Events

Details: Category: bovas; Last Updated on Wednesday, 14 February 2024 16:36; Published on Monday, 08 April 2013 14:59; Hits: 1279

Palm Sunday-Renactment of the myth of the Puppets-Persephones

Every year in March/April, depending on when Holy Easter falls, an ancient rite is celebrated on the Sunday before in Bova. The preparation of this rite takes place in the week before by the inhabitants, who join together in spontaneous workshops to build special sculptures, made from olive leaves and reeds, depicting women and adorned with wild flowers and first fruits. The 'pupazze' or 'palme di Bova' are made from olive leaves that all the people, men, women and children, weave with great skill and patience around a reed board. Once finished, they are adorned with flowers, fruit, ribbons and lace. After the blessing, the blessed palms are taken around the streets of the village and dismantled; the 'steddi' (i.e. the parts that make them up) are distributed among the people who keep them on a tree or in their homes. Opinions on the origins of this ritual differ. There are those who claim that the origin seems to be rooted as far back as prehistoric times, when populations used propitiatory rites to evoke the Mana (the Greek name for mother earth) for their crops and the fertility of the land.

There are those who maintain that the ritual derives from the myth of Persephone, traces of which are often found in local history and archaeology, and those who trace it back to Lent in the Byzantine tradition. The fact remains that it is an ancestral tradition, which the faithful renew every year, carrying 'pupazze', human-sized anthropomorphic statues with the features of a woman, in procession to the sanctuary of San Leo. Usually in Calabria, as in other regions of Italy, abandoned villages come back to life on holidays or in August when the inhabitants return in search of memory or even to alleviate the burden of guilt and abandonment, and the festivals of post-modern Calabria tell of this coming and going between old and new places. In Bova, a further step is being taken, one that is changing the face of the village and the surrounding area and is projected into the future, through initiatives such as Palm Sunday to promote the recovery of historical and cultural identity, but also the architectural recovery of the village so as to dissuade people from abandoning it and help them invest in new small business activities in tourism and beyond. For further information, we recommend: Volume 'All'ombra delle pupazze in fiore - antropologia di un rito nella Calabria grecanica' Edizioni Kurumuny 2010 , edited by Alfonsina Bellio.

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Novenary and patron saint's day of St Leo (5 May)

The feast of the patron saint St Leo is very much felt by all Bovesi, even those whose lives have taken them far away. Many return to Bova as early as nine days before to participate in the preparatory novenas. The recited texts and songs are very old and are passed down orally from generation to generation. The feast begins on 4 May with the procession that 'takes' the Saint out of the Sanctuary of San Leo where his remains are kept in a locked niche and he is accompanied to the Cathedral where he is watched over by the Confraternity of San Leo. The solid gold-plated wooden coffin supports the chiselled silver bust of the Saint, which is carried uphill through the winding streets supported by eight people who do so by vow and submission. On 5 May, from the Cathedral it is carried in procession through the entire village in the presence of the Bishop of the Archdiocese of Bova and Reggio Calabria and the authorities, and after the celebration of Holy Mass, it returns to its Sanctuary where it remains exposed to the faithful until 8 May. During the processions, the Confraternity of Saint Leo, one of the few still active in Calabria, precedes the Saint and the Brothers dressed in a white habit and a brown cape with a brown hood protect him while the municipal band punctuates the passages with soft, melancholic music.

