Ferragosto in Trieste, the Natural Capital of Nowhere: Tropical Nights where Santa Barbara Meets Feast of the Assumption
Free Entertainment in Trieste
This year in Trieste August 14th was not a day for the beach. A sombre dark sky for much of the day signalled the Gods’ displeasure with something or other, and this mood was not to be broken until the party started later on in the evening. But maybe it was simply that the party had been very good the night before, and even the Gods needed some down time before limbering up for more tropical dance grooves.
Friday night’s free entertainment was a band called Morcheeva. They came to fame in the 90s, a sort of more populist version of Massive Attack. Their single Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day reached Number 7 in the Italian charts, a much better result than the band achieved in their home country England. Perhaps the lesson is that Italians will buy anything with Rome in the title, for the song had nothing to do with Italy or Rome and everything to do with the sort of slushy pop that has no pretence of didactism. Along the road the band fired their singer, called Sky, lost out in popularity, and have now re-hired her and are attempting a come back. Morcheeva were slick and danceable. The highpoint of their regulation length show was predictably a version of Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.
So why is Trieste the natural capital of nowhere? This description hails from Jan Morris’s book ‘Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere’. Morris first visited Trieste as a young Welsh soldier at the end of the second World War. Trieste curiously haunted Morris and following a sex change, she re-visited the city as an elderly woman. It would be hard to invent a more fascinating story than hers. The transition from a young rookie, suffering from a confused gender, to an older woman, and her changing view of Trieste. Returning after so long, she charts Trieste’s history, its meaning in her life and juxtaposes patriotism and sex, two of her favourite topics. Such a mixture of themes could go horribly wrong, but Morris holds all together through her wit and command of language.
The full quote from Morris’s book is that Trieste is the ‘natural capital of the nation of nowhere, a home for those bound together by the common values of humour and understanding, usually exiles in their own communities but probably numerous enough to form a nation’. Morris may be right in her analysis, or was this more an allegorical reference to her own state of mind? An alternative theory might be that Trieste’s joie de vivre and tolerance is simply a product of its regular changes of proprietor.
Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, Hapsburgs, and German occupiers have all held the reins. Even Tito occupied Trieste for 40 days, its position as the only natural port in central Europe proving just too attractive. With Joyce an erstwhile resident, and one of his pupils, Svevo, also achieving literary fame with a little help from the great man, it is perhaps no wonder that Trieste appears more in discursive essays than in guidebooks or the travel sections of newspapers. But miss it at your peril.
Back to the music. As the day wore on the Gods stirred themselves and organised the firmament for the next party. The sky cleared, rumbles of thunder that had threatened during the day receded into the distance. Perhaps they had been no more than the sounds of deep slumber in the heavens.
The evening entertainment was none other than Sicilian Trumpeteer Ray Paci and his band, Aretruska. Not content with being a fine musician-trumpeteer, vocalist and arranger-Paci has a well-developed social conscience and is a strong supporter of Amnesty International, Amref and other good causes. His music mixes Brazilian and other Latin, ska and mestizo. From the first verse of the opening song, the carnival atmosphere began, and the crowd danced ever more wildly and energetically, driven by the horn section and underpinned by a Bahian percussionist.
The musical odyssey took us through cumbia, bossa nova, samba and Bahian beats. The Feast of the Assumption is called the Festival of Santa Barbara in Bahia and would have been celebrated simultaneously. Paci and his band would have been more than welcome guests there and musically would have blended in seamlessly. The band seemed in no hurry to stop playing, and Paci said the party would continue after the concert, around town. The finale was the band’s parody of Madness, and my friends swear that the statues of Mikeze and Lakeze, figures from Trieste folklore, were swaying along in time, paying homage to this internationally flavoured musical feast.
