Sea and mines 2025: music, memory and future

The inhabited center of Portoscuso was born around the tonnara “su pranu”, built in the 16th century by the Cagliari merchant Pietro Porta and, over the centuries, has become the landing place for Sardinian fishermen, Ponzesi, Sicilians and French corallai, from which a unique cultural mixture has come to life. The tonnara today contains the memory of the maritime vocation of the territory, once linked to the fishing of red tuna and subsequently voted for mining and the metallurgical industry in nearby Portovesme, whose high chimneys affect, turning the gaze to Sudest. That permanent scar on one of the most beautiful coast in Italy, made of coves, white beaches and crystal clear sea, but also of Nuraghe and Domus de Janas, is a symbol of wicked industrial policies of the past, present and, perhaps, also of the future.

Despite everything, there are those who, along new roads with hybridized cultural interventions, have been trying for over twenty years of giving a new centrality to this wounded territory, but which still vibrates with workers’ struggles, suffering and conquests of men and women. This is the case of “Sea and Miniere”, a traveling review organized by the Cultural Association of the listed Cultural Association with the artistic direction of Mauro Palmas, who has found his place of the soul in Portoscuso, for a few years now. This festival, now in its eighteenth edition, has become an open -air laboratory of cultural resistance, a stage of exchange between generations, artistic languages and different geographical origins. A real unicum in the Italian music scene, both for the artistic proposal with the different original productions, and for the formative one as an incubator of young talents.

The central moment of the Festival was the week dedicated to the seminars of singing, music and popular dance which, this year, was held from 24 to 29 June in the old tonnara on Pranu. Over one hundred and fifty, among fans and more experienced musicians from all over Europe, have crowded the different internships whose peculiar didactic approach allows the study of traditional music by new perspectives, deepening vocal and instrumental techniques.

The training program, with two study sessions and rehearsals in the morning and in the afternoon, was accompanied by the rich program of evening events that opened on Wednesday 25 June with the unpublished meeting between Peppe Voltarelli and the little stable orchestra of the sea and mines. The eclectic Calabrian singer -songwriter has proposed an engaging live in which we listened to in a new guise historical songs of his repertoire as “Sta Città” and “sailors” from “Last night in Malastrana” and extracted from his latest album “The great race towards Lupionòpolis” including a poignant “Mareniro”, the reflective “Nun on Sulu Mai”, the ironic “Limone Squeeze” Swingante “Au cinema”. The visionaries and, often comic, introductions to various songs, to compose a theater-canzone show, enhanced by the instrumental charge of the orchestra little stable with the strings of Mauro Palmas and the clarinet of Marco Argiolas in evidence, are unmissable.

On the evening of June 26, “Our homeland is the whole world”, the original production of the Festival which saw, after over twenty -five years, the rearrangement of the show “Sometimes they return” from which the homonymous album of Mauro Palmas was taken, which together with Elena Ledda, Simonetta Soro, Maurizio Geri, Silvano Lobina, Marco Argiolas and Andrea Ruggeri, proposed an intense and current reinterpretation of songs As “I’m blind”, “from the beautiful cities”, “Red Shirt”, “Regazzine please listen to” and “Gorizia”, until you reach a choral “Stornelli d’imilio” of the Anarchist Pietro Gori. To tie the songs, the introductions of the writer and journalist Bruno Gambarotta, who offered a critical counter -anti to the flow of the songs. In closing, the popular dances in the square transformed the evening into a big party until late at night.

Even richer evening was that of June 27 with the recital “A word … and my voice sounds. Pasolini between music and poetry” curated by Elisabetta Malantrucco for Radio Rai Techeté, who saw the reciting voice of Simonetta Soro protagonist, flanked by Elena Ledda, Anna Lisa Mameli, Mauro Palmas (Liuto Cantabile and Mandoloncello) and Marcello Peghin (guitars). Refined and moved tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini, the show highlighted the relationship with music, through his poems, his songs and radio interventions, composing a unitary unitary story that has returned the strength of the poetic word as an instrument of truth. Following, in the late evening, Andrea Andrillo rose on stage who, accompanied by Silvano Lobina (bass), Fabrizio Lai (guitar) and Nicola Vacca (drums) proposed an intense set in which he presented the songs from his latest album “Fortunate possibilities”.

Saturday 28 June, another very dense evening program with the first part of the evening dedicated to “Sighida”, a project born from the meeting between Mauro Palmas and the young and talented organist Giacomo Vardeu, proposed in an unprecedented “extra large” version with the participation of the little stable orchestra and the cuncordu and content of Orosei. If on the disc we appreciated the brilliant dialogue between ropes and bellows and refined rhythmic interlocking, the presence of an extended formation with Andrea Ruggeri on drums, Marco Argiolas at the wind, Silvano Lobina on bass and Marcello Peghin on guitars has enhanced the expressive power, bringing out surprising connections with jazz, prog and rock in songs such as “minor dance”, “adelasia” and “Torra”, not to mention the vibrant versions of “Libera Me Domine” and “Naneddu Meu” with the voices of the cuncordu and tenor of Orosei. Following, the set of Sandra Bautista, winner of the 2024 edition of the Andrea Parodi prize, who climbed on stage with Claudia Bardagi (piano) and Cra Rosa (percussion). The Spanish singer proposed the songs from her repertoire between Catalan song and World Music, in which personal stories often peek on her experience and family.

To close the week, as usual, the collective concert of the participants in the seminars who shared the stage with the musicians who conducted the various workshops. An performance that testified the value of the sea and mines training course, not as a sterile replica of traditions, but as a generative space, in continuous dialogue with the present. This review is therefore confirmed as a festival that aims to enhance minority cultures, the denied memories, and that tradition that never needs to be projected towards the future for the new generations in search of roots.

Text, photos and videos of Salvatore EspositoEditorial director of www.blogfoolk.com

1. Peppe Voltarelli and the little stable orchestra of the sea and mines

2. “Our homeland is the whole world”, Bruno Gambarotta