Join Italian Charities of America For A Documentary Film Screening of Musical Journeys with the Black Madonna in Southern Italy & A Southern Italian Folk Music Concert by Alessandra Belloni & I Giullari Di Piazza. In-Person Event on Saturday, June 7 at 7:00pm - Doors Open at 6:30pm. 83-20 Queens Blvd, Elmhurst, NY. Click Here To Reserve Your Seat.

Italian Charities of America invites you to an evening of Southern Italian culture featuring a documentary film and a Southern Italian Folk Music Concert. The documentary film Musical Journeys with the Black Madonna in Southern Italy is written and produced by Alessandra Belloni and directed and edited by Francesco Piccolo.

After the film we will conduct a short Q&A session with Alessandra Belloni. Following after with a Southern Italian Folk Music Concert featuring Alessandra Belloni and I Giullari Di Piazza.

The concert will feature Southern Italian folk music and dances featured in the film, including the traditional drumming and dance of the Tammurriata in honor of the Black Madonna, sacred chants for the Black Madonna from the regions of Campania and Sicily, Sicilian tarantellas, Neapolitan love songs and original compositions by John T. La Barbera and Alessandra Belloni featured in their opera ‘THE VOYAGE OF THE BLACK MADONNA’ (Premiered at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1991).

ABOUT THE FILM: This documentary takes us on a mystical journey of initiation, transformation, and empowerment with award-winning musician and author Alessandra Belloni as she unveils the secret healing powers of the musical traditions of the Black Madonna in Southern Italy. In footage never before seen outside of Italy, the film immerses viewers in a world of ritual and magic where ecstatic devotional music and dance powerfully transform and heal the heart and soul throughout the beautiful land once known as Magna Grecia. The film reveals this devotion in all its vibrant complexity as a living descendant of ancient women’s wisdom traditions and the veneration of mother goddesses. We follow a series of musical pilgrimages that Belloni leads each summer to the Southern Italian regions of Campania and Sicily, visiting the sacred sites of the Black Madonnas known to local folklore as the “Seven Sisters.” It is an intimate and participatory journey, with the camera closely following Belloni and her students as they learn and perform the music and dances associated with each Madonna, taking part in the feast-day celebrations and experiencing their power and mystery in the first person. It also features workshops of ritual drumming and dance featuring authentic tarantella and tammurriata in the region of Campania, led by Belloni and featuring guest artist Nando Citarella on percussion and vocals. The film includes footage of the rituals never before seen outside of Italy, as well as archival footage collected over Belloni’s forty years of fieldwork, offering a global audience intimate access to this little-known ancient tradition.