Puglia: la religione

The south of Italy has a reputation of being more religious than the north, more superstitious, and in a strange sense, more pagan. Being in Puglia for Easter gave us a first-hand glimpse of some of the holiday's rituals.

The Thursday before Easter we were in Lecce, and we noticed that the streets were filling up with people, signori, children, giovani. We met our friend M for dinner, and she explained that since the days before Easter are a time of grande luto, great grief in Catholicism, all the churches of the paese set up special altars and Easter sepulchres. At these altars are plants that have been grown indoors without the light of the sun, and so their leaves are a thin ghostly white, and they are placed beneath the altar.

la gente in strada a Lecce

The people then go round from church to church, at least three or four M says, to visit these altars. She said in Lecce it was easy to go to multiple churches, just imagine how it must have been ai tempi, long ago when distances were greater. We go inside one church because we're all curious, and it's very dark, lit only by candles. A Jesus made from carta pesta, paper machè, lies in a glass case surrounded by the glittering white candles. The altars are somber, though when I see the white plants I'm reminded of rice noodles. People move in and out continuously, stopping briefly to look at the displays. Even the teenagers in leather jackets and bleached hair cross themselves and kiss their knuckles, and the sight is a little strange, as glimpsing them on the street you don't imagine the depths of their religious feeling.

Still, outside it's all festa, people are meeting and socializing, drinking eating and laughing. The cobblestone alleys are packed and it's difficult to move quickly. I say to F that it seems more like a party than a religious ceremony and he says casually that it's riti senza religione, ritual without religion.

(Then when M's friend joins us at the bar, the first thing he says is "Tutti gli altri vanno in giro stasera a vedere le sepulchre, ed io invece mi sono messo a contare gli amici suicidi. Sono tre." Everyone else is going around tonight to see the sepulchres, but I instead got to counting my friends who've committed suicide. There are three.)

the somewhat unsettling robes of the Gallipoli procession

Then, in Gallipoli, we caught the processione di venerdì santo, the procession of Good Friday, which is rather famous. There are two processions, one beginning at 7 pm and ending at 2 am, and then another beginning at 3 am and ending at 9 am. Many members of the procession wear red and white robes that can't help but remind an American of the KKK and which I found profoundly creepy. Two bands played a somber march, many of the robed men were barefoot and carried symbols of penitence. Behind them walked selected members of the community, not robed but definitely well-coiffed. (F remarked that this explained why we saw so many people in the barbershop that day.) The people who had chatted and shrieked and laughed as they awaited the beginning of the procession were silent, whispering now and then about the details of the costumes and statues. Then, as the procession entered the winding streets of the old city center, it became a chase to see how and where you could catch a glimpse of Jesus and red robes in the dimming light.



Later at Easter lunch with M's cousins, we heard that to be a member of a procession like this you had to pay extraordinary amounts of money. M's cousin knew a group of men who had paid 85,000 euros to carry the Madonna.

The whole affair made me think of Ivan's words about religion:

“In the night,” he said, “pilgrims arrived from all over the world. They filled the piazza in front of the church, they ate, they drank, and they played music. In the morning, the saint emerged from the church for the procession. People kissed the saint, lifted their babies to touch against the saint, pushed money against the saint... And during the procession there was this relationship between the people and the saint. It’s clear that the church tolerated this spectacle, but there was little religious about it. It was idolatry, it was barbarism. What struck me was the need for physicality, to have a physical relationship with the saint...Faith is metaphysical. God is there, and you are here, and it’s hard. Here you have the possibility of physical contact."

It all left me feeling a little empty and strange but grateful for having seen it, this other spirit of the south and Italy.

