Greece and Italy meet in Kythnos
Icons from Greece and Italy
A strong root unites the special sacred iconography and the routes of faith between Kythnos, Cyclades and Cerignola in Puglia and Turin.
The extraordinary similarity of the byzantine icon of the Madonna di Ripalta, venerated in Cerignola in Apulia and in Turin, with that of the Panagia (Madonna) of Canala in Kythnos, offers us an opportunity to strengthen the historically existing relations between Greece and Italy with an original traditional specificity, which reveals our ancient material and spiritual ties.
A delegation from Italy, including clergy and citizens, traveled to Kythnos accompanied from Italy with the icon of the Madonna di Ripalta, which has been donated to the Municipality of Kythnos.
The events were framed by a music and dance event with the participation of three outstanding Italian artists, the musicians Simone Campa and Domenico Celiberti and the choreographer and dancer Maristella Martella, as well as a participated delegation of local inhabitants, musicians and artists from Kythnos.
Contributors
Simone Campa
Multi-instrumental musician, singer, artistic director, researcher, teacher and sound therapist.
He specializes and works passionately on musical ventures that focus on intercultural dialogue.
Founder and artistic director of the historic art company La Paranza del Geco based in Turin, which since 1999 has been involved in the preservation and revival of the folk traditions of the regions of Southern Italy: twenty years of activity and more than 1,000 performances with which he brought the rhythms and sounds of the tradition of the regions of Southern Italy in more than 30 Countries, in Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East, Italy and abroad.
He has held masterclasses on Mediterranean percussion and traditional Italian music at the Museum of Music Instruments in Brussels (Belgium), at the EGE Üniversitesi of Izmir (Turkey), at the G. Ghedini State Conservatory of Cuneo and the APM School of Higher Musical Perfection of Saluzzo. In the European Parliament, he was a speaker at a conference on "Performing Arts and Traditional Music as tools of intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding" in Brussels in 2017.
He has held masterclasses on Mediterranean percussion and traditional Italian music at the Museum of Music Instruments in Brussels (Belgium), at the EGE Üniversitesi of Izmir (Turkey), at the G. Ghedini State Conservatory of Cuneo and the APM School of Higher Musical Perfection of Saluzzo. In the European Parliament, he was a speaker at a conference on "Performing Arts and Traditional Music as tools of intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding" in Brussels in 2017.
Singer, violinist, multi-instrumentalist musician.
For more than twenty years he has studied and deepened the music and the oral tradition of the regions of Southern Italy and Sardinia, meeting traditional instrumentalists and singers. He collaborates with many musical groups throughout Italy, participating in festivals and traditional celebrations. He plays over thirty instruments of the Italian folk tradition, ranging from strings (Calabrian lyre and violin, mandolin, classical and rhythm guitar) to percussion and from accordion and organ to bagpipes (surdulina).
Domenico Celiberti
Maristella Martella
Dancer, choreographer of the New Folk Dance. Researcher in the field of theater and dance and on Salento tarantism, Mediterranean dances and rituals. She founded in Bologna in 2001 together with Eugenio Bennato one of the first tarantella schools in Italy. In 2009 she founded also, the company Tarantarte in Puglia and runs a permanent theater dance studio in collaboration with the City of Paris, at the Center Fleury Barbara and with the City of Lecce at the Carlo V Castle. She participates in the "Notte della Taranta" festival and collaborates with the distinguished composers such as Ludovico Einaudi, Goran Bregovic, Giovanni Sollima, Phil Manzanera. Maristella collaborates regularly with the group Officina Zoè and with the director Edoardo Winspeare.
George Bellis, born in 1949 with the gift, has been playing the violin for 55 years. From a young age he picked up sticks and ligatures in his hands pretending to play the violin, until at 13 his father took him to learn from a local and practically listening to the folk music of the time, he learned and developed it.
While his son Vangelis took him to the Conservatory in Athens to learn the violin with the support of his father, he did not continue. However, soon at the feasts of the island, he was won over by the lute and thus they have been a couple for 20 years with their talent.
George Bellis
Vangelis Bellis
Antonis Vlastaris
Dimitris Vlastaris
Self-taught musicians originated from Kythnos. Antonis Vlastaris (Koutsikos) plays the traditional self-made percussion "doubi" (drum) and Dimitris Vlastaris (Soumas) plays the traditional self-made wind instrument "tsabouna" (bagpipe).
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Activities 2022
