The music of Calabria is part of the Italian musical tradition. Like other regions in southern Italy, Calabria for many centuries was an integral part of the kingdom of Naples, and, as with other regions, the musical life tended to be overshadowed by the important activities in the capital city to the north—the conservatories there, the composers, the vast amount of music performed in churches (see also Music of Naples). Yet, modern Calabria has developed a vibrant musical life based on its history and, as well, a dedication to building new musical and theatrical facilities, many of which are of the type termed polivalenti in Italian—that is, multi-purpose.

The rural Calabrian folk tradition is most closely associated with the zampogna, the Italian bagpipe, which is found across Italy but is an especially important part of the Calabrian tradition. Calabria is home to at least five different kinds of zampogna. This tradition has lately been recorded and adapted by the group Re Niliu. There is also an ancient Lira (violin) tradition, pipita and tambourine.

The chitarra battente (in Italian "strumming guitar", however "battente" literally means "beating" related to the fact that this guitar thumps the rhythm of the music) is a musical instrument, a chordophone of the guitar family. It is similar to the 5-course baroque guitar, but larger and typically strung with five double strings, traditionally made of brass, but currently - steel. Nowadays it is typically used by folk musicians, mainly in the southern Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, and Campania, as well as in other areas of southern Italy; in past centuries the instrument was found in most of central and southern Italy.

It is considered a folk instrument, though it has its origins in the Italian court music in the early Baroque era. Musicologists refer to the "historical" as well as the "folk" chitarra battente. There are many extant historical 17th century instruments in museums. Though now associated with Southern Italy, the chitarra battente has been built and played as far north as Ponte Caffaro in Lombardy until the turn of the 20th century.

The chitarra battente comes in three sizes. The medium and large instruments are the most common. The instrument may have five or four courses of strings. These courses are typically double or triple, a“course” being a group of 2 or 3 strings plucked as a single unit. Thus chitarra battente is typically a five or four-course instrument.

There is great variation in the size of the bouts (the rounded “hourglass” curves of the body of the instrument), kinds of wood, shape of the back, decorations, number of frets, etc. The strings are tuned in what is called a “re-entrant” system; that is, unlike a modern classical guitar, the lower strings may be tuned to higher pitches.

The instrument is played without a plectrum, and the fingers achieve a wide range of effects through plucking, strumming, beating the strings or the sound board, etc. The chitarra battente is typically used to accompany singing or dancing and can be played in an ensemble or as a solo instrument. The most important center of production is in Bisignano in the province of Cosenza. Traditionally the instrument has been made locally in the region from which its characteristics derive, often being constructed by non-professional craftsmen or simple carpenters.

From the first to the fifth courses of strings, the tuning is usually: E (Mi), B (Si), G (Sol), D (Re), A (La), like one of the three tunings of the baroque guitar.

Notable virtuosos on chitarra battente are Marcello Vitale, Alessandro Santacaterina and Francesco Loccisano.

Zampogna (UK: /zæmˈpɒnjə/, US: /zæmˈpoʊnjə, (t)sɑːmˈ-/, Italian: [dzamˈpoɲɲa]) is a generic term for a number of Italian double chantered pipes that can be found as far north as the southern part of the Marche, throughout areas in Abruzzo, Latium, Molise, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, and Sicily. The tradition is now mostly associated with Christmas, and the most famous Italian carol, "Tu scendi dalle stelle" (You Come Down From the Stars) is derived from traditional zampogna music. However, there is an ongoing resurgence of the instrument in secular use seen with the increasing number of folk music festivals and folk music ensembles.

All chanters and drones are fixed into a single round stock that the bag is attached to. Each chanter is tuned differently, according to the tradition it represents, and there are dozens. Typically, the double-reeded versions (Marche, Abruzzo, Latium, Campania, southern Basilicata and parts of Sicily and southern Calabria) will have a soprano chanter on the right and a bass chanter on the left (called, respectively, ritta and manga—meaning 'right' and 'left'—in the tradition of Southern Latium) with an alto drone (bordone being the generic name); but as many as three drones, the other tuned above and below the basic chord can be used, or, in the case of the Marches tradition, no drones at all. The single reed versions consist of the surdullina types of the Province of Cosenza and Catanzaro, and the ciaramella or ciaramedda of Messina and Catania in Sicily, as well as in Southern Calabria. The surdullina is a very short chantered version of the instrument that is used to play tarantellas primarily, while the ciaramedda can play all of the traditional regional melodies the other types can.

