Ajò by ENZO FAVATA

Ajò is a typical and very effective expression of the Sardinian people. It invites one to take off and leave, to go on a trip. In our case it means the desire to go further. Even in Sardinia there are people who, starting four generations ago, sailed across the ocean, to the Americas, on those ships whose history includes that of emigrants from all places.
Having left from every village in Sardinia, they all had the same basic motives as the immigrants who today are coming from various places to our developed Western countries. They want to emigrate to rise from poverty. If you ask them, they will all tell you they do not intend to stay for ever. They have but one goal: to earn enough money to go back home, perhaps in ten or twenty years, with a solid position. These are their stories and they all have one thing in common: nostalgia.

Like the nostalgia of those two elderly men who have returned to our island, speaking a language that was no longer Sardinian, nor real Spanish: it was a mixture of both. They had spent a lifetime far away from their own country and their memories of the old places had faded. Yet when they were finally back in their homeland, they suffered from another nostalgia - they missed the place where they had spent most of their lives: Argentina.

As I wrote the music for this project, I did a lot of thinking about the stories, these faces, these eternal rambling spirits, these two wind-swept lands so far, yet so close, where religion and family still have a deep value. I tried to reconstruct a pathway through these memories, that would somehow resemble that strange way of speaking old emigrants have.
In the journey across the sea of remembrance I would need good mates. Besides my well-assorted crew, I asked an Italian-Argentine, Dino Saluzzi, if he would be willing to undertake this route between Sardinia and Argentina. So the ship set sail and we arrived at our destination.
«Hey don’t you guys ever emigrate?»

Enzo Favata