The Amalfi Coast has a song for every occasion, whether the occasion is a procession of "battentes" or a lemon harvest. People sing to pray, to keep them company at work, in the fields or on the boats, to say thanks or to implore, for pleasure, to woo or deride, to narrate or lullaby, to favour a good haul of fish, to invoke a safe return, to overcome the grief of a bereavement. In addition to songs, also music and dance deserve a special mention. The heady "tammurriata" with its uncontainable explosion of energy and violent physicalness, the more sophisticated "tarantella", the frenzied "pizzica" that seems inspired by an imperious, overpowering interior force: as a community instrument dances interpret, imitate, deny, exasperate the reality of everyday life, so as to exorcise or celebrate it. An essential role in all this is played by music and the obsessively repetitive rhythm of guitars, "putipù", "triccheballacche", castanets and "tamorre": ancient musical instruments, created by the art of lutists or thanks to popular invention, with remote Arab ancestors or built with the ingenious use of leather, tin boxes, old earthenware pots. They are melodies, sounds, words, gestures that interpret and communicate everyday living with its rites, times and significance: they are representations of themselves and their world, expressions of their hopes, fears, joys and grief, of their enjoyment and everyday fatigue that popular tradition has decided to and succeeded in sublimating, in a manner all its own.