The sounds of the band are undoubtedly an integral and essential part of those rites, sacred and profane, which characterized the patronal feasts of the south and of Puglia in particular because they offer the most spontaneous and immediate musical commentary. They perform a double task: they translate what is being done into musical affections and reinterpret the ancient lesson of the Neapolitan school of music with a fluid and only apparently obvious melodic vein; that musical teaching, exemplary ferried in the nineteenth century by Fedele Fenaroli (1730-1818), Niccolò Zingarelli (1752-1837) and by the Altamuran Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870), which expresses itself in the marches in an immediate and effective way through ideas and music by composers from Fasano and not, who formed the repertoire of marches between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, integrating it with loans and reductions from melodramas. This last aspect of the reduction from the opera also shows how much the melodrama was widespread, felt, appreciated, reinterpreted and performed in many forms (often far from the original) in a time when it was difficult to enjoy it (if not in the theater ) due to the absence of record diffusion. The publication of this record testifies on the one hand the passionate attachment to tradition and on the other the intelligent and timely initiative to promote the area and its extraordinary history and culture.