Puglia

For Easter break I decided to fulfill a long-held dream: travel all the way down the boot of Italy to Puglia. It's a sun-bleached region surrounded by breathtakingly blue waters, former home to Greeks, Romans, Goths, Lombards, and Byzantines, with fields of olive groves and wild flowers, steeped in tradition and poverty and folk music, la pizzica e la tarantella, the dances of love and death. Of course I wanted to go. We spent 6 days and 7 nights, beginning our stay in Lecce, moving to the coast at Gallipoli, stopping in the countryside for a wonderful Easter lunch with sort-of distant cousins (you can find family anywhere, really), and returning to Lecce for Pasquetta, the day after Easter.

There's a lot to write about with Puglia, and I'm not sure I can do it justice. But I felt like I was having a great adventure there, that I was truly someplace different. The salty air, il sole che picchia, the colors of the countryside and of the people, seduced me, enchanted me, and I was very sorry to leave. So to indulge my nostalgia and to sort through some of the 400 digital pictures we took, I give you a few entries on this lovely and complicated region.

la festa di piadena

This weekend we went to the annual cultural festival in Piadena, a small town in southern Lombardy. At a big house in the countryside, choral groups, bands, and merrymaking leftists gather for three days of wine-drenched folk music.

This year we stayed mostly outside nel bosco and watched the groups rehearsing for their performances. My favorite group was the Suonatori Terra Terra, the same Tuscan group I saw play in la piazza della Signoria in Florence all those years ago that made me fall in love with folk music. I took some video of their prove, or rehearsal. This is one song that unfortunately is split into two parts because I ran out of space on my little point-and-shoot.

The structure of the song is a fixed chorus, written by Giuseppe Miriello and made famous by the great folk artist Giovanna Marini, followed by "improvised" verses, or stornelli. When the song was first written in the 1960s, it was directed against the Christian Democrat minister, Emilio Colombo. I Suonatori Terra Terra have updated the song by writing verses for today's Italian ministers.

The chorus of the song is:
Statevi attenti, voi della popolazione/Imparatevi a leggere e scrivere/Per difendervi dal padrone.

Which means: Pay attention, you the people, learn how to read and write to defend yourself from the boss (in the leftist sense). What the people need to defend themselves from changes depending on the verse they sing.

One of my favorite verses is the second in the first video. First the woman singing announces, "Arrivano le femminucce, here come the ladies!" Then she sings,
Ehi Ministra Gelmini, fa tagli sulla scuola
Li mette quarant'alunni con una maestra sola.
Hey Minister Gelmini, who makes cuts on education
She puts forty students in one class with just one teacher.

Another verse, and the most cutting, comes at the end of the second video and the song. The woman announces, "Who will there be for the finale?" and begins to sing,
Ehi primo ministro, si fa le leggi su misura
Difende i suoi privelegi, pare una dittatura (pare!).
Hey Prime Minister, who makes laws to measure
He defends his privileges, it seems like a dictatorship (it seems!).

The verses are teasing and comic, but when the singers arrive at the chorus, the joke evaporates into the urgency and seriousness of their call.

The day was full of choral groups and protest songs, but those of the Suonatori were my favorite. Maybe it's because they are mostly women singing and playing typically masculine instruments like the bass drum and the trombone. Maybe it's because they smile and raise an eyebrow, twisting the sadness or anger of their songs into something playful and subversive. Or maybe it's the music rising together with their human, wonderful voices. What I know is that it is a vital form of protest, both ancient and relevant, a rebel yawp accompanied by accordian.

Ma statevi attenti, voi della popolazione, imaparatevi a leggere e scrivere per difendervi dal padrone.

chicken man

Later F. would tell me, "See what you would miss if it weren't for me?" and yes, I would have missed it entirely if he hadn't turned around on his bike and said, "Did you see that? Aveva una gallina!" So we stopped, backpedaled, and sure enough, a man was walking down Corso Garibaldi with a rooster on his shoulder.

