Catanzaro, Ettore Castagna e la lira: la vivida testimonianza di un mondo antico e mai perduto

by Vittorio Pio – La Nuova Calabria
images Catanzaro, Ettore Castagna and the lyre: vivid testimony to an ancient world that has never been lost Ettore Castagna, a native of Catanzaro living in Bergamo but a migrant by destiny and an anarchist at heart, is a character who defies categorisation: researcher, anthropologist but also a highly regarded writer. His artistic output is fluid and encompasses various experiences: from Re Niliu, a group that pioneered a sharp ethnic sound, to a solo career that recently saw him debut with “Eremìa”, a highly inspired album with a singer-songwriter style, released by Alfa Music some time ago. In his latest work, he has focused on the lyre, a fascinating stringed instrument with only three strings, a witness to an ancient and never lost world.

“Lira sona sona” is the eloquent title: it is a commission published by www.nota.it, reserved for him by none other than the prestigious Faculty of Ethnomusicology at the Sorbonne in Paris. It is a raw and magnetic album that stirs the soul and reveals the roots of a dimension originating from ancient yet unsurpassed masters: “This is an album,” he begins, ‘that I should have made thirty years ago but never did because I was constantly distracted by other things. I’ve always done too many things at once. In the last decade, I have perhaps definitively distanced myself from philological reinterpretation, but I would add that Destiny has resolved the issue. One morning in May 2023, the illustrious Professor Dider Demolin appeared at my door in Bergamo, immediately striking me as very determined. ‘I came to see you because I need to talk to you about a project…’ he began, and then launched into a speech that I found hard to believe, given my not always peaceful relationship with the academic world, at least in Italy.

A sort of investiture in the field, in short…
‘Fortunately, that had already arrived earlier. Didier is a smiling scientist, frank and direct, without any rhetoric. ’You are the historical witness of the Calabrian lira,‘ he continued, ’so it’s up to you to summarise your experience, essentially about yourself, since you represent the Italian Bartok.”

Wow, what a shock!
“In fact, once I had recovered from that, what could I say? Maybe no? Never. With the valuable support of an important international sponsor, the album was recorded at lightning speed in a month. I did almost everything myself, recording between Reggio Calabria and Bergamo. There were very few external contributions. I would describe it as an ethnographic album, hard, frank, direct: the lyre as it has been played for centuries and as I have been playing it since 1985. However, I must mention my wonderful companions on this journey, the voice of Jenny Caracciolo, very ancient but sometimes with neo-melodic undertones, and the primordial sound of Mimmo Morello. Peppe Muraca and Anna Cinzia Villani also participated in the album.”

What does contemporaneity mean to you? Why do you insist on playing the lyre in this way? Aren’t you afraid of archaeology?
“I may be trivial, but my idea of contemporaneity is very philological. Everything that exists at this moment, that exists with me at this moment. Playing the lyre in such an ancient way seems limited to many: drone chords, modal scales with altered notes, insistent, dirty and primordial rhythms. No vibrato and no spectacular scales with Paganini-style position jumps, but circularity, continuous, hypnotic recombinations. Sometimes when I play alone, when I play for myself, I lose myself in dilated and infinite times in these cycles of micro-variations and microtones. I think more of Steve Reich and Terry Riley than of the virtuosity of romantic strings… And I must tell you that by proceeding in this way, I find peace of heart.”

You have been living in Bergamo since the late 1980s, far from Calabria, and almost obviously, as well as inevitably, you have achieved greater acclaim elsewhere. How do you feel now compared to when you left? Does the consideration of not being a “remnant” weigh on you? Or does Calabria remain, as someone has already said, a place of the mind?
“The illustrious De Martino said that it is necessary to have a village in one’s memory, and Pavese said that one “needs” a village, even if only to leave it. Calabria is the village of my memory. I have a non-rhetorical view of Calabria and I accept what my region of birth is today, just as I jealously guard the memory of what it was before and when I left. I am a supporter of memory and a sceptic of nostalgia. Memory is restoring things as they were. Nostalgia is Leopardi’s remembrance, it is transforming the past for better or for worse. “I want to be a witness even when there is no one left to bear witness to,” says Cassandra by Christa Wolf. And that is what I think.”

