The longest running international festival in Sardinia is back, the 39th Ittiri Folk Festa is ready, scheduled from 18 to 22 July . An opportunity to celebrate hospitality, sharing and friendship and also the half century of life of the volcanic Ittiri Canneddu association which since 1972 has been committed to recovering and enhancing the vast clothing heritage of the community and the search for what in the past it was the dance that accompanied the Ichthyreans during moments of celebration.
The story of Ittiri Cannedu.
The Sardinian dance rehearsals to take part in the first Nuoro Folklore Europeade in 1972 were the group's first real baptism. The strong emotion felt on that occasion gave rise to a passion in the children of the time for dancing and traditional clothes. The first years of the group were useful for creating the framework of Ittiri Cannedu's future. Traditional clothing to adopt, dance proposals to perform, image to present externally.
The research was initially carried out by the members of the group who carried out in-depth investigations with older people who were still aware of the techniques and information in this regard. The next step was the involvement of scholars and experts who gave cultural credibility to the group's proposals.
The association has always focused precisely on the field of credibility of proposals and the deepening of popular culture and this has been the figure that has distinguished it over these fifty years. Conferences and studies on traditional clothes, musical instruments, dances and popular music became the group's daily bread and a subject to be investigated and promoted. In the year of the fiftieth anniversary the most welcome and auspicious fact, the resumption of the dance school , already present since the end of the nineties: a large group of boys and girls who will give continuity to this glorious association in the years to come.
The presence of Ittiri Cannedu became constant in all Sardinian festivals and major folklore events. After the first time for an event of the Sardinian league in Milan in 1979, the group's trips were countless. International festivals and folklore events in all parts of the world including four times in South America, Qatar and the Caucasus just to name a few.
Many visits to the Sardinian Clubs in Italy and Europe as far as Argentina and Brazil. And finally, a few weeks ago the trip to Wolfburg, Germany, to meet the Sardinian club named after Grazia Deledda.
The first Ittiri Folk Festival
1984 was the first year that the group, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, organized the first gathering of Sardinian groups selected among the most representative. It was only the dress rehearsal of what later became one of the most well-known and appreciated festivals in Sardinia and beyond: Ittiri Folk Festa.
The Ittiri Folk Festa International Festival reaches its 39th edition this year. From a simple review of foreign groups it has become a container of events that frame the main event.
There is no topic of the popular and material culture of Sardinia that has not been investigated, treated and showcased during the almost forty years of the Festival.
The most successful of the Sardinian groups and the best international groups made a stop on the stages and squares of the Ittiri Festival. The stage of the folk festival is one of the most coveted among Sardinian and international groups.