Carnival in Mamoiada

The normative descriptions of folk customs, such as we find in ethnographic encyclopaedia, or in the representative publication of the Museum of Mediterranean Masques of Mamoiada about the local Carnival, lift the custom into a timeless sphere, adjust it to the rhythm of the eternal return. What was yesterday will be tomorrow as well, and the parade of the mamuthones and issohadores of Mamoiada appears before us from the obscurity of five thousand years as we would have experienced it by entering the stream of time at any of the carnivals in the past five thousand years.

The normative description highlights the actions repeated year after year, which are considered the essential elements of the custom, and the carriers of collective identity. Exactly because of this, it does not account for such casual and improvised actions of the realization of the custom, as, for example

• that the mamuthones and issohadores, while dancing through the village, en-route stop at every bar, where they dance around the room, and they get free drink in return;

• the villagers take part in the feast in a wide variety of carnival costumes, which, from a historical and symbolic point of view, are absolutely incompatible with the millenary tradition of the mamuthones, but this absolutely does not bother anyone;

• the participants of the parade again and again quit their ritual role, to interact with the relatives and friends, thereby strengthening social ties, and they take pictures with their mobile phones of the other millenary masquerade, the kurents invited from Slovenia to amuse the village, just as these latter take photos of them, and all the onlookers of all of them;

• and that this multi-threaded series of events, which waves on, halts and then restarts during many hours in several sites, unique and never repeatable, and only to be experienced here and in person, this is the very carnival of Mamoiada.

On the Milan flight a young Italian couple is watching me organizing the photos. “Where is this?” they ask. “In Mamoiada, Sardinia”, I reply. “Next year we will go there, too”, they decide.

Mamuthones in the bar. Video by Tibor Nagy

Maria Pittau: Su Beranu (Spring). From the album Raighinas (2004)

New blood. Video by Ildikó Fabricius

Growth-ring

Gavoi (Sardinia), 15th-c. parish church, Easter 2016

Gavoi, Carnival 2017

Carnival in Sardinia

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“If you want to see a carnival, as there is no other in all the earth, go to Mamoiada, where it begins on the day of St. Anthony, and you will see the herd in wooden masks, the mute and subdued herd, the defeated elders and winning young people, the sad carnival, the carnival of ashes, our everyday history, a joy seasoned with bile and vinegar, the bitter honey.” Salvatore Cambosu: Miele amaro (Bitter honey)

Just a few days, and Lent sets in. In the last days, however, from Shrove Sunday to Shrove Tuesday, the Carnival reaches its summit. It is celebrated in an especially archaic way in the villages of Sardinia. First and foremost in the secluded mountain region of Barbagia, which is culturally a kind of island in the island. And there, primarily in the village of Mamoiada.

Mamoiada is one of the oldest settlements in Sardinia. Next to it, in the double cave Sa Oche e Su Ventu was excavated one of the island’s oldest – twenty thousand years old – human habitation, and the huge rock-cut tombs under the village have been in use since the 6th millennium BC. In the Middle Ages, the remote and inaccessible mountain region could not be really achieved by the Catholic Church: in contrast to the rest of Sardinia, no monastic community has settled next to the village, and its only church was the small shepherd church of St. Cosmas and Damian, far from the settlement. This may also explain the survival of those very ancient carnival and spring-greeting fertility rites, which thousands of years ago were common throughout the Mediterranean, but today their remains are to be found mainly in the mountain villages of the Balkans.


The Carnival of Mamoiada begins on the night of 16 January, the feast of St. Anthony, when fires are lit and masquerade processions organized across the whole Mediterranean. The two types of the Mamoiada processions are the mamuthones and the issohadores. The former, who symbolize some kind of ancient animal or natural force, wear black sheep skin dress, black wooden mask and black cloth, and carry on their back twenty to thirty kilos of copper bells – “sa carriga” – with bone tongues, which accompany with a ghostly roar their slow, rhythmic procession. The latter follow them in red-white Renaissance – or as they say here, “Turkish” – dress, mostly in white masks, with lasso in the hand, with which they try to pull the viewers into the march. The procession ends at the bonfire lit on the main square of the town, where all the participants and spectators are offered a traditional Sardinian plate of beans with bacon, and the whole village is united in a Sardinian round dance – ballu tundu – around the fire.

Today we travel to the Carnival. Now we can illustrate this short report only with the pictures of the booklet of the Mask Museum of Mamoiada. On the evening of Shrove Tuesday we can hopefully publish our own photos on the feast.



Tenores di Bitti: Ballate a ballu tundu (Round dance). From the album Ammentos (1996)

Easter Sunday in Sardinia

In Oliena, the pitch-note of Easter Sunday is given by the young men – and recently also women –, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of ancient bandits, who since the early morning are continuously firing from the rooftops. Wherever we go down there, lead, shot and shell casings are continuously falling on our heads.


Oliena, Wild West. Recording by Lloyd Dunn, 27 March 2016

A procession starts from the church of St. Francis, with the statue of the Virgin Mary, who wanders the streets of the old town in search of her son. Meanwhile, in the church of the Holy Cross, amid polyphonic Sardinian folk songs, they decorate the statue of the Risen Christ, and then also another procession starts from the door of the church to the main square.

I turn back to the Holy Cross church for a photo of the empty square. A young woman in an apron stands on the corner, looking anxiously back and forth. “Has Christ already gone?” “Five minutes ago”. “Oh, Madonna. Every year I’m late.”


