The Italo-Albanian Kalimera in the Parco Pollino in Calabria

In several regions of Southern Italy there is still a rural tradition to recite the Passion in the local dialects. They are Balkan dialects which are mixed with the local Italian dialect, but its ritual recitation is usually called kalimera («Good morning» in Greek). The present study compares five communities which perform the kalimera in a more or less liturgical context of the Holy Week: Spezzano albanese (Spixana), Acquaformosa (Firmoza), Lungro (Ungra), Firmo (Ferma), San Basile (Shën Vasili), Frascineto (Frasnita), and Civita (Çifti). The five communities use a corpus of texts which often follow a literary prototype created by Jul Variboba during the 18th century. Each village uses different melodies or strophic models usually a monophonic recitation by female singers, San Basile's recitation is even performed as a multipart song alternating between male and female singers, while the female multipart recitation of Spezzano must be regarded as a lost tradition. Organization: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), Union of Bulgarian Composers (UBC), and International Musicological Society (IMS)