One of the best perspectives with which to savor human existence was provided by Jacques Attali, when he declared that the world should not be looked at or read, but listened to. In the last hundred years, the propensity of many cultural projects has been to verify the "sounds" of the world, going beyond musical instruments, and benefiting from the incredible acoustic qualities that nature has given us a long time ago: stones, shells , flints or rudimentary ancient flutes are able not only to trace an aural path, that is, to determine our geographical position for listening, but are also capable of providing very particular sounds, which are the envy of any experimenter or builder of sounds.
How timely can it be to look at the past and ancient sounds? A lot. Given that any advancement in techniques will not be able to scratch the symbolic meaning attributed to music by a community, the challenge lies in knowing how to obtain the maximum result in relating sound practices spaced apocalyptically over time. It is something that is also based on respect for men and their concepts of life: today, faced with the spread of musical slavery that persecutes us, it is the same science that is asking for help from the arts, an ideological sustenance useful for facing truths that they hide in the power of music, sometimes disposed of in tribal practices or circumstantial rites.
Viandes's drawing, carried out by the musicians Stefano Leonardi and Antonio Bertoni, lands heavily in a field unwanted by the consumer society, in the same way that today visitors to a Paleolithic cave look with suspicion at the places and habits of their predecessors: the control and vanity of attitudes have overcome any will to restore an open channel to what is apparently not visible.
Viandes' idea is to regain possession of a communication that is through the inanimate, appropriately solicited: improvisations (those of today as well as those of long ago) worked on traditional instruments from a part of the world or on instruments prepared in such a way as to to grasp a constant reference to an implicit objective materiality, as the desire to represent the musical sense of the past and to develop a tactile sensitivity of the music.
It is a workshop of knowledge that takes place between the two musicians: on the one hand, Leonardi immerses himself in a series of temporal and geographical stratifications that can be connected to the exhalations: from the xun (an ancient Chinese globular flute) to the dilli kaval (a flute in Anatolian wood), from transverse flutes to Sardinian "pipes" (the launeddas, released in its three parts, and the silittu, an obsolete flute made of elderberry wood); on the other, Bertoni governs the laws of friction, dividing itself between the guimbri (traditional Gnawa stringed instrument) and the cello, prepared and played to live a carnal experience of rubbing.
The matter of "blowing" and the matter of "handling", intended as the main responsible for musical creation, meet for a rare session of beauty and instrumental simulation, of energy and instincts, capable of making us experience the overflow of sounds, the rough stone (maneuvers to approach ancient quarries or the pavement of one of our urban roads) or the industriousness of a community. They are very high-profile improvisation experiments, which we should all follow up, relying on what looks like a temporal "upside down" of the sound material. In two words, an apology for the future in defense of music. - Ettore Garzia
1. Lupercus 08:33
2. Fléau 07:13
3. Baccanale 04:00
4. Viandes 08:44
5. Hircus 03:14
6. Schiocco 01:55
7. Fatua 04:43
Antonio Bertoni – cello, guembri
Stefano Leonardi – flute, sulittu, dilli kaval, bass xun, launeddas (mancosedda, tumbu)
All compositions by Antonio Bertoni and Stefano Leonardi
Recorded by Antonio Bertoni on October 26, 2018, live acoustic sound, no overdubs
Mixed and mastered by Antonio Bertoni
