This work introduces the reader to Sardinian music through a series of encounters with individual musicians and their families. Refusing to separate the music from the world in which it arises, the author offers twelve vignettes focused on individuals such as Cocco, a chicken farmer who deciphers the shapes of his fowl and the layout of his henhouses in the constellations of a summer sky, and Pietro, a sleep-walking postman who divides his time between mail deliveries and impromptu serenades. These vignettes bring to life an art still very much alive: the music of villages with an oral tradition, sung or played in the company of others. Through these portraits of music makers and their families, Lortat-Jacob overcomes some of the epistemological and methodological dilemmas facing the modern field of ethnomusicology, while also giving the general reader a sense of the multiple and idiosyncratic ways that music is involved in everyday life. A compact disc containing samples of the music being discussed is also provided.

Translated by: Teresa Lavender Fagan