, theatre synthesize in this human-divine tragedy, the very keynote of becoming. Whether these chants are Sardinian, Salentine, “Griki”, or Calabrian the last moments of Jesus life are meditated, when he is alone facing death, his human condition, his responsibility and the tragic awareness of human essence contemplating death.
In “Grecìa Salentina” the Chant of Passion has stood time and fashion, giving us, through its liturgical execution, the essence of human becoming.
The Passion in “grika” language may be considered one of the most ancient types of popular theatre, the most authentic expression of Miracles existing all over Italy in the Thirteenth century.
Quite rightly the Passion may be included in the great Italian tradition of “Bruscello”, the so-called popular performance in which Biblical heroes or characters are represented.
This performance took place in the squares and at the crossroads of the villages on stages decorated with leafy branches in a period spanning from Carnival to Palm Week.
Bruscello goes back to Spring ritual feasts of Roman and pre-Roman age. During these feasts, after having collected branches in the woods, people sung a chant going door-to-door asking for presents.
Then Bruscello was decorated with multicoloured ribbons, flowers and oranges as fertility symbols and auspicious for spring arrival.
Passion was sung during Palm Week. Life in rural and pastoral communities was marked by important liturgical events, among them there was Easter with its complex liturgy full of imaginaries, such as death-rebirth-resurrection, ever since symbolizing nature’s awakening, the passage from winter to spring.
Then our farm labourers cast off their clothes of hard workers and became refined cantors of the “Passione tu Cristù”.
Generally two cantors, an accordionist or a man playing a barrel organ together with a palm bearer, placed themselves at the crossroads of the village, sung and mimed the Passion of Jesus one at a time. They often went even to farmhouses to play the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The palm branch (an olive branch) was decorated with red ribbons or oranges. As Passion is a transition rite which occurs in a particular moment of life, that is the transition from winter to spring, symbolizing life and death, this particular chant is a propitiatory rite.
The Passion tells the life and the pains of Christ and the excruciating suffering of a mother wandering and looking for the fruit of life: her son. The Passion represents popular pietas (piety) and the most complex and articulated way through which people express their mysticism and the need to communicate with divinity.
It is made up of 66 strophes, the last ones are a request for reward by the cantors, once they have obtained it, they move to another village or other crossroads to repeat the same performance.
The old cantors tell that in Martano there was a school to learn the Passion: the teachers were called “Stompi” and they taught not only the text but also gestural expressiveness and mime.
The Passion is one of the few sonorous and gestural performances which prevails in all the towns of Grecìa Salentina, in fact one of the distinctive and unifying features of Grecìa is the Passion.
Each town has had in the past and now too cantors who have characterized the chant of Passion with their own gestural and mimic performance and recently the chant of Passion has been recovered in its most genuine sense. In almost all the towns of Grecìa Salentina groups of young people have begun to sing the Passion again, often helped and guided by some old cantors. In schools and in church recreation centres the chant of Passion is revived and sometimes even dramatized. During Palm week local cantors and some others coming from Central and Southern Italy set up spectacular and devotional events.
2008 Edition of the Chants of Passion involves all
the towns of the Grecìa Salentina making
a circuit in which the Chants are performed in the
places where the Passion used to be sung and is
still sung.
The “grika” musical tradition of Passion
and the introduction of musical culture coming from
different Italian regions and all over the world
about the same subject, makes 2008 event an extraordinary
occasion to preserve and bring in again folk music. From 9 to 16 March 2008 different
bands will play in the most beautiful churches of
all eleven municipalities of Grecìa Salentina
plus those of Alessano and Galatina.
Luigi Chiriatti and Gianni De Santis are in charge
of the project.
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