A couple of Sundays ago my friend from Australia, Manuel Casha, who is a Maltese għana connoisseur, his Melbourne friend Bill and I decided to spend the morning at the Pieta’ boċċi club. So what, one may be inclined to retort, is not the whole of Malta also downing beers and free nibbles in bars, clubs and other places every Sunday morning?
The difference lies in the fact that the Pieta’ club is one of the few remaining places where the traditional għana singers and guitarists converge every week, 52 times a year, away from the humdrum of everyday life and in the company of people who gallantly and willingly seek to preserve a precious part of our national heritage.
It is where the real folk are. The problem is that hardly a visitor, a so-called “tourist”, is ever even made aware that it exists. While tourist guides and excursion companies concentrate on taking tourists to the most likely of places, these unlikely hidden treasures remain sidelined and forgotten. Perhaps rightly so, some might argue, as tourism may after all create an artificial, over-commercialised air to the għana scene, as has happened to flamenco and fado in certain parts of Spain and Portugal.
But it is still a pity that the interested visitor is being denied such a rich aspect of Maltese culture. Don’t get me wrong, it is all right to have these new posh places like The Point, the Plaza and other shopping and entertainment places on the island, but one must bear in mind that most tourists who come here are from countries where the shopping and entertainment places are much bigger and probably
better.
But they do not have għana and għana communities. So why are we restricting tourists to just boring, often lifeless ‘Maltese nights’ in hotels and holiday complexes and, to some extent, the rather staid annual Għana Festival at the Argotti Gardens? Most visitors, I’m sure, would prefer to go to places where the real folk, the real people of Malta and Gozo, are.
Judging from Bill’s reaction to our two-hour stint at Pieta’, most tourists would welcome the same opportunity. He could not stop talking about it for the rest of the day, so much so that I am told his wife finally had to beg him to please change the subject!
It is not a question of just dumping the tourists there, filling them up with ħobż biż-żejt, snails and bigilla, and hoping for the best. Many Maltese, in fact, need someone to hold their hand during an għana session. Singers’ voices and innuendos vary, as do their village and town accents, and it is sometimes difficult to catch all the words – and, of course, absolutely impossible – for the non-Maltese-speaking visitor.
Bill had the benefit of my impromptu translation of what the four għana singers were spewing out. He had been given a basic idea earlier of what għana is all about, its history and the various forms it takes, how it actually forms part of a whole Mediterranean chain of different cultures and its validity even in this first decade of the 21st century.
What Manuel and I did to help Bill get into the spirit of għana can be done by even the latest beginner in the tourist trade. Għana should not be force-fed and tourists should not be taken to ‘tourist’ places for some sort of dispirited, folksy entertainment, but to għana places where they can enjoy a genuine folkloristic atmosphere embellished by the sampling of traditional Maltese food, beer and yes, why not, a bit of good old banter.
Għana is not all sad ballads and tragedies – it has its humorous side. The Sunday we visited we were lucky enough to witness the return of one of the four singers who had recently suffered a serious stroke. The session started with the other three warmly welcoming him back on the scene, while he sang about his joy at being back among them. Before anyone could think the session was about to turn into a weeping competition, the spontaneous lyrics instantly switched to a new, almost tongue-in-cheek vein that at times had the audiences as well as the singers themselves in stitches.
While Manuel happily accepted the offer to join the guitar accompaniment, I tried to help Bill catch some of that remarkable ambience. “Lost in translation” may be an understatement, but he still somehow got the gist of the atmosphere and was soon laughing away with the rest of us. That poor man’s recent stroke had become a peg for a number of harmless jokes in rhyme, much to his delight.
Are we daft enough to think that the average tourist would not have loved to be there with us, as long as there was someone to explain, and literature to read about what was taking place inside that proletarian club, its magnolia wall-space filled to capacity with pictures of past għana masters and boċċi heroes? Even the “No politics here” notice in Maltese seemed to integrate well with the whole scene.
Are we also daft enough to conclude that such places and such traditional fare are of no interest to the visitor, and we should therefore keep on restricting his and her holiday itinerary to the most likely of tourist places? That is only insulting the intelligence of the average tourist who, given the peaceful and laid-back reality of Maltese social life, I’m sure would eagerly want to share in all of it and meet the real folk, instead of those who simply want to get him or her or both into unwanted time-share deals and onto the next cattle-load to Gozo and the Neolithic Temples.
Bill has since gone back to Oz. I am gratified he took with him a piece of Malta not many visitors to these Islands ever get to see and experience. Real folk, in the meantime, get on with the business of life with their ancient songs, their cold Cisks and their boiled snails, happily away from any superficial lights and groaning escalators...