In 2025 legendary Southern Italian roots band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) celebrate their 50th anniversary. Founded in 1975 by the Durante family and now led by their visionary inheritor Mauro, CGS will join Big Ears Festival with an explosive show led by the pulsating healing rhythms of the Taranta. Do not miss one of the most thrilling live bands in the world!
“CGS offer a lesson in how to turn local music into a global brand”
The Guardian
“a whirlwind”
The New York Times
Founded by writer Rina Durante in 1975, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) is regarded as Italy’s leading and longest-standing traditional music ensemble, hailing from the Salento, the heel of the Italian boot, in Puglia.
Italy’s fascinating dichotomy of tradition and modernity come together in the music of CGS: the seven piece band and dancer are the leading exponents in a new wave of young performers re-inventing Southern Italy’s Pizzica musical and dance traditions for today’s global audience.
The company can make an audience shimmy with the energy of the ancient ritual of pizzica tarantata, said to cure the taranta spider’s bite with its frenzied trance dances. CGS shows are a life explosion: full of energy, passion, rhythm and mystery, they bring the audience from the past into modernity, and back.
Lineup
Mauro Durante, voice, frame drums, violin
Alessia Tondo, voice, percussions
Giulio Bianco, Italian bagpipes, harmonica, recorders
Massimiliano Morabito, diatonic accordion
Emanuele Licci, voice, guitar, bouzouki
Giancarlo Paglialunga, voice, tamburrieddhu
Silvia Perrone, dance