Let’s stay with regional themes: if I’m not mistaken, Paleariza was founded in 1998, Tarantella Power (now Kaulonia Tarantella Festival) in 1999, Primavera dei Teatri in 1998, and Joggiavantfolk in the same years. Today, Primavera dei Teatri is considered one of the most important festivals on the Italian theatre scene precisely because of its openness to other realities and territories, while Paleariza no longer takes place. Kaulonia Tarantella Festival finds itself almost forced to invite TV personalities, almost old glories, whom no one really considers from an artistic point of view, in order to get coverage in the local press, and Joggi Avant Folk remains a festival based on volunteering, like other commendable initiatives that have not lasted. What do you think happened?
‘What happened is that the political and cultural levels in Calabria do not communicate with each other. Politics is stagnant, incapable, insensitive, depressed. It reflects the dismay, disenchantment and lack of dreams of the electorate. Quality is not important, it does not deserve funding. Calabria lives for a fortnight in August, and the yardstick of politics for funding entertainment in general is the so-called “sausage meter”. How much sozizzu have you sold? A lot? OK, then the festival went well’.

A few days ago, the first bagpipe player graduated from the conservatory in Nocera Terinese. But as far as I know, “u sonu”, which is also the subject of your research, has declined sharply at traditional festivals. On the other hand, CDs and books on the subject are being printed. Does this seem logical to you? What could be an effective policy for the cultural and tourist promotion of local traditions?
“Until a few years ago, we were ashamed of our grandfather’s barn because it smelled of animals and manure. Today, we are asking for funding to turn it into a panoramic space with a hot tub inside a farmhouse. This is what has happened. Peasant and pastoral culture has been the subject of centuries of historical shame. After throwing the baby out with the bathwater, today we are left with regret. Nostalgia is rampant for what we never really knew because it was the object of absolute historical and social rejection. We want the so-called “tarantella” back, we want the so-called “tradition” back. The South seems like an Indian reservation where the defeated natives stage their own hypostatic rituals to earn a few quid from tourists. Calabria has its repertoire… chilli peppers… the tarantella… even the ‘ndrangheta… There has never been a truly serious policy of critical analysis of the history of Calabria and the South. Only such a process, with the awareness it brings, could have value as a founding element of a project for the future.

What do you consider to have been the greatest satisfaction of your artistic career? What is the difference between writing a song and writing a novel?
I am very proud to have always stood tall. I have always played, sung and written what I liked to write at the time. I have never chased trends. I did everything possible and, often, the impossible to ignore them. I like to write timeless music and books. Records that you will listen to in ten or forty years and think that they still speak to you. I’m not interested in being up to date, following the so-called mood. I have worked and continue to work hard to be myself and to remain so. Within my music and my writing there is the punk bassist of the 1970s, the traveller, the lover of philology, the reader of classics and the beat generation, the player of traditional instruments, the anthropologist, the vinyl collector (which was stolen from me), the postmodern emigrant, the documentary filmmaker, the journalist, the professor of literature… A song can be very different from a novel. Not only because a feature film is different from a short film, but also because I follow the teachings of my dear, unforgettable friend Mario Giacomelli. He once told me, “When I get excited while taking a photo, it means that it will certainly be a great photo”. This applies to everything: photos, novels and songs.

What’s in store for you in the coming months? I know you already have at least one, if not two, albums of unreleased material ready, and what are you listening to today, motivated solely by the pleasure of doing so, without any repercussions on your research?

“I am a chaotic but global listener. I don’t have any reference genres. I generally avoid the mainstream but end up listening to it anyway. I don’t like opera, with rare exceptions. The beauty of it is that everything you listen to inevitably has an impact on what you write and play. But this is my artistic way of experiencing contemporary life. Generally, for superstition’s sake, I am rather stingy with previews of the future. I’m working on my next and second album as a singer-songwriter, which should be out by 2025. However, as I don’t have any big, rich productions behind me, the timing is uncertain. That’s what I’m proud of: my entire artistic life, in writing and music, has always been self-produced. I’ve always decided everything myself… full stops, commas, even square brackets.

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