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The Day for the Enhancement of the Language and Culture of the Greeks of Calabria

The Day for the Enhancement of the Language and Culture of the Greeks of Calabria has been characterised over time as the event par excellence for the promotion of the local language and culture. It has been consolidated over the years and the event constitutes a moment of festivity and celebration not only of Bovese Greekness but of the entire area. The day, held entirely in the Calabrian Greek language, also promotes artistic activities with musical and/or theatrical performances and local food and wine stands. Fundamental is the role played by the language day to bring children closer to the Greek language of Calabria through direct participation in the event, which every year includes the organisation of activities to learn the language in a playful and entertaining way. It takes the form of an important moment of cultural exchange with Greece through the involvement of the city of Thessaloniki, already present in Bova since the events for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

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Corpus Christi Procession

On this occasion, altars are prepared in the alleys, the streets decorated with flower petal arrangements and the balconies decorated with lace and blankets. People in procession accompany the Sacrament through the streets of the Borgo, which is carried by the parish priest protected by a small canopy (liturgical umbrella) held by the mayor. The municipal band plays sacred music, and children dressed as little angels lead the way throwing flower petals.

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Paleariza Festival

Festival of traditional ethnic and Grecanic music (August) This is an itinerant festival involving all 14 municipalities of the Grecanic area, an artistic event now recognised at national and international level that takes place every summer in August . Since 1997, the Palearìza® Festival, which in Calabrian Greek means 'Ancient Root', has sought to promote interculturalism, attention to Mediterranean cultures, the recovery of the identity of the minority culture of the Greeks of Calabria, and the eco-touristic enhancement of the internal areas of the Grecanico Aspromonte. The cradle of the Paleariza® Festival is precisely the Grecanica Area, with its capital Bova, and the ancient Greek Calabrian municipalities located in the Aspromonte National Park. But above all, the cradle of the festival is its people, its administrations, the many friends who have always been present over all these years, and the GAL Area grecanica Development Agency, the managing and owner of the brand. In thirteen years, a simple summer music event has been transformed into the 'Ethnomusical Festival of the Hellenophone Area of Calabria', a true tourist and cultural calling card for the entire area, which aims not only to be the ideal container in which to welcome the fragmented Grecanic cultural universe and mix it with musical and historical experiences such as Mediterranean sounds and rhythms, but also to represent a design laboratory in which to incorporate the Area's diverse and multiple cultural initiatives. The Area's ambition is for the Paleariza® Festival to become a territorial brand and for the collateral events proposed in periods other than summer to extend the Area's cultural season and to be useful tools to support and stimulate the existing system of local offerings.

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Christmas with the 'ninnarelle

One of the places where the charm of the Christmas festivities (Ta Christòjenna) can still be felt to this day is undoubtedly Bova, the Chora of the Grecanica Area, even though the nature of the places and the purely agro-pastoral living conditions during the winter period reserved little for the people except snow and hunger. In fact, the saying was 'sta Christojenna chioni ce pìna' 'at Christmas, snow and hunger'. Nine days before Christmas Day, the Ciaramèdde (bagpipes) announced the holy novenas (tes àjes novène), and by the light of the torches made of fir trees (zzinne o dede), people went to church from five in the morning accompanied by the sound of the bagpipes. Sounds and songs throughout the Christmas season with various instruments such as bagpipes, the accordion, tambourine and the classic zzarìno (trìgono) chased away the melancholy of hard daily work. On Christmas Eve, the table was set with thirteen different dishes that people had at home, such as cauliflower (làchano azze attho), roasted chestnuts (càstana affurrimèna), stockfish (piscistòccu), prickly pears (sika tu turku), walnuts (caridia), pears (appidia), buffèddhi i.e. sweets made with potato dough, zzippuli i.e. dough leavened and fried in oil, with anchovies or without nnacatuli fried sweets, pretali ( plutària) sweets made with flour, walnuts, figs, almonds and sometimes even honey.

In groups and in chorus, people went around the village to the houses to sing the ninnarelle, wishing them a happy Christmas, and at the end of the ninnarelle the players and children who sang were given something in money or in kind. Even today, on the nine evenings before Christmas, young people from Bova go around the village and the countryside playing the Ninnarelle, local and religious Christmas music. They stop in front of houses and, after playing, go inside to offer their greetings and warmth, and then continue their announcement in order to give the people a unique charm that they will carry in their hearts forever.