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Accepted Paper:
Commoning in Sonic Devotion
Lorenzo Ferrarini
(University of Manchester)
A piece of sonic ethnography dealing with conflict over the acoustic space of a Catholic pilgrimage in Basilicata, Italy. Here, sounds can bring people together in common sonic devotion but also highlight frictions on the proper ways to relate to the sacred and the future of tradition.
Paper long abstract:
This piece is an original composition of field recordings I made between 2014 and 2016 during different mountain pilgrimages in Basilicata, Southern Italy. It uses strategies of juxtaposition to foreground contrasts and conflict over the common spaces that pilgrims share in and around the sanctuary. The shouts of the players of 'morra' set the scene for the camps where pilgrims spend the night, cook, sing and pray. A brief soundwalk around the sanctuary showcases the diversity of the pilgrims' "sonic devotion" (Scaldaferri 2006), only to be interrupted by the loudspeakers broadcasting the priest inside the church. Shortly afterwards, the sanctuary is the setting for a conflict that involves the police versus some musicians and their devotional songs.
The composition makes the point that it is in sound that people gather to perform embodied modalities of relating to the sacred, and that it is in sound that frictions and transformative relationships are played out. As I wrote in 'Sonic Ethnography' (Ferrarini and Scaldaferri 2020), the historical evolution of these festivals shows that their future is at stake in the negotiation of the co-existence of their different sound elements in a common acoustic space.