Carnival is celebrated everywhere in Calabria. The celebrations take various forms: masquerades, parades (recently also including floats), dances and enactments, including farces and funerals. The sonic component is central in these celebrations, whether it is traditional music played live, pop music played through loudspeakers, sounds produced with objects and other devices or shouts.
In Alessandria del Carretto, the Połëcënëllë biëllë parade the streets with beautiful costumes and masks. They wear a bell for herd animals on their belt and let it ring while merrily walking with gracious skips. Bagpipes, accordions and frame drums accompany the parade, which spreads sound and music across the town. The Połëcënëllë biëllë occasionally stop in an alley or a square for a dance, during which they mute their bells.
The tour ends at the main square, where the Połëcënëllë biëllë‘s pretty dances are abruptly interrupted by the Połëcënëllë bruttë, Coremm and the Bear, who wreak havoc among the crowd, scaring children and throwing ashes on the bystanders’ feet. Their sounds are unsettling, with screams and bells ringing chaotically.
In the various enactments, Carnival is impersonated as a gluttonous man with a huge belly who loves eating sausages and drinking to the excess. He is often opposed to Corajisima, who is thin and warns Carnival against the excesses of food and wine. She impersonates the restrictions of Lent and the fasting imposed before Easter. Eventually, gluttony signs Carnival’s fate: he eats himself to death or chokes on food.
In Girifalco, Carnival’s casket parades the town like an actual funeral. Carnival is grieved with hilarious and witty remarks on his lust for food and wine shouted through the streets. Although the parade is small, its sounds are overwhelming: wailers (Carnival’s widow, friends and relatives) shout their sorrow, responded by the bystanders’ jokes, while the band plays funeral marches and merry melodies accompanied by air horns and honking cars.