The man was strolling down the street at dusk, in an old blue shirt and jeans, and the rooster was happily settled on his shoulder, beautifully dark colored and shiningly clean. It hardly fluttered a feather as they made their way down the street together. We watched as the man stopped by a cafè and started a conversation with the three people, two men and a woman, who sat outside. While they talked, the men amused but willing, passersby feigned disinterest, turning around to stare only after they were out of the man's sight. Of the conversation, we heard the man say something like, "Sorry to disturb you, but I can only stay outside of locales, sai, they're always kicking me out."
And one of the men saying, "But it's not you, it's him!" Gesturing at the rooster, who adjusted his seat on the man's shoulder.
"Well anyway, I'm armed. Like in the old west." And he pulled up his shirttails to reveal a bottle of beer in each of his pockets. They all laughed and he continued on his way, but not before praising the beauty of the woman they were with.

"Che dici, lo seguiamo?" said F. Perhaps following a man with two beers and a rooster is not the city response to strange occurrences, but of course I agreed. We walked with our bikes a little ways behind him. He crossed the street and we watched as he greeted every person he passed, singing "Bandiera Gialla," sometimes stopping to talk, another time making an obscene gesture at a signore who offended him. The rooster rode peacefully, every so often flapping its wings to regain its balance. It didn't make a sound. On our side of the street three little girls and their moms passed, and the one in front cried,
"Cel'ha una gallina lassù quel signore! C'è una gallina!" That man has a chicken!
But her friends didn't believe her and couldn't see as far. "Ma era un cane, dai."
And we smiled because we knew the truth.

Finally we sped up and crossed the street, so that we would be in his path as he passed. I pretended to look at some flowers, watching him approach out of the corner of my eye. He stopped beside us, and from up close I could see he had a big bushy beard and sparkling eyes, a sweet face really but the kind that could turn frightening. He stood next to F and told him that he shouldn't be afraid of the chicken, non ti fa niente. And so F reached out a hand and stroked the rooster, who seemed to retract his head into his neck in contentment. A woman behind us was saying, "Che meraviglia, what a miracle, quel signore ha una gallina. Che bello."
And he said, "No, pardon me, you know what the miracle is?" Smiling he pointed at me and the woman who worked at the flower stand and then swept his arm to include the women passing by on the street and said, "Sono loro la vera meraviglia, they're the real miracle. Le nostre compagne. Our companions."
And excusing himself for the intrusion, he continued down the street.

Lazy at best

I've been a bit down on the posting, and this time I can't even blame it on the good weather: it's been raining for about ten days straight.
And I can't blame it on nothing happening in at school. For example: A week ago, I was introducing Joyce to my 5th year class. We had just begun to read "Eveline" when a boy whipped around in his seat and vomited all over the floor. There were screams, half the class escaped to the window, the other half outside of the classroom. Lesson put on hold. The next day I was on the third floor and saw some of my 5th years in giro. They said, "Hi Rachel! We really like Joyce!" Sure.

And it's not that I've been bumming around the house: I went to Florence with F a week ago, which was lovely. We caught La Notte Bianca , where shops stay open into the early hours and there are concerts and hordes of night owls. Then on Saturday we took the train to Sesto Fiorentino to attend Primo Maggio at Istituto di Ernesto de Martino, the place where I interviewed Ivan della Mea and in general fell in love with folk music.
Here is a video of one of the choruses at the festival singing "Stornelli d'Esilio," one of my favorite leftist songs. Chorus is like this:

Nostra patria è il mondo intero
e nostra legge è la libertà
ed un pensiero
ribelle in cor ci sta

Our homeland is the whole world
Our law is liberty
And a rebel thought is in our hearts.

More or less.

