The online versione of the article by Luca Barbieri is on the Il Tirreno web site, together with a video to become part of the Summer edition of the song. Below we are providing a fast-track translation of the main article.

The second article by Sara Landi provides more general background on the pibinko.org network (see this link for an equivalent picture).

More links

• The Gran(i)Tour presentation: https://www.pibinko.org/granitour24en/
• Supporting the project: https://www.pibinko.org/support/
• For more information, bookings, or to send your 15 seconds of Twist: micalosapevo@pibinko.org or +393317539228.

MASSA MARITTIMA.

The refrain is one of those that could also stick in your head: “Tatti bar” repeated several times. And if the notes might be hit -it’s actually difficult to listen to them without hinting a few dance moves, or in any case letting yourself be carried away by the sound at least for a few seconds – the video could really soon go viral. Groups of people (from various parts of Italy, with Maremma remaining the protagonist), individuals wriggling in everyday places, a horse (but there are also dogs), everyone going wild with the beat.

This is the “Tatti Twist”, the new track by the Jug Band Colline Metallifere, an international and “intergenerational” collective that since 2018 has been proposing “reflections on the territory, on the relationship between city and countryside and on little-known aspects in the rural area”, as they define themselves. A song to which the video released in recent days is obviously linked. The video was assemble with contributions collected through the “call” by the band, which had asked to send video clips with “twist shots” and then return – after a couple of months – a collective result.

How the idea was born

The genesis of the idea is explained directly by them: «Sometimes we try to explain apparently cold topics (nutrition, they cite as an example), sometimes slightly technical and slightly suggestive topics (the night sky and light pollution), sometimes different points of view on “soft mobility”. With the “Tatti Twist” we wanted to give ourselves a lighter moment. We put together the twist dancer curriculum of our one-string-bass player Wolfgang Scheibe (who took part in national competitions in Germany in the 1960s), with the story of many foreigners who discover Tuscany as the “promised land”, they add. In January they launched their “call”: looking for twist dancers for a music video. The call was in fact connected to the creation of the song, in English, which tells the story of a person who falls in love with Tuscany and choses to come and live in Tatti (“I went down to Tuscany looking for a place to be and I found its name Tatti, oh yeah”, the words that open the song, not by accident). «We would like to make a video clip of it – explained Andrea Giacomelli from the Jug Band – and we are looking for dancers, professional or less so, with a preference for amateurs», he explained. It would therefore have been enough to send a video of maximum 15 seconds, by the deadline.

The dancing horse

This is the recent past. Just a few days ago, the video was published. «Since January we have then sent invitations to our fans to propose some twist steps from their favorite “location” and we have added all the clips to the video: the participation was very good, about forty people from various latitudes between Cagliari (Sardinia) and central Italy. We also had some unexpected characters, including two dogs and a horse (we don’t know if a dancing horse is new in a music video, but it certainly doesn’t appear often…)”, they add. «The audio was recorded on November 1st, then the idea for the video in which around 40 people participated, the two dogs and the dancing horse which belongs to one of our fans in the area. Now we would like to receive further contributions and – after what we can define as a winter edition (since the material was in fact collected during the winter, ed.) – we are considering a summer version of the video, the “summer” of the Tatti Twist”, adds Giacomelli again to Il Tirreno.

Video contributions can be sent to the band on WhatsApp (+39 331 7539228); or by email (micalosapevo@pibinko.org). But they can also be sent to Il Tirreno Grosseto on Facebook or by email (grosseto@iltirreno.it); then they will be turned over to the musical group.

Tatti in the world

Returning to the words of the song, the “Tatti” referred to in the text – the band explains in their note – are two: the hamlet of Massa Marittima in the Colline Metallifere, where two of the members of the group live, while the Tatti bar «is a well-known venue in Stuttgart, which took its name from the Maremma village”, as we wrote in recent months when talking about a tour of the band.

The Tatti Twist, they recall, is one of the six songs produced by the Colline Metallifere Jug Band during the winter. And now the next period mark on your calendar is June with the Gran(i)Tour in Germany, with a stop also in Rovereto (Trento): «And an international preview in Vienna for the European Citizen science conference with Jack o’Malley representing the group.”

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…and the Tatti Twist: