Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

The preparations for a traditional sardinian festival.

Few musicians, surely, make their instrument before the performance. But that’s what Franco Tolu is doing, fitting together and holing slender lengths of reed. ‘When you’ve been making launeddas pipes for thirty years,’ he says, ‘it doesn’t take thirty minutes.’

Now he is shaping the trickiest bit, the mouthpieces, or canellino. With a pocketknife he chips two tongues into stubby reeds. He weighs them down with beeswax that was kept warm and pliant under his arm. The finished article is three pipes; two short, five-holed chanters and one long drone.

He tests it, puffing out his cheeks and blowing through all three at once. I never heard so much noise from so slight an instrument, it’s like having an elephant trumpet in your ear. The chanters make a melody, the drone a doleful wail. The pipes use the same principle as bagpipes but instead of a separate bladder, the musician fills his cheeks with air. Meanwhile, he breathes through his nose. If that sounds tricky, it is; Franco says that ‘if you don’t learn the launeddas as a child, you never will’. But he isn’t satisfied with the tone, and adds more beeswax.

I’m in the small town of Maracalagonis on the outskirts of Cagliari in southern Sardinia. While the celebrities head north to the glamorous Costa Smeralda the real heart of the island beats in little towns like this one, where an extraordinary cultural continuity is practised. Yesterday, in Cagliari’s archaeological museum, I saw a bronze figurine of a man playing a three piped instrument exactly like the one I’ve just seen made. It’s from the Nuraghic Culture, and it’s over two thousand years old.

Here, in an attractive shady courtyard, workers are preparing for Sa Festa, a feast and a show put on for local weddings and, increasingly, curious visitors. A couple of capped men roast boar piglets on spits over a crackling open fire. The pig’s skin has been lashed with thyme to strip the hairs off. Long skirted women lay out bowls of olives on crisp white tablecloths. A girl slits and curls dough to make fanciful baroque whirls. When glazed and fired, the surrealist buns will be used as decoration. She makes for me a traditional Sardinian easter egg – a flat figure of a dough woman with a wide skirt, with a boiled egg affixed over the stomach with a strip of dough. It seems bluntly pagan.

There are still a few hours before the feast is set to begin so I go for aperitif with Carlo, the manager’s son. Maracalagonis is languid in the afternoon heat. Old women sit in the shade of palm trees outside the church and young toughs stand outside bars with beers and cigarettes – the men aren’t being ominous, just law abiding, smoking being banned inside.

The bodywork of Carlo’s car is heavily scratched from trying to negotiate the town’s narrow alleyways. Over a mirto, the Sardinian liqueur made from myrtle berries, Carlo explains how the Sa Festa venture snowballed from a venue for local celebrations into a tourist attraction that can host three hundred guests in one night. He feels that this is an exception; generally the Sardinians of the south are not good at making others aware of their rich culture, and blames their insular nature.

Island races usually go out and explore the world, but not the poor Sardinians; for them, the world came and beat them up. So they retreated to the hills and looked in rather than out, over the centuries developing a culture that is rich and, to outsiders, rather strange. I think of the pictures I have seen of village festivals, where men swathed in heavy goat skins stamp and jump to make the bells hanging from their body ring. In seems a long way from the urbane sophistication of the mainland. They must be doing something right, however; these inland Sards are some of the longest living people in the world. Carlo’s convinced that that is the benefit of their diet.

We visit the Coronas, three generations of sweet makers, who are busy making Sa Festa’s exquisite deserts, with sure hands that don’t need measuring tools to get the right quantities.

Laetitia, the youngest at eighteen, is making is making amaretti cakes. She explains that nowadays most people mix the ground almonds with wheat, and decries the practise. The almonds she’s using have been roast in the wood fired oven in the courtyard then ground with a pestle and mortar.

Her mother, Christina, is making a star cake by pouring caramelised sugar, almonds and lemon peel into a wooden mould. As well as the delicious roasting almonds, I can smell oranges – Anna, the eighty four year old matriach, is grating dried peel. She’ll use it in Pardulas, little cakes make with ricotta cheese and saffron. It’s a charming cottage operation, and the ladies won’t let me leave until I’ve sampled everything.

Back at the courtyard, juniper branches have been spread across the entrance way, and their delicious fragrance is released as they are stepped on. The dancers have arrived, and are changing into the Sardinian traditional dress of long black skirts and waistcoats. Carlo tells me that not so long ago it was common to see villagers in traditional dress, but now they only wear it on special occasions.

In a side hall, the pasta operation is in full flow. One cook is whipping up fregola. It’s simply stone ground wheat mixed with water and agitated by hand until it adheres into little pellets. It’s one of the oldest forms of pasta, a staple of the Sardinian kitchen first imported from north Africa. It sounds simple to make, but there’s more to it than it looks, as I discover when I give it a go. The tricky bit is getting the lumps all about the same size. The cook reminds me to always whisk anti-clockwise and pretends I’m doing well.

Malloredus shells are being made by pressing a sheet of pasta against a basket, then rolling up finger sized smidgons. A third cook is making ravioli, moulding a paste of three kinds of cheese and folding it into a pasta package. It all looks absolutely delicious, and Iﾕm impressed with the care and dedication.

I ask Carlo what the Sardinian is for free range and organic and he doesn’t even understand the question; everything is free range and organic, so he don’t even understand the concept. He advises me not to eat too much of the sausages now sizzling in a long spiral over the fire, or the ravioli now being ladled with rich sauce, as I must leave space for the boar; it’s rich and gamey and has little fat. By now, I’m feeling incredibly hungry, and glad that the guests are starting to turn up.

Most are Italian tourists, who have paid only forty Euros for this four course feast. As they arrive they are serenaded by Franco Tulo with his langueaddas. They are given a glass of wine, Moscato (sweet) or Malvasia (dry), made from a grape that the Romans would have used.

An accordionist and a guitarist play folk songs as the chefs, now changed into traditional dress, dish out the antipasti. The spits are hoisted up like pennants, three pigs impaled on each, to great applause. Carlo proposes a toast, Franco plays a jig, the skirts of the dancers rustle as they prepare themselves, and the party starts.

| The Italian magazine | Jan 07 |