I picked up a nice little survey of Maltese folk music when I was there a few years ago: Guze Cassar Pullicino and Charles Camilleri, "Maltese Oral Poetry and Folk Music", Malta University Publishers (1998), ISBN 99909-44-18-0.

Didn't hear anything at all like what the book describes, though.

I wasn't very impressed with contemporary Maltese culture in general (bread pudding excepted). They probably have lots of songs about trapping songbirds and blasting them out of the sky with shotguns.