Ciao ciao, my bellas! I hope you’re ready for some pizza and pasta, for today we journey to Italy, to explore the word: cantastoria.

‘Cantastoria’ is an Italian word which is a ‘theatrical form where a performer tells or sings a story while gesturing to a series of images. These images can be painted, printed or drawn on any sort of material.’ The word comes from the Italian for ‘story-singer’; ‘canta’ meaning ‘to sing’ and ‘history or story’. ‘Cantare’ comes from the Latin ‘canō’ meaning, ‘I sing’, and with the suffix ‘tō’ becomes ‘cantō’ which means ‘I sing’, but can also mean ‘I exchange, or call forth by charms, chant’. ‘Storia’ is from the Old Italian ‘istoria’, which in turn is from the Latin ‘historia’, from Ancient Greek ‘historía’, which means ‘learning through research’. 

Though the word is Italian, ‘cantastorias’ originated in 6th century India, where religious tales called ‘saubhikas’ were performed by storytellers who travelled from house to house with banners painted with pictures of Gods. ‘Yamapapaka’ was a similar style of storytelling, where performers with vertical cloth scrolls sung stories of the afterlife. Some of these stories continue to be performed by the Chitrakar women of West Bengal today.

Heading back to 16th century Italy, prayers would be sung next to illuminated scrolls as ‘cantastorias’, whilst the secular folks created ‘cantambanco’ or ‘singing bench’, where the performer would point to pictures with a stick whilst standing on a bench. Up until the 19th century there were blind men in Spain with a young ‘helper’ who would make their living by displaying illustrations whilst the blind man would sing a story, often about crimes, while his helper pointed at each illustrations. These were known as ‘romances de ciego’ or ‘blind man stories’.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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