L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 14 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE I t begins, of all places, in a ditch. Along the s t r e a m s a n d f i e l d - edges of Sicily grows the tall wild cane the botanists call Arundo donax and everyone else calls sim- ply canna, the giant reed that has fenced gardens and thatched roofs across the Mediterranean since before a n y o n e w a s c o u n t i n g . T o make the island's own little f l u t e , t h e f r i s c a l e t t u , a craftsman goes out in the d e a d o f w i n t e r , b e t w e e n about November and March, and cuts his cane by prefer- ence on the nights of a wan- i n g m o o n , w h e n t h e o l d country wisdom holds that the sap has drawn down and the wood will not rot. Then he waits. The cut reeds are set aside to cure for as long as two years before a single hole is bored, because a flute made in a hurry will crack, and a flute made from a moon-cut reed, properly seasoned, will sing for a lifetime. W h a t t h e c r a f t s m a n makes from that reed is a pretty modest thing to look at: a straight cylinder of cane n o t m u c h l o n g e r t h a n a man's hand, closed at the top with a little plug of wood so that, blown at the end, it sounds the way a recorder sounds, sweet and breathy and bright. Down its length run the finger holes – seven on the front and, character- istically, two more beneath for the thumbs, nine in all – and, by covering and uncov- ering them, the player picks out the melody. There is a catch, though: a single fri- scalettu plays in only one key, so a real player, like a harmonica man, carries a whole bundle of them, flutes of different lengths for dif- ferent songs, and pulls out the right one the way a car- penter reaches for the right chisel. T h e i n s t r u m e n t i s o l d , almost beyond reckoning. If we think that flutes of this kind appear in Sicilian art as far back as the fifth century before Christ, in the days of the Siceliots, the Greeks who settled the island and left it their temples, their theatres, and, the story goes, their shepherds' pipes. It was the Greek herdsmen, m o s t l i k e l y , w h o f i r s t brought the cane flute to Sicily, and for two and a half thousand years afterward, it stayed exactly where they left it: in the hands of shepherds. Out on the summer hills with the flock, through the long, silent, sun-struck hours, a man needs something to do with his breath and his fin- gers, and the friscalettu was t h e a n s w e r , a c o m p a n i o n small enough to tuck in a pocket, cheap enough that a boy could whittle his own, and capable of turning soli- tude into music. But the little flute had a second life, and this is the one Sicilians remember most f o n d l y , b e c a u s e i t c a m e indoors and it came to the feast: when the work was done and the festa began, the friscalettu led the danc- ing. Above all, it is the voice o f t h e t a r a n t e l l a , t h e whirling southern dance, its quick, bright melody skip- ping along over the steady heartbeat of the tamburello, the tambourine, that almost a l w a y s p l a y s b e n e a t h i t . A r o u n d t h e t w o o f t h e m gathered the rest of the old Sicilian band: the marranza- no, the jaw harp that twangs its single hypnotic drone; sometimes a guitar, some- t i m e s a n a c c o r d i o n ; a n d voices, always voices. In that company, the friscalettu is always the one that carries the tune, darting and orna- menting over the rhythm like a swallow over a threshing floor. Even its names tell you h o w d e e p i t r u n s i n t h e island's speech, if it is true that, depending on which town you are standing in, the same flute is a friscalettu or a f r i s c a l e t t o , a f r a u t u , a fischiettu, a frischiettu, even a faraùtu, a little thicket of dialect words all circling the same idea, the one at the root of the Italian fischiare, to whistle. This is why hol- ding a friscalettu is a bit like holding a whistle that a hun- dred generations of Sicilians have known by a hundred affectionate names. For a while, in the middle of the last century, it seemed the flute might fall silent along with the shepherd's world that made it. Especial- ly in the postwar years, the pastures emptied, the young left for the cities and for America, and the radio and the record offered music that asked nothing of your own two hands. But the friscalet- tu has proved stubborn, as Sicilian things tend to be, and there is still a handful of dedicated makers, luthiers in and around Catania, at the foot of Etna still cutting the moon-reeds and turning out flutes by hand. Encouragin- gly enough, you can still find teenagers that want to learn, some of them star ting as young as fifteen. Folk revival groups have carried the reed flute back onto the stage, where its ancient, uncompli- cated sweetness cuts clean through anything electric. I n t h e e n d , t h i s i s t h e wonder of the friscalettu, that so much can live in so l i t t l e . A h o l l o w l e n g t h o f ditch-cane, cut by moonlight and dried for two winters, still has the exact voice that once kept a Greek shepherd company on a Sicilian hill- side, and can still, on the right summer night, set a whole piazza dancing. Cut by moonlight: the story of Sicily's reed flute, the friscaletto LUCA SIGNORINI Advancing our Legacy: Italian Community Services CASA FUGAZI If you know of any senior of Italian descent in San Francisco needing assistance, please contact: ItalianCS.org | (415) 362-6423 | info@italiancs.com Italian Community Services continues to assist Bay Area Italian-American seniors and their families navigate and manage the resources needed to live healthy, independent and productive lives. Since Shelter-in-Place began in San Francisco, Italian Community Services has delivered over 240 meals, over 900 care packages and made over 2000 phone wellness checks for our seniors. An artisan crafts a friscaletto, the traditional Sicilian reed flute that has accompanied folk music on the island for centuries (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI)

• Cover