In Melpignano, the homeland of La Notte della Taranta, music becomes home. Inside the Palazzo Marchesale, the Center for the Documentation of Popular Music was established to preserve and make resonate the deepest soul of Salento.
At its heart is the Luigi Chiriatti Collection: nearly fifty years of research on tarantism, work songs, and rituals, with over 4 terabytes of recordings, photographs, and interviews. A heritage now organized and made accessible thanks to a PNRR project, today it is a living, public archive, ready to be heard.
Here, memory is not only consulted: it is experienced. The immersive installations by Massimiliano Siccardi and Raffaela Zizzari transform documents and stones into breath, sound, and light. In the ancient prisons of the palace, the “stone archive” — inscriptions left by prisoners on the walls — dialogues with the voices of popular songs: different signs, same thirst for dignity and freedom.
The Center is born as both a physical and symbolic place: a space for study, a workshop for musical productions, an open laboratory between roots and the future. In the coming months, meetings, books, and new collaborations will weave Melpignano into the Mediterranean. Here, tradition does not remain still: it pulses. And every visitor is invited to listen to that ancient rhythm that still flows through the stones and squares of Salento.
Info: tel. +39 375 6041184, centrodocumentazionemelpignano.it, closed on Mondays.