On the main square, along a path bestudded with rosemary branches, the two processions are approaching each other. The encounter takes place, s’incontru, which gives name to the whole festival. Christ bows before her mother, the Sardinian men before the Sardinian women carrying her. Then all the participants, and the entire public dressed in traditional costume, retires in double row to the St. Ignatius church for the Easter high mass. Along the main street, every bar has already put out the tables and chairs. The locals – and with them we, too – go from place to place, tasting the almond cakes offered for free at this time in every bar. Friends meet, groups condense and disperse, like colorful flocks of bird they are swirling in the maze of the aviary of the town.

Domingo de Pascua en Cerdeña

En Oliena, el pistoletazo del domingo de Pascua lo dan, literalmente, los hombres jóvenes del pueblo –y solo recientemente también la mujeres–, nietos y bisnietos de antiguos bandoleros, que desde primeras horas se dedican a disparar sin pausa en lo alto de los tejados. Por allá donde pasamos, plomo, proyectiles y cartuchos caen continuamente sobre nuestras cabezas.


Oliena, El Salvaje Oeste. Grabación de Lloyd Dunn, 27 de marzo de 2016

Una procesión parte de la iglesia de San Francisco con la estatua de la Virgen y recorrerá las calles de la ciudad vieja en busca de su hijo. Mientras, en la iglesia de la Santa Cruz, entre los tradicionales cantos polifónicos sardos, han decorado la estatua de Cristo Resucitado para también partir luego en procesión desde el portal mayor hasta la plaza principal.

Volvemos a la iglesia de la Santa Cruz para tomar una foto de la plazoleta vacía. Una joven en delantal dobla la esquina mirando nerviosa atrás y adelante. «¿Ya ha salido el Cristo?» «Hace cinco minutos». «Oh, Madonna. Cada año llego tarde.»


En la plaza del pueblo, sobre un lecho de ramas de romero van acercándose las dos procesiones. Tiene lugar el encuentro, s’incontru, que da el nombre a la fiesta. El Cristo se inclina ante su madre, los hombres sardos ante las mujeres que la llevan. Luego, todos los participantes y el público, todos vestidos con trajes tradicionales, se retiran en doble fila a la iglesia de San Ignacio para el solemne oficio de Pascua. A lo largo de la calle mayor, los bares ya han dispuesto las sillas y las mesas. La gente –y nosotros con ellos– vamos de local en local probando el pastel de almendra que regalan por cortesía. Los amigos se juntan, se forman y se dispersan los grupos girando como bandadas de pájaros de colores en la pajarera laberíntica de las calles del pueblo.

Holy Saturday in Sardinia • Sábado Santo en Cerdeña

On Holy Saturday, time stops in Sardinia, as the soccer ball in the air. In the valley of Ogliastra, in the towns of Gàiro, Ulassai, Osini, from the Descent from the Cross on Friday night to the Resurrection in Sunday morning, the churches are empty, the streets deserted, only an old woman passes along them with a pint of water brought from the public well. Heavy, drowsy sunlight trickles down the side of the valley, blending with the scent of the fresh green grass, rosemary and wild thyme, lizards and old men are basking in it. If the clouds did not fly up from the sea in the late afternoon to curtain off the sun like the purple shroud the stripped-down crucifixes of the churches, this day would never end.

El tiempo se detiene el Sábado Santo en Cerdeña como el balón de fútbol lanzado al aire. En el valle de Ogliastra, en los pueblos de Gàiro, Ulassai, Osini, desde el Descendimiento de la noche del Viernes hasta la Resurrección del Domingo por la mañana, las iglesias están vacías, las calles desiertas. Tan solo una anciana pasa con un cubo de agua del pozo. Un sol perezoso, dormido, se deja caer por la ladera del valle arrastrando olor a hierba, romero y tomillo; las lagartijas y los jubilados salen a aspirarlo. Si a la tarde no subieran las nubes desde el mar para ocultar el sol, como el velo púrpura que echan sobre los crucifijos sacados de las iglesias, el día no tendría fin.

A fizzu meu so coro (The heart of my son / El corazón de mi hijo). Religious song from the Barbagia, arranged by the great Sardinian singer Maria Carta, 1984 / Canto religioso de Barbagia, arreglos de la gran cantante sarda Maria Carta, 1984

Good Friday in Sardinia • Viernes Santo en Cerdeña

The church of St. Ignatius is covered in complete darkness, only the lanterns of the male and female ministrants are lit, as the procession starts from the sanctuary through the aisle and the medieval streets of Oliena. They visit seven churches in memory of the seven sorrows of Mary, they are lined with their lanterns in the front gate, while the members of the local confraternities – the religious associations who organize the Holy Week rites, which you see below in the the mosaic tiles – walk out and join them. The procession, which grew into a large crowd, returns in an hour to the church of St. Ignatius. Here in the sanctuary they have already set up the monumental medieval crucifix with movable arms, and the choir is assembled, dressed in Baroque folk costume, sings polyphonic religious songs. It is the beginning of s’iscravamentu, the tradition of the Descent from the Cross, preserved from the Middle Ages.

La Iglesia de San Ignacio está inmersa en una completa oscuridad, solo los faroles de los oficiantes iluminan al iniciarse la procesión desde el santuario, por el corredor y las calles medievales de Oliena. Visitarán siete iglesias en memoria de los siete dolores de la Virgen. Alineados con sus faroles ante la puerta principal, aguardan a que los miembros de las cofradías locales —como se ve en las fotos del mosaico de abajo— salgan y se reúnan con ellos. La procesión, que va creciendo hasta ser numerosa, volverá en una hora a la iglesia de San Ignacio. Aquí en el santuario ya han dispuesto el monumental crucifijo medieval de brazos articulados, y el coro se junta, con sus barrocos atavíos tradicionales, para entonar los cantos religiosos polifónicos. Es el principio de s’iscravamentu, el Descendimiento, tal como se ha transmitido desde la Edad Media.

Tenores di Bitti: Deus te salvet, Maria