What is "piva"

The Piva ( Bosnian: Piva, Serbian Cyrillic: Пива, ) is a river in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, shorter headwater of the Drina river, which it forms with the Tara river on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Piva may refer to:

• Piva, a river on Bougainville Island, Solomon Islands
• Piva, a Guatemalan artist
• Piva (river), a river in Montenegro
• Piva, Montenegro, a region in Montenegro and the clan
• Piva language, a member of the Piva-Banoni languages
• Piva (bagpipe), an Italian folk instrument
• Piva (dance), a Renaissance dance
• Lake Piva, a reservoir in Montenegro.
• The Primrose International Viola Archive, a collection of viola music at Brigham Young University

Piva is an Italian Renaissance dance that may have originated from a peasant dance to the accompaniment of bagpipes. In 15th-century sources it is described as the fastest version of the basse danse. Antonio Cornazzano, for example, in his Libro del'arte del danzare (ca. 1455), explains that the music for the piva was also called cacciata, was in quadruple time beginning on the downbeat and was twice as fast as music for the basse danse . The term appeared also in the 16th century, applied to compositions for lute. The pivas in Joan Ambrosio Dalza's 1508 lute collection are very repetitive pieces in quick triple time, with no clearly defined structure. However, it may not be accurate to describe them as being in triple time, since the fast triple rhythmic groupings do not represent one bar each, but rather single beats divided into triplets, just like Thoinot Arbeau's mesure ternaire for the basse danse .

Piva is a historical region in modern Montenegro, which existed as a tribe also known as Pivljani in Old Herzegovina. It is situated in the northwestern highlands of Montenegro, bordering the Republika Srpska ( Bosnia and Herzegovina). The Piva lake flows through the region. It includes modern day Plužine.

The piva is a type of bagpipe played in Italy and the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland, such as Ticino, but it's also known in Croatia. The instrument has a single chanter and single drone.

Illustrations and scriptural evidences tend to suggest that a similar instrument was also used in Veneto.

In Italy it was traditionally played in an ensemble with the piffero (folk oboe) until the piva was replaced by the accordion in the 1950s.

The piva appears to have died out in Switzerland in the 19th century, but was revived in 1980 by Swiss-German folk musician Urs Klauser.