As it often happens, the specimens preserved in the collections of CAMS – University Centre for Science Museums University of Perugia, the material heritage, are the starting point of different communication paths that use the intangible heritage, represented in this specific case by the musical heritage, as cultural mediators. The sound journey in the footsteps of the naturalist-explorer Orazio Antinori from Perugia has been conceived both to celebrate in a different way the memory and the cultural and human heritage of a great Umbrian scientist and naturalist, and to activate a therapeutic principle in addition to the treatments undertaken to alleviate the malaise and discomfort, caused by the social isolation related to the current pandemic, in the museum public.
Thanks to musical heritage, we also want to trigger a process of public engagement that will reintroduce in a real way in the territory the collaboration between the public and museums, which existed before the closure of the museum spaces, through some keywords such as heritage, diversity, communication, trust, care, economy. This will enable the re-establishment of the indispensable trust between communities and museums to share and reconstruct an inexhaustible variety of cultural plots and narratives spanning educational, scientific, social, historical and political fields. This audio journey, following Italy’s recent ratification of the Faro Convention in September 2020, is fully in line with our country’s cultural heritage policies.
Project for an Antinoriano sound journey in stages, from Greece to Turkey, from Egypt to Ethiopia
Thanks to the material heritage of the samples of the CAMS collections, through the musical heritage, in the summer of 2020 we have organised the first sonic stage, with Greece (https://youtu.be/PojwRJOrWdY), of the long journey of exile after the fall of the Roman Republic in 1848, undertaken by Orazio Antinori, naturalist and Risorgimento militant of deep Mazzinian faith. The second stage of the sound journey, organised in the summer of 2021, pointing in a consequential geographical and historical sense, was Turkey, where in the then heart of the vast Ottoman Empire Antinori lived for nine years, from 1851 to 1859. The journey will continue over the next few years towards the Great South, still following Antinori’s itineraries, to reach Palestine, Egypt, Sudan and finally the green highlands of Ethiopia, where Antinori went several times and where he also carried out his last expedition, many years later, from 1876 to 1882, founding the famous Geographical and Scientific Station of Lét Marefià, where his remains still rest under the shade of an old Sycamore tree (Ficussycomorus L., 1753).
Popular sounds and songs from Turkey
Turkey, with its 783,562 sq. km. surface area, is one of the largest Mediterranean countries, but its greatness is not limited to its territorial extension but is also manifested in the richness and variety of its natural and cultural heritage. This wealth can be seen in the wide variety of landscapes, environments, ecosystems and one of the riches plant and animal biodiversities in Eurasia, as well as in the countless testimonies of the peoples and civilisations that have succeeded one another in its territories over thousands of years, leaving an extraordinary historical, artistic and cultural heritage in Turkey today.
The second event-stage of the long sound journey in the footsteps of Orazio Antinori, brought to Umbria from 8 to 10 August 2021 traditional folk sounds and songs from Anatolia (Türkhalkmüziği), thanks to the availability of two virtuoso Turkish musicians Umut Sülünoğlu (Master of Saz and Bağlama) and Uğur Önür (Master of Kemantché), who combine musical talent with a deep culture of ethnomusicology, the result of both academic studies and direct experience in contact with rural communities in the most remote regions of Turkey. Thanks to the sounds of some of the most typical instruments of the Turkish folk music tradition, the Saz and the Bağlama (chordophones of very ancient Central Asian and Iranic origins) and the Kemantchè (another bowed chordophone typical of Asia Minor), the ‘duo’ led the audience into the atmosphere of a repertoire of instrumental and vocal pieces, of traditional and popular music of ancient origins, often of unknown authors and handed down from generation to generation in rural communities. Music of different genres, types and styles of the rich and varied Turkish musical heritage, with a focus on the sounds of both the inland and mountainous south-eastern regions of Anatolia and the northern coastal areas, along the shores of the Black Sea and the western and southern coasts, facing the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean.
The concerts of the Turkish leg of the Antinoriano sound journey, always organised in close collaboration with public bodies and regional and local associations (as in the previous event “ΥπέροχηΕλλάδα! – WonderfulGreece’ last August 2020! ), tookplace in Perugia at Giardini del Frontone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZfSd8x68a0), in collaboration with “T-Trane Record Store” of Perugia, in Terni at FAT Art Club (https://studio.youtube.com/video/pIMfNKWQK2A/edit) in collaboration with the cooperative CAOS of Terni and finallyat Parco Naturale Regionale del Monte Cucco (Fossato di Vico, Perugia), as part of the Green Festival national art “Suoni Controvento” – Itineraries of sustainable culture, in collaboration with the Umbrian Association of Songwriting and Author’s Music, in the picturesque setting of the Cave of St. Agnes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LDgB26uwlQ) immersed in the beech forests of Monte Cucco (Costacciaro, PG), between Material and Immaterial Heritage.
