INSPIRATION

Today I have very few kilometers, between granite and pastures. And obviously shepherd dogs. Which by now I have learned to escape with my technique of stopping and yelling at them!

I enter Onanì, classified as an Authentic Village of Italy (I have already found this in several municipalities … sooner or later I will list them all.) The village, just under 400 inhabitants, is well cared for. I arrive right in the center and stop the bike in front of the Town Hall. After realising that no one is waiting for me, I go to the bar to ask if there are any accommodation facilities but I am told there aren’t. A gentleman offers me a coffee after giving a nod to the bartender saying “cumbidamidu” (pay him a drink).

I leave the bar and get on my bicycle to visit the village. Most of the houses are in a beautiful granite, well cut, as well as the pavement of the historic center. I notice some beautiful murals, by Pietro Asproni from Bitti, and statues of white limestone, most likely coming from Monte Albo, not far from here.

I go down to the lower part of the village, and I reach the ruins of a church, which I discover later to be Santa Maria, and near another country church, San Francesco, where I do not enter, and later I will discover that it has a beautiful fresco on the altar by Diego Asproni. I missed it.

From here, just outside the village, I admire the profile of the center, with the main church standing out. I start pedaling again, this time uphill to get to the parish of the Sacred Heart, built on a granite rock base. From what I’ve seen in other sites, I have the feeling that once there was a nuraghe here. From here I see the valley that extends behind the village and another beautiful little church surrounded by greenery. It is Saint Peter, which I approach walking in the tall grass.

I take one last turn, I see that there is the mill of Tziu Natalino but it is closed. I also find signs indicating the Onanì Experience, a multimedia visit through the sites of the territory, but apart from the mill, I have already seen them. I stop to talk to a gentleman, who tells me he is from Bitti but has been living here for some time. It’s almost lunch time, I don’t have hospitality yet, I don’t have any money in my pocket to eat here, there isn’t an ATM, so I decide to go to Bitti and end the day there, in peace and work.

 

SOUND FRAGMENTS

Bells

SHORT SARDINIAN STORIES

I had already been to Onani twice. Both times on the occasion of concerts of the Nuoro Jazz Festival, the festival of concerts that takes place during the summer workshops designed by Paolo Fresu and the Nuoro Music Institute.

In 2012 I performed with my Songbook Quintet, on the occasion of the release of my first two records, Songbook Vol.2 and Vol.1 (released in this order … a bit like the Star Wars trilogies!) With me, my friends Fulvio Sigurtà, Alessandro Di Liberto, Gianluca Corona and Pierpaolo Frailis. The concert took place in a widening of the main street, right where I was chatting today with the man from Bitti.

The following year, 2013, I went back to see the concert of the talented singer and friend Laura Mura, who promoted her album ‘Il Mio Disco’, a work to which you could contribute as a producer, participating in the costs of the production. Having contributed, I’m counted among the producers of the disc, and I couldn’t miss it at its launch! Laura was accompanied by the many and very talented musicians who participated in the recordings, and the evening took place in a square, which, however, I could not identify today.

If it is true that there are no two without three, I wonder “shall I return to Onani for the fourth time?”