Premio Andrea Parodi Cagliari, Sardinia. By Andrew Cronshaw.
B
ecause of global warming, nowa- days Sardinia’s flamingos don’t all bother migrating south for the winter, and some are still hanging
around on the salt pans and reed beds to the east of the island’s capital Cagliari in the still-balmy days of autumn when the Premio Andrea Parodi, Italy’s only world music competition, happens.
Andrea Parodi was a much-loved Sar-
dinian singer, with a soaring tenor voice, who drew on his island’s traditional and popular music and made musical friends around the world, including Al Di Meola, with whom he made a duo album in 2005. He died of cancer, aged 51, in 2006, and a Foundation was set up in his memory by his widow Valentina Casalena and family. Since 2007 it has staged the Premio, an annual competition usually happening in mid-Octo- ber. The musical director is another pillar of Sardinian roots music, singer Elena Ledda, with whom Andrea was working on the duo album Rosa Resolza when he died.
The Premio comprises three free ticket- ed concerts in which usually ten (but this year nine) finalist bands or soloists perform items from their own repertoires and one from Andrea’s. On the first night they play two of their own songs, on the second night one of their own and one of his. Also in the second concert, the previous year’s winner returns to perform; in 2018 it was Sardinian Daniela Pes with a powerful, rocky band set that showed how much she’s developed since her accolade last year. In the third, final concert performers play just their own competition song and there are also special guests from Sardinia, Italy and beyond.
The venue is the very well-equipped Teatro Auditorium Comunale in Cagliari’s
hilly central old town, with a small pre- event gig at Jazzino jazz restaurant by one of the foreign guests. Charismatic Peruvian singer Jorge Pardo did the Jazzino gig, a fine set exploring Afro-Peruvian musics. He’d brought with him brilliant Peruvian guitarist Francisco Rey Soto, and after just a day’s rehearsal with the Sardinian rhythm section – percussionist Andrea Ruggeri and bassist Silvano Lobina – it gelled like the quartet had always been together.
Andrea Parodi sang in Sardinian, so the competition tends to attract perform- ers who can sing one of his songs in that language or Italian, and they mostly come from across Italy as well as Sardinia, often singing in their regional dialects. One 2018 entrant, though, was the Cyprus-based trio Monsieur Doumani, who proved pop- ular, winning several of the prizes, includ- ing for best arrangement of an Andrea Parodi song. Sicilian singer-guitarist Giuseppe di Bella won the prize for best lyrics with his Ncucciarisi, and the overall winner was La Maschera from Naples, whose own song entry, Te Vengo A Cerca, in Neapolitan dialect and Wolof, alluded to refugees crossing the Mediterranean, a theme of sympathy that was notably and strongly echoed in every prizewinner’s competition song, and indeed those of vir- tually all the finalists.
In the final gala, when the Premio final- ists performed again and the winners were announced, Sardinia’s famous cantu a tenore vocal quartet Tenores di Bitti ‘Remunnu 'e Locu’ delivered their thrilling, drone-grinding polyphonic vocal sound when founder and leader Daniele Cossellu was presented with the golden disc trophy of the Premio Albo d’Oro 2018.
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glorious, high-point moment came towards the end of that final night’s show when all the guests appeared together in what was nominally a jam but gelled into something much more. The blend of Jorge Pardo’s male voice and the female voices of Elena Ledda and Venetian Duo D’Altrocanto formed a harmonising unity so rich, so perfectly bal- anced and magnificent that it moved one to the verge of tears of delight. One hopes that it wasn’t just this one-off and can be taken further. They were joined by a suitably splendid band comprising Macedonian guest guitarist Stracho Temelkovski, Rey Soto, Rug- geri and Lobina, and on mandola long-time Elena Ledda collaborator Mauro Palmas, whose new CD Palma De Sols had its release event earlier that day.
When I write about events and festivals I have in mind what sort of experience might be had by someone travelling a distance to them as audience, rather than as a privi- leged invited journalistic guest and in this case foreign jury member. Well – and I’m not getting a back-hander from the tourist board to say this – Sardinia’s an island rich in nature, history, tradition, mountains and seasides, so going to some Premio Andrea Parodi events (there are daytime presenta- tions and seminars too, but in Italian) and exploring Cagliari, combined with spending a few days travelling around other less urban parts of the island, could well make a good, and fairly inexpensive, holiday in the pleasant temperatures of autumn.
This year’s takes place on 10th – 12th Octo- ber and is accepting applications until 31st May. Among the prizes are a series of con- certs and festival appearances and a € scholarship.
premioandreaparodi.it
2018’s finale with Mauro Palmas, Stracho Temelkovski, Andrea Ruggeri, Jorge Pardo, Duo D’Altrocanto, Elena Ledda, Rey Soto.
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Photo: Andrew Cronshaw
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