The narrative song is a definition that identifies a typology of repertoires attested throughout the European continent, particularly widespread in northern Italy, with extensions in central Italy and a rarer presence in the south and in the islands. The narrative song, of which traces can be found as far back as the Middle Ages, emerged above all in the 16th century and is subsequently documented in vast areas of the Italian territory from the 19th century onwards.

The performance of narrative songs can be monodic or polyphonic, with or without instrumental accompaniment. The story contained in them is generally based on the complete development of a tale, concatenating strophes that construct a story about love and passion, often dealing with crime and cruelty, generally defined by  few protagonists and a quick and concise sequence of facts and actions. For this reason, the narrative song provides for the immediate recognition of the verbal part and the prevalent use of Italian, although there are not infrequent dialectal additions and influences.

When polyphony dominates the song, the singers have fun performing chords, spacing , divarications and unisons before returning to the initial harmonic structure. Performed and transmitted in contexts of public or private entertainment, of an almost always collective nature, the narrative songs were sometimes the expression of particular specializations or, in the case of the singing story-tellers, of itinerant professionalism. Many popular songs in the Laga mountains were transmitted by the so-called camplesi (people from Campli’s nearbies), door-to-door storyteller singers who travelled around the territory periodically, encouraging the transmigration of the repertoires.

Don Nicola Jobbi first recorded a group of women from Cesacastina singing some narrative songs while they were working in the kitchens of the village school during a summer camp in 1965. Elgisa Giustiniani, Emilia Ridolfi, Maddalena Baldassarre and Costanza Romani sang a significant portion of their narrative repertoire, from La montanara ( The mountain girl) to La pastorella, (The Shepherdess) from Lu marënarë (The sailor) to Mia cara Emma (My dear Emma), ​​a variant of La Madre Resuscitata (The reborn mother) collected by Costantino Nigra among the popular songs of Piedmont. In a subsequent visit to the village he also documented the elderly transhumant shepherd Palmerino Marrocco, holder of a vast repertoire of songs and poems in ottava rima , poetic fragments taken from the chivalric epics,  lamentations and sacred cantatas for religious services, generally used during processions.