The Night of the Bakers, between December 23rd and 24th, in Toritto, sees musicians and singers singing dialect stornelli and Christmas carols to the sound of guitars, accordions, violins and tambourines.
The origins of this tradition date back to the early 1900s, when the “baker’s quest” became a musical performance. The workers of the local bakeries of the time asked with a characteristic “cry” to the women of Toritto to bring bread and Christmas sweets to bake and invoking the “Holy Sacrament” for the poor families.
The practice was due to the widespread poverty of those years. The transition from shouts to Christmas carols marks the birth of the “Night of the Bakers”. The original bakers, over time, became musicians and singers organized in companies (Compagnia Lisi, Maselli, Regina), who began to pass down the musical repertoire and the tradition itself from generation to generation.
The Strina Songs are ritual songs of begging belonging to the cycle of songs related to the Christmas/Epiphany period. In this relatively quiet period of time for working in the fields, some farmers, in Salento, gathered in groups, almost always of five, and went from farm to farm, from town to town, to sing near the noble and manor houses the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the Three Wise Men with gifts: the strina therefore, the strenna.
The strina was generally performed by one or two people accompanied by a small orchestra of instruments: accordion, cupa-cupa (a kind of Neapolitan putipù in Corigliano d'Otranto also called bagpipe), violin with rattles, tambourine and triangle.
Sagnette Pasta
Olio d'Oliva E.V. 500 cl.
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