A single table

I WAS in the pretty, orange-tiled hilltop village of Scapoli — in central Italy — for an international bagpiping festival.

Scapoli, with its potted geraniums and steep, narrow streets and terraces, overlooks valleys of olive groves, vineyards and cornfields, across to forests where native bears and wolves still roam in the safety of the 44,000-hectare Parco Nazionale di Abruzzo and its 60,000-hectare extended protection zone.

Although it is itself perched on a 600-metre hilltop, Scapoli is overlooked by the spectacular peaks of the Mainarde range to the north-west and the Matese range to the east. The mountains — held sacred by the early Pentri people whose culture held sway here until the Romans seized the region in 263 BC — give a tranquillity to Scapoli, even at the height of the festival.

This is a relatively poor part of Italy, unpretentiously rooted in the traditions of its rugged environment. Life here has made for a hardy but hospitable rural culture that persists, despite its having been weakened by emigration and economic vulnerability. It’s produced close functional relationships between hard physical work, community pride, food, celebration and hospitality.

There’s something compelling about a commitment and sense of beauty that binds a community so proudly around the presentation of things its people produce with their hands. Yes, this is an “Italian thing” to be sure, but little Scapoli does it well.

The village’s own bagpipers — and there are a few of them — were out in their dark, knee-length cloaks, red ribbons and black felt hats, processing through the crowds. With them went singers, accordion players and percussionists… thudding drums, ringing cymbals, jangling tambourines, rattling castanets, moaning friction drums – as many as 20 different languages were being spoken, and all around were bagpipes: all sorts of bagpipes, with their own strange-sounding names: baghets, musas and pivas from northern Italy, zampognas from Sicily and the south, bots from the Pyrenees, Scottish Highland and Irish uilleann pipes, gaitas and gaidas, dudas, sacs de gemecs from northern Spain and other instruments from around Europe. There were tarantella dancers from southern Italy, singers, guitarists and other performers.

Many of these people had arrived, some by hitchhiking across Europe, with little money, lightly packed backpacks and their instruments. They had come to play, to learn, to celebrate, to journey. A few stalls displayed piping supplies, crafts and souvenirs; others filled the air with the smells of spit-roasting pork, fresh-baked bread, and locally made smoked meats, wines and cheeses. Trestle tables and chairs attracted visitors and performers.

It was at such a table, with wine and food passed around, that I saw an elderly local instrument maker, a young woman piper from Scandinavia, a burly Serb, a costumed Spaniard, another Balkan piper who was introduced to me as a Croat, and several north Italian piva players locked in animated discussions in several languages about their music and their various bagpipes. Instruments were being taken apart, reeds were being passed around, snatches of tune were being sung, techniques were being compared and the table was rocking with laughter.

This was the summer of 2002. Less than a year had passed since the terrorist attacks that felled New York’s “twin towers”; United Nations weapons inspectors were looking for evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” in an Iraq that was still ruled by Saddam Hussein. The former president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, was being tried in The Hague for war crimes: Serbs and Croats, like that pair at the table, had very recently been deadly enemies. And, from time to time, NATO military jets made loud, roaring passes overhead.

On the ground, in striking contrast, little Scapoli had in its own beautiful way brought the whole of Europe to a single table.