Gavino Murgia, soprano, alto, tenore & baritone saxophones,
Bassu Guttural, Launeddas, Sulittos, Thunder Tube,
Tumbarinu, Eventide for the saxophone
Michel Godard, Tuba, Serpent and electric bass
Patrice Héral, Drums, voice, electronic sampler, djembe, percussion
The sounds of an island
And yet here is that for countless centuries we fight without pity or remorse,
so love the carnage and death, oh eternal rivals or brothers relentless!
from „The man and the Sea“ by Charles Baudelaire, 1857
Everything is in their eyes. Both life and death, instinct that becomes fate, into
the trap on a journey of love towards the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic
down to Gibraltar, between Spain and Africa. But they see only Spain, who
gives “mattanza” its etymology: matar,
to kill.
Because the tuna swim always looking
to the left bank; they know that it is
the coast of heat, of love, of reproduction.
The bank that lures them down,
way down, towards beautiful islands ,
scented of mediterranean foliage and
the wood of boats. This is held in their
memory. Held also is, that once one
of them had carried ashore a puppet
and his father. But that‘s another
story.
Destiny betrays them in the middle
of their obstinate race. They come
into the nets cast by the fishermen,
miles of nets which they mistake
for the coastline, keeping them ever
to their left. An endless corridor, a
succession of five chambers from
which they could still turn back, but
their instinct urges them on, into the
death chamber, the inevitable end.
Once it was so, in Carloforte, one of
the Mediterranean‘s last, on-going
”tonnara”. Now ... No, now it‘s the
end of the tuna‘s end – millenial,
epic, sacrificial -. Now they are trapped,
transported to Malta, fattened,
slaughtered and sold as gold to
Japan. Red tuna threatened with
extinction. The schools of tuna in
migration intercepted by satellites.
Now is the end of „Man and the Sea“ and of „The Old Man and the Sea“, though
only a marlin, a solitary old fisherman, certainly a different sea. (qui non so
cosa voleva dire esattamente...) The end of those black and white photographs
of struggle, nets, fins, on the walls of pizzeri - as in the Tabarkin town.
The distorted end of love’s sacrifice.
„L’ultima mattanza“ is a decisive comment
on the sea, violated, abused, deceived,
at the end of a thousand-year history.
Gavino Murgia, Michel Godard, Patrice
Héral let down intertwi- ned nets of
sounds and voices and silences, into the
sea to the north of Saint Peter’s Island.
They recite ritual prayers, lending rhythm
to the ethnic rhythm of ancestral fishing,
ferocious, blood-stained red, each time
washed away by the sea. Three musicians;
a theater, Botti du Shcoggiu; a
chef, Second Borghero; and an ethical
publisher, Insula, have joined together
in this appeal to raise awareness. That
the tuna can remain in Carloforte, “la
mattanza” remain in Carloforte and in
Carloforte remain its history.
Raffaella Venturi