Sardinia on the road by Sebastiano Dessanay

In June 2018 Sebastiano Dessanay , double bass player and composer born in Cagliari, but with roots all over Sardinia, takes an important decision. He chooses to leave his job at the Royal Birmingham Junior Conservatoire and to realize a dream: to visit all 377 Sardinian municipalities by bicycle.

A journey to be carried out in a slow, creative way, crossing territories, people and sounds to capture its essence and transform it into music. That journey, which started from Nuoro, arrived in Cagliari and lasted about fourteen months - from 26 October 2018 to 21 December 2019 - is presented to us in the volume " 377 project " (Italian Touring Club, pp. 352).

Do not expect, however, the traditional travel diary or a historical-artistic-social report. Dessanay's intent, traveling from town to town, was quite different as he writes in the book: it was to immerse himself “in the landscapes, meet people, leave impressions, provide stimuli. And above all, to tell the journey with music ”.

Music entrusted to a very special instrument, a bass ukulele, that is a miniature bass capable of producing the same notes as the double bass, but transportable by bicycle. Melodies and rhythms were thus mixed with historical, cultural, social events , tastes and smells, images and panoramas, the stories heard in fourteen months of travel. They mingled with the silence of the villages, with the details that only the author made sense to observe and remember. The result was a symphony into the wild with a small land at the center that encompasses "many continents".

In short, an atypical Sardinia, but at the same time more authentic and radical, capable of fascinating, questioning and even "fatiguing" the traveler. As Dessanay recounts: "Each of the 377 stages has become a journey within a journey , each small difficulty a danger, each rain a monsoon storm, each stream a river to ford".

The journey has thus become an intimate experience, an adventure, a small personal odyssey, as the author crossed the land of his roots and ended his journey in his native Cagliari.

Like every itinerary, the one in Dessanay had its beginning and its end, but perhaps not a definitive point of arrival as the author always confirms: "Like Ulysses, I thought I was going back to the places of the soul, scrutinizing the water from the wells sacred, questioning blind Nuragic diviners. I have added pieces to the family tree, but I feel I cannot put a full stop. The only way is not to stop, to continue in the search, to continue climbing the 'mountains of the mind' as the book by the English writer Robert MacFarlane is called. That's what I'm going to do. This is why after 377 there is no point but there are two. Two points, to continue, so that the end is always a new beginning and what has been a spur for the future. It is true for humans, it is even more true for an entire island, Sardinia, which retains vivid memories of its past, but which struggles to glimpse its future.