Dec. 6 – Ambrogio Sparagna’s interest in popular music comes from the artist’s parents, traditional musicians from Maranola (Latina). Sparagna’s passion continued throughout the seventies with studies in Ethnomusicology at the University of Rome Diego Carpitella, one of Italy’s most famous ethnomusicologists, and worked on tarantism in Salento, which would inspire Ernesto de Martino’s “The Land of Remorse” (1961). Sparagna’s formation as an ethnomusicologist was carried out in parallel to his career as a musician, which boasts international gigs in Europe and beyond. The artist brings to an end the Year of Italian culture in Hungary on Monday, December 16, at 7pm (in the Sala Verdi of the Italian Cultural Institute in Budapest) with a live concert. He will perform “Taranta d’ amore” accompanied by the Popular Italian Orchestra as part of “Italian sounds of yesterday and today” project. The Popular Italian Orchestra of the Auditorium Parco della Musica, directed by Ambrogio Sparagna, is a workshop for the development, elaboration and dissemination of oral tradition music, through the production of original programs dedicated to regional and national folklore repertoires. “Taranta d’amore,” brought to life in collaboration with the Fondazione Musica per Roma, is a big show dedicated to the rich Italian repertoire of folk dances: gighe, tresconi, saltarelli, ballarelle, pizziche, tammurriate e tarantelle.