There's more, but I am a bum. So I will wait until I am not a bum/not sfasata from a 9-7 workday.

line of the day

Rounding a corner on my faithful bike, Natty, on a rainy day, yellow Paddington bear hat on my head, middle-aged Italian man watches me pass and says,
"Che brava!"

a bus ride

Once again I'm posting something about play rather than work, but I had to fix the bus driver in my memory and if I don't write something about him he'll slip away...
This weekend we went to Champoluc in Val d'Aosta, X has a house there. I had to leave Saturday instead of Friday with F because I had work Saturday morning. Train, train, bus from Verres up the winding mountain roads to Champoluc.
On the bus we were at first the only passengers, and we sat up near the driver (F said we were vechietti, I said that if you put me in the back of the bus on mountain roads I will puke). The driver was a small man with gray hair, bald on top, bulbous nose, toothy grin. He asked us if his cigarette, which he dangled out the window while waiting for other passengers, bothered us. I thought of my roommates and said absolutely not. When we set out, he drove to the train station to check for other passengers and to take us down a parking lot ramp (Come un luna park!) as if it were a rollercoaster. Not bad, eh? he asked.
He was warm and wonderful. He asked F if he were milanese and they discussed the merits of city bus driving versus country bus driving. The autista concluded that even the higher pay could not tempt him to Milan. In Aosta the spese were low, the people were warm, life was tranquilla.
Two tween girls got on and sat directly behind the bus driver. They were obviously familiar, they spoke to him like a good friend. He asked them how their studies were going, how were their families. One of the girls began telling him about her parents, who were divorced, and their children with their new companions. He said, Oh so you have lots of brothers and sisters. And she said, No, we're not really brothers and sisters truely. And he said, But they are still the children of your mama, your papà, è sangue lo stesso, blood is blood, che mondo, carissimo amico.
Then he asked,Chi è quel ragazzo che sale ogni mattina? Anche ieri? È maleducato quello, non saluta mai, non dice niente. Ma saluta, ragazzo. Di dove sei che sei così maleducato? Ma cosa ti hanno insegnato tuoi genitori?
He complained about a boy who takes the bus every day but never says hi, never says a word of greeting. Where is he from, that he never learned manners?
At one little village he stopped the bus and noticed a girl getting off. He asked her, Can I ask you a favor? You know what it is? She said, Of course. He gave her a sack of groceries he had bought earlier in the day and told her to bring it to his wife (Sai dove abito, vero?). The girl stepped off the bus and the driver called out the window, Grazie! She replied over her shoulder, Niente! He turned to us and explained, Così mia moglie mi fa da mangiare, altrimenti mangiamo le patate e basta! (This way, my wife will make me something to eat, otherwise we would be eating potatoes and that's it!).
As we climbed further into the mountains, the height of the snow beside the road growing, the light fading away, he sang along to the songs on the radio. More people got on and off the bus, never very many. At one point he stopped the bus to let off an elderly woman. He asked her, Give me a goodnight kiss!
No, I will not.
And why not?
She replied, You know and I know that you have a wife at home.
Yes, and you have a husband, who is watching us right now!
And we turned to look out the window and sure enough, I saw a dark stooped figure in the warm orange window and the curtain fall as it was released. The old woman and the autista laughed, she made her careful way down to the curb. He turned to us, È un terrone come me! È tanto geloso, quello. (He's a redneck from the south like me, he's a jealous one alright!)
He would turn to us now and again, smiling and saying a word or two. F asked me why I was being so quiet, and I told him it was because I had to remember everything, fix it all in my memory. We had to arrive, though, and I was a little sad when we did. I had that feeling that we were friends now and that we should know each other's names or kiss goodbye or share something that meant we were more than just customers of a service. I could have stayed on that bus for a long time, my head on a warm shoulder and my ears filled with singing and friendly words.

And on the weekend...

After my traveling plans for the weekend of Carnevale fell through, I decided to make the most of my weekend in Milan and take advantage of all the cool events in giro. I also had my camera with me for my adventures. My Saturday consisted of:

-bike ride into centro with F to see the children in their holiday costumes. We found a Trasforma Milano exhibition that turned junk into toys:


(Duomo lookin' imposin')


-Then we swung over to the Samedi Gras Multirazziale, a march against racism in Milan. ("Dove tutti sono milanesi, tranne i razzisti"). We danced with our bikes to reggae, watched the destruction of Lega Nord political posters, and paused in a tunnel to sing and curse at the vice sindaco of Milan.



