Mad Sardinian Concert

It's been a while, but we managed to get some music this weekend. Firstly a folk club on Friday night, then a free concert at a Southbank concert hall on Saturday.

I don't know where the money come from for these free concerts but they are quite regular. In this case, it was a proper hall, full audience, real ticketing, and freebies on the seats to boot. Brilliant, and all at the cost of the train ticket into town. I suspect a tourist board must have had a hand in this one, as it was accompanied by plugs about the beauties of Sardinia. The audience seemed to have a bias towards Italian, too, and there was a very laid-back feel to it.

It was a great concert in its own right, though. A trumpeter of apparent fame was the key man and musical director, and it was a fusion (or maybe collision) of folk music and jazz, with a character which was nothing like anything else I've seen (not that I'm all that experienced yet). The first half showcased the music and performers, and then the second half was a kind of live soundtrack to a carefully put together mix of monochrome archive footage from 1930s Sardinian life.

I have to say the performances were quite remarkable. There was a four-part male choir (billed as polyphonic), a female singer, a special-effects cellist, a bassist, a drummer. Besides that there was the trumpet (and flugelhorn) man, a man on a guitarish instrument that I think was called a Mandola, a punk jazz accordionist, and a quite incredible man playing what I have to call the madpipes - apparently a type of Sardinian folk instrument. They were like wooden flutes or recorders, appeared to come in different varieties according to key, and he mostly played two at once. More than that, he played them in a continuous flow that made me quite tired to watch: the notes just never stopped! I remember learning about circular breathing when I had trumpet lessons, and this was obviously that. The playing never stopped for an "in" breath. Mind-boggling.

The actual music flowed back and forth between mellow melodic folk with a bit of beat to full-on free-form jazz. The accordionist appeared to be able to do both at once, but then what can you expect from a man with a skull-and-crossbones on his beanie hat. Each instrument had a bit of a solo, and in the case of the cello, seemed to be out to prove that you don't need anything else in order to provide all the sound effects for a film.

The film segments struck me oddly. It was nice to see tradition and old-fashioned ways live on film, and lots of it was lovely. But I felt there was an uncanny resonance between the people and the brethren as I know them, and I'm not sure exactly why that was. They looked wholesome, I suppose, and the dress sense had a similar feel even though they were wearing traditional Sardinian folk costumes and the brethren wear modern styles. I think it was the feel more than the look, and the air of always having something practical to be getting on with. Anyway, it felt exotic and oddly familiar at the same time.

To sum up, this was well worth an evening out. Anybody with access to London shouldn't dismiss a concert because it's free - they can be very good!