The Launeddas, the music of Sardinia

The launeddas is a triple clarinet, played with the technique of circular breathing and made out of exclusively natural materials like: cane, beeswax and thread. it is found only in Sardinia where it has an unbroken history for more than 3.000 years.
Andreas Bentzon heard the launeddas being played for the first time in 1953, during a holiday when it happened that he rented a room at the house of a launeddas player. In 1962 he decided to bring his movie camera and he shot a series of scenes which show, in its daily life and music, the world of the launeddas players, the religious rites their music accompanied, the Sardinian economic situation and in general the way of life of Sard people.
These unique films, unknown until 1981, were found by Dante Olianas during his visit at the Folklore Archives in Copenhagen, where Bentzon had left them before his premature death in 1971, at the age of 35.
The director Fiorenzo Serra, Bentzon’s friend, took care of the editing of those films, having to face lots of problems: no correspondence between image and sound, no number on the negatives, varying speed in films and in tapes etc. The making of this documentary was truly a work of “archaeological cinematography”.