-After our daily dose of politics, we returned to my neighborhood, Isola, for the Milano Clown Festival. The Festival, which lasted over three days, included street performers, artists, and musicians from all over the world.

The night before, I had watched the Brera Street Band perform al Frida. Saturday, we caught Le Rang du Frond al Teatro Sala Fontana.

They were fun (I especially enjoyed the fishnet-wearing banjo player), but they were playing strange banjo glam punk for a crowd that was half under 10, and I think they were a little confused. Their attempts at Italian were adorable though (Per favore potere lower the volume perchè i bambini sono *puts hands over ears*).

We headed to Piazza Gioia for the clowncerto of Hibiscus Theater from Spain, grabbed a beer at Frida, and then returned to Gioia for the concerto finale.

I never figured out the name of the band, but they were French and played gypsy music that everyone felt in their feet. The PIC Clowns mingled and danced too. At one point one of the singers began talking about a mystical experience (in French. All I know F translated for me). The accordion player began wiggling his fingers at the crowd, and we wiggled back. He climbed down from the stage, we kept wiggling our fingers. As he moved through the crowd, he caught my eye, cocked his eyebrow, grabbed my hands and pulled me to the stage. The singer began chattering in French, asking me my name (Rachel. Vashayl? Ra-chel. Mayshell? Rachele! Machall? Rachel! Ahh, Ray-shell!) Next thing I knew I had an accordion strapped to my back and the accordion player embracing me to play it. We spun around in circles while the crowd cheered and the band played along. Then as a finale, the entire band kissed me four times on the cheek, merci merci merci, bravissima. My head was spinning. F laughed at me and said he could tell I was confused about the kissing the entire band deal. And as we left to go dancing at Circo Bussa, strangers said, "Ciao Ray-shell!"

Then, on Sunday, we took a little trip to Cremona, the birthplace of Stradivarius. We wandered around, saw the Duomo, and visited a little flea market. I bought two records, Johnny Cash and Doc Watson, to play on my new (borrowed) giradischi.


All in all, it was a good weekend.

Bars e caffè

And the autogestione continues. I went into school for about an hour today, read Faulkner, and chatted with Fabrizio about grammar (Does the sentence "The question was asked to her" sound as weird to you as it does to me?). Doing very little tends to make me all sorts of hungry, and since I couldn't justify lunch at 10:30am, I headed to the bar around the corner for a cappuccino e brioche (I miss my sfoglia crema I used to get in Florence, Milan is all northern-European-y and frequently shuns my pastry of choice).

I walked in and said ciao to the barman, who always responds, "Ciao prof!" Then I heard "Ciao Rachel!". One of my students from the first two months was there, milling about in her raincoat and backpack. Her mother works the cash register. I immediately switched to English. During a short and terrified exchange half in English, half in Italian, she explained that the vice-principal had sent her class home early for the day. Then she helped me pick out my brioche. The barman whipped out a plate for my pastry and put my sugar in my cappuccino for me. When I finished, I went to pay, and I found out that my lovely student had paid for me. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside. I thanked her profusely in English (sweetie!) and headed on my way...

Bars are the best. Good things tend to happen in them. At Brother's Bar, the first bar I went to in Milan and where I go every time I tutor at the family's house, the two old barmen always seem so delighted to see me. They always ask me, "Come stai?" and when I respond bene, "Ah si vedo che stai bene," and then make some comment about being too old. At the bar near the school, the young barman knows what I get, knows what kind of sugar I like (grezzo), and always calls me prof. Returning for a visit to Florence with friends from study abroad, the barmen at our favorite cafè (TabacchiBar per sempre) not only were delighted to see us but bought us our coffee. It's one of my favorite parts of Italy, the ritual of ordering an itty bitty coffee and standing by the barman to down it in a minute or two, making a mess of crumbs and cream, eavesdropping on conversations, making friends...