Deep into deepest Sardinia...

To Barbagia, the interior Sardinia, where I inadvertently ate fried sheep brains (they were tasty)and was glared at by a raven-haired waitress. But not or for eating brains. In fact I am not sure what her problem was.
Barbagia is the island’s Wild West. Well, like the Wild West if the West were in the centre, if you get my drift.

Monica and I took a weekend trip there with two Swiss-ettes (Svizzara in Italiano) and an Irishwoman (Irlandesa).

One of the Swiss gals had to drive because the car rental agency at the Alghero airport wouldn’t accept the ridiculous excuses for identification we call our Yukon drivers’ licenses because the documents -- which everyone in Yukon will readily admit looks like something a junior high student produced on a Gestetner -- lack international standing. Which is akin to saying that even the mafia wouldn’t accept your personal references because the references lacked credibility, but I digress.

Our quest also coincided with a storm the peeps of the Mediterranean call a Mistriale (mistral wind). Which meant there was some wind and a cool rain; by that I mean cool in the context of the Mediterranean basin. By Canadian standards it was a warm rain. Very warm. Sort of like walking around outside with the output of a shower head pouring down on you.
There were some smallish trees broken by wind when we returned to Alghero on Sunday afternoon, so I suspect the west coast of the island (where Alghero is situated) bore the brunt of the storm.

Barbagia, from what I’ve heard, is the one area of Bronze Age Sardinia that was able to hold back the invading Iron Age Roman invaders back in the day, “the day” being 238 B.C.

Barbagia is named by Romans not for the fact that the Barbagians wore beards (some times even their men, too. “Barbe” meaning beard in Latin and romantic languages. NO - the real reason the Romans called the Sardi Barbarians was more onomatopoeic in source: the isolated Sardi islanders spoke their own version of Latin that was just far enough removed from the mainland that the Romans said the Sardis sounded as if they were mumbling “Bar-bar bar-bar bar.”

One of the things we also saw (well we saw several, actually) are these preistoric (Bronze Age) stone structures called Nuraghes. They can be quite large, up to two/three stories, and they would house whole family units back in the days up to 10-15 thousand years ago. And a lot of these things are still around and some have been restore to more or less orignal condition.

This is the kind of current events you learn when you go out for beer with a Sardinian musician.

Which brings me to Claudio, who sings and strums on his Brazilian-made classical guitar. And he also loves Joni Mitchell, which makes me very proud. He did a little rendition of Circle Game totally improvised. He also likes Ornette Coleman.

Claudio is also a part-time teacher. He gave us a lesson on traditional Sardi music, which blew me away.

He brought traditional instruments to our music lesson and he PLAYED them: flutes from the interior of the island (Barbagia), strange reed-based things that are half clarinet and half bagpipe, and a weird, weird drum that has a reed going onto the middle of the drum head. You wet down the reed and rub the reed and the drum makes a sound that is part percussive and part tonal. The instrument Claudio brought was made in Majorca (Spanish island) but the Sardis also used them.

This particular instrument was covered with goat skin, but legend had it the best sound came form a drum that was made from a dog that had starved to death. I kid you not.

In any case, there are lots of good musicians inland and Claudio told us a few still make their own traditional instruments.

He also, from a CD, played us some music known as Tenores…an ancient style of chanting or chorale music done in three parts and unique to Sardenia. Very eerie. Makes me want to set a vampire story here.

Another cool thing about the interior of the island is a town called Orgosolo. There all sorts of really cool political murals painted on the walls there. You can see photos of some of them on this post.