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Rating: I know the Sulcis area only slightly, and that's why when I see the program of the Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival, I think that finally going there will allow me to kill two birds with one stone with the sure conquest of Portopino.
The Comet is Coming are playing on September 5th, when I'm told it's three weeks away, and despite the early notice, I immediately book two tickets as soon as I can. I've been to some other musical events and have seen how easily they sell out. This year, every simple social event seems to have transformed into an epic happening due to the rarity of the offerings. I'll be out of the Kingdom for two weeks and don't want any nasty surprises. I was right: the day before the concert, the official sold-out announcement arrives, although for this Festival, many people tell me that's practically never happened before.
The journey of about 160 km to reach our destination begins in a warm post-nap afternoon. I have to pick up B halfway, who “lovingly” made me leave earlier without my knowledge and responds to my complaints with a “naaaa... you would have been late anyway.”
So, I actually arrive late (which means at the right time), but among chatting with the neighbors who are annoyed by my wrong-way entry, loading luggage into the car, waiting for B to turn off lights-lock the house and falsely declare a false start with a cry of “§%&#, I left the phone at home: let's go back!” we are officially and truly late. There are still 80 km to go, and I'm driving. I don't have any music in the car that I really feel like listening to, the USB stick with new mp3s no longer works, but B talks incessantly anyway, and so I laugh the whole time at the various stories of his summer on the edge of credibility. We haven't seen each other in almost two months, and he's a torrent of words.
The road to Sant'Anna Arresi through the Sulcis area is a continuous series of almost deserted villages that I only knew by name, 95% of the bars encountered (note: it's Saturday night) are closed, and I need a coffee and an ice cream. Now. We're in the splendid Sulcis scenery, with green and imposing mountains rising majestically around us, unexpected compared to the parched Campidano we just left behind, a civilized place where I might too easily have found a bar for coffee and ice cream. Ice cream perhaps not stored alongside fish and packaged recently, like in the last decade.
In Sant'Anna Arresi, after methodically getting lost upon entering the town, we ask for directions and easily reach the concert area. It's located in the upper part of the town, where the polished Nuraghe Arresi stands with its small green lawn next to the small church, whose access steps form the stands of the concert area. These steps wind like an isthmus over the sea towards the center of the small square where the stage has been set up, giving the pleasant feeling of being exactly “on” the stage, almost flying. There are no dividing elements between the audience and artists; the stage is very low, and I can almost see who is playing from above rather than the more traditional view from below. In recent years, I've noticed that at every concert, there is an increasing tendency to widen the distance between the audience and musicians, with high stages and steel barriers separating us from our idols, whose sweat we'd prefer to smell and maybe catch a bit of spittle rather than perceiving them at a “postcard” distance in the name of some unclear security to safeguard.
After looking around, greeting various acquaintances, including some regulars who didn't even know who was playing, we discover that the super-cool front-of-concert bar charges double compared to the bar 150 meters away, right in front of my parked car. It's for this reason that, even though we arrived at a more than respectable time, we miss the first four minutes of the concert. However, after some chaotic slalom among seated people, we find a spot on the aforementioned steps at the position I spotted, and we finally begin our “sonic trip.”
As you can imagine, they might have started with the splendid Summon the fire. Right in front of me, I see King Shabaka; he blows his soul into his saxophone, with a concentrated and serene expression at the same time. He hardly spends time interacting with the audience; after all, it seems he doesn't have a working microphone, which he occasionally gestures about to someone behind me, but the serenity this tall young man radiates is such that even the microphone issue doesn't wrinkle his face at all. Therefore, it's clear that his presence is emphasized and made unforgettable more by the perfect reflection of lights on his ebony skin than by his words. He plays with the power of a mothership bridging cosmic distances; one becomes hypnotized following his fluid fingers with which he communicates that the musical performance is a natural extension of his athletic persona.
The game master of the evening is Dan Leavers (Danalogue), appearing like a forest elf in a knitted green jacket with a pointed hood, which he soon discards (presumably due to the sultry sulcisan heat), revealing a psychedelic Anas-striped t-shirt with large arm openings to prevent sweaty armpits. It's him who greets us with a familiar and sympathetic “Comenti istais?”, it's him who constantly transports us to parallel psychedelic universes, and it's him who makes us long for a dancing evening where we are again free from antiviral constraints, that is, a lot.
Everything is accompanied and marked by the rhythm of Max Hallet's (Betamax) drums, an “android” who played for no less than 90 dense minutes almost consecutively, ending with a splendid solo while King and Danalogue rehydrated with water and beer respectively, sitting on the ground before the final explosion. Betamax was impressive, despite two dangerously red and swollen eyes and a posture at the evening's end suggesting an imminent collapse, he apparently maintained the same energy, just like a free object in space to which a slight force is applied and whose consequent inertial motion continues for eternity.
In essence, an event with a high factor of unmissability: not a waiting moment with an audience perpetually in ecstasy, so much so that even some intrusive photographers, at least for a moment, put down their tools of the trade to finally enjoy the show. A band to see live to appreciate every possible nuance and explosive force, much to the chagrin of those who didn't.
A long-lasting, small but huge event, this Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz, which almost silently, at more than accessible prices, offers so much and deserves a great applause also for the intimate location that allows you to be close enough to the musician to observe what movements compose their gesture (and if you take that opportunity from me, damn you, my boot-wearing organizer!).
And then the next day, there's the sea: Portopino is a Poetto that made it. Beach rating 6.5, but let's give the transparency of the water and the scenic green pine forest behind it a solid 8.5. Definitive.
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