The traditional reeds are made from stalks of the Giant Reed Arundo donax, called "canna marina" in Italian. The double reed versions may also be made from plastic. The single reeds are made from a single section of the cane.

Traditionally the bags are made from goat hides that are removed from the slaughtered animal in one piece, cured, turned inside out, then tied off just in front of the rear legs, one of the front legs serving to house the blow pipe with its simple leather valve (soffietto), and the other tied off. The typical round stock into which both chanters and drones are fixed goes into the neck of the skin. The hair is left on, and is contained in the inside of the bag (otre). Today, however, some pipers are substituting the traditional goat and sheep hide bags with a rubber inner tube or wintex which is covered with an artificial fleece. This practice of using the synthetic bag is particularly popular among the pipers from Scapoli in the Molise region, and those of Atina in Latium.

The double reeded version of the zampogna is generally played with the piffero (called biffera in Lazio, or ciaramella or pipita in other regions; a shawm, or folk oboe), which plays the melody and the zampogna provides chord changes, "vamping" or rhythmic harmony figures or a bass line and a soprano harmony as accompaniment. This double reed tradition would include Central Italy (Latium, southern Abruzzo and Molise), that of southern Basilicata (Pollino) and nearby areas of Calabria, and some areas of Sicily (Syracuse, Palermo). Single reed versions are played solo in the Calabrian tradition of the surdullina (Cosenza), and a version with a plugged chanter called the surdullina albanese, and the Sicilian ciaramedda or ciaramella (Catania, Messina, and Reggio Calabria). The chanters and drones vary, according to the tradition, from a few inches long (surdullina) to nearly two meters in length, such as used in the cathedral of Monreale (Palermo) and nearly every size in between. The pipes are related to the Sardinian launeddas, a single reed "triple clarinet" comprising two chanters and a drone and played in the mouth by circular breathing.

The word zampogna is etymologically related to the Greek symphōnia (συμφωνία), meaning "concord or unison of sound" (from σῠν- syn-, "with, together" + φωνή phōnḗ, "sound") and applied later to a type of bagpipe. It cognates to tsampouna, the word for the Greek island bagpipe (itself a reborrowing of zampogna), Romanian cimpoi, which means "symphony" or "many sounds played together", and Georgian čiboni.

Tarantella (Italian pronunciation: [taranˈtɛlla]) is a group of various folk dances characterized by a fast upbeat tempo, usually in ⁶
₈ time (sometimes ¹²
₈ or ⁴
₄), accompanied by tambourines.^[2] It is among the most recognized forms of traditional southern Italian music. The specific dance-name varies with every region, for instance tammurriata in Campania, pizzica in the Salento region, and Sonu a ballu in Calabria. Tarantella is popular in Southern Italy and Argentina. The term may appear as tarantello in a linguistically masculine construction.

In the Italian province of Taranto, Apulia, the bite of a locally common type of wolf spider, named "tarantula" after the region, was popularly believed to be highly venomous and to lead to a hysterical condition known as tarantism. This became known as the "tarantella". R. Lowe Thompson proposed that the dance is a survival from a "Dianic or Dionysiac cult", driven underground. John Compton later proposed that the Roman Senate had suppressed these ancient Bacchanalian rites. In 186 BC the tarantella went underground, reappearing under the guise of emergency therapy for bite victims.

The stately courtship tarantella danced by a couple or couples, short in duration, is graceful and elegant and features characteristic music. On the other hand, the supposedly curative or symptomatic tarantella was danced solo by a victim of a Lycosa tarantula spider bite (not to be confused with what is commonly known as a tarantula today); it was agitated in character, lasted for hours or even up to days, and featured characteristic music. However, other forms of the dance were and still are dances of couples usually either mimicking courtship or a sword fight. The confusion appears to derive from the fact that the spiders, the condition, its sufferers (tarantolati), and the dances all have names similar to the city of Taranto.

The dance originated in the Apulia region, and spread throughout the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Neapolitan tarantella is a courtship dance performed by couples whose "rhythms, melodies, gestures, and accompanying songs are quite distinct" featuring faster more cheerful music. Its origins may further lie in "a fifteenth-century fusion between the Spanish Fandango and the Moresque ballo di sfessartia." The "magico-religious" tarantella is a solo dance performed supposedly to cure through perspiration the delirium and contortions attributed to the bite of a spider at harvest (summer) time. The dance was later applied as a supposed cure for the behavior of neurotic women (Carnevaletto delle donne).

There are several traditional tarantella groups: Cantori di Carpino, Officina Zoé, Uccio Aloisi gruppu, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, Selva Cupina, I Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli.

The tarantella is most frequently played with a mandolin, a guitar, an accordion and tambourines. Flute, fiddle, trumpet and clarinet are also used.

The tarantella is a dance in which the dancer and the drum player constantly try to upstage each other by playing faster or dancing longer than the other, subsequently tiring one person out first.

Tarantism, as a ritual, is supposed to have roots in the ancient myths. Reportedly, victims who had collapsed or were convulsing would begin to dance with appropriate music and be revived as if a tarantula had bitten them. The music used to treat dancing mania appears to be similar to that used in the case of tarantism though little is known about either. Justus Hecker (1795–1850), describes in his work Epidemics of the Middle Ages:

A convulsion infuriated the human frame [...]. Entire communities of people would join hands, dance, leap, scream, and shake for hours [...]. Music appeared to be the only means of combating the strange epidemic [...] lively, shrill tunes, played on trumpets and fifes, excited the dancers; soft, calm harmonies, graduated from fast to slow, high to low, prove efficacious for the cure.

The music used against spider bites featured drums and clarinets, was matched to the pace of the victim, and is only weakly connected to its later depiction in the tarantellas of Chopin, Liszt, Rossini, and Heller.

While most serious proponents speculated as to the direct physical benefits of the dancing rather than the power of the music, a mid-18th century medical textbook gets the prevailing story backwards, describing that tarantulas will be compelled to dance by violin music. It was thought that the Lycosa tarantula wolf spider had lent the name "tarantula" to an unrelated family of spiders, having been the species associated with Taranto, but since L. tarantula is not inherently deadly, the highly venomous Mediterranean black widow, Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, may have been the species originally associated with Taranto's manual grain harvest.

Calabrian Tarantella (in italian: Tarantella Calabrese or "Sonu a ballu": playing for dancing) is a generic term to include different musical-dancing expressions spread in Calabrian peninsula and different from other southern Italian dances called simply Tarantella. It is played and danced during religious festivals and other social occasions. In recent times the tradition has been revived as new groups are taking an interest in instruments which had been falling into obscurity; they played "ad usu anticu" (in the old/traditional way) or they modernised the sound adding a bassline or new sounds.

Musical instruments of Calabrian Tarantella are: zampogna, substituted often by organetto, with tamburello, in some areas was used Zampogna with Pipita and Fischiotta, while in Locride e Monte Poro was used calabrian lira. Rhythm is based on terzine with time in 12/8 and sometimes in 6/8.

Although there is homogeneity in Tarantella played and danced in all Calabria, there are some geographical differences: there is libera in east catanzarese, sonu a ballu in Aspromonte and Zumparieddu in Sila and Viddanedda in Reggio Calabria and style differences: fimminina (female style), masculina (male style), libera.

Tarantella calabrese is a man-women couple dance, but it could be also man-man and woman-woman, in a circular space made of moving people named "rota" (wheel). "U mastru i ballu" (Master of dance) decide the order of the dancers inside rota managed turns. Players outside rota follow and feel dancers and change music rhythm. In the past, during dancing, the people created a unique rota in the square where they danced.