This book makes a promise in its title and then keeps it. It is a history of Mosta and its first band, the Soċjetà Filarmonika Nicolò Isouard, covering the years 1871 to 1985 in Volume I and 1986 to 2023 in Volume 2.
It can be read on three levels. On the primary level, it is mostly a reference book, supplying raw facts such as names, dates, figures, and transcriptions of primary sources. On the secondary level, it contains passages, some long some short, that are mostly local history. On the tertiary level, it leaves an "ideological" aftertaste, in the sense that upon reflection the reader intuits the development of Maltese national history seen from below.
When I took the Historical Studies course at Oxford University, one of the subjects was local history. It carried little to no interest for me, as it was English local history. That said, certain historiographical insights were revealing - like for instance, the study of voting patterns in England which, mirroring old religious and ethnic divisions, indicate that democracy is less a clash of ideas and ideologies and more of a clash of identities, and that those who quarrel with tribalism (yours truly included) would seem to be everything but right.
But then, I find Maltese local history intriguing. Not only because it twines into national history, but also because it casts light on the small but significant dissimilarities between Maltese hailing from different parts of the islands. Detractors could argue that once you've read the history of one locality, you've read them all. Isn't each one of them but a variant of a "national" type? In more ways than one, we could embrace Henry Frendo's thesis - expressed in his introduction to the 1994 book he co-edited with the late Oliver Friggieri, Malta: Culture and Identity - that in Malta, owing to the small size of the country, nation and Heimat overlap.
Heimat is a complex, cultural German concept that usually defies translation; it means "home" or "homeland" but with added emotional weight, signifying a profound sense of belonging, rootedness, and identity tied to a place, culture, people, or memories, unlike a simple geographical location. Agreed, in Malta nation and Heimat overlap, but that doesn't mean they are superimposed. Books like Il-Mosta u l-Ewwel Banda Tagħna support this interpretation.
Whereas nation and Heimat overlap but exist separately, each region, and, possibly, each locality has its own Heimat. Vassalli subdivided Malta into five different linguistic areas, each with its own distinct dialect. A prime example of this phenomenon is, to my mind, the word ġarnûs, used only in Ħaż-Żebbuġ and in the same sense as in the province of the Sicilian town of Enna where the smaller town of Agira is found, the town in which Ħaż-Żebbuġ's St Philip built most of his career as thaumaturge. There are - and this is, I believe, self-evident - different sub-cultures on these islands, each representing a distinct Heimat. Mosta's Heimat is described and analysed in this handsome (and - let's admit it - heavy) two-tome work, along with one prime expression of it, the Nicolò Isouard Philharmonic Society.
Despite the colonial power's valiant efforts to deny us our national identity, the Maltese still strove to invent a "national" historical tradition. And up to a point, they managed to invent tradition. I would argue, however, that that tradition can be subsumed into the narrative of the foreign dominant classes based on the (probably invented) assumption that the projects of the rulers and the will of the ruled coincided in historical outcome. The history of our towns and villages, on the other hand, is the history of the other classes, and is possibly real (as opposed to "invented") history.
In the Maltese context, local history speaks volumes - if you'll excuse the convoluted pun - about what our forefathers and even present generations went through. Particularly since the band clubs, the każini, were the pivots of Maltese politics. In his 1994 essay Malte, des occupations française et britannique à l'indépendance, Alain Blondy writes: "les Maltais n'ont jamais été maîtres de leur politique : l'Histoire s'est faite chez eux, mais sans eux" (the Maltese have never been masters of their own politics: history has been made in their country, but without them).
Colony Malta didn't have an own foreign policy, as this was a sphere of activity controlled exclusively by the Empire. Despite the intermittent tug-of-war between "native" law-makers and the colonial administration perpetuated by the succession of Constitutions imposed on Malta, virtually all local decisions were ultimately taken by the governor and his minions (not to say, underlings). The space left for any political manoeuvering by the Maltese was in the każini, that served as crucial spaces for community identity, political discourse, and proto-nationalist expression.
By fostering a sense of shared culture and acting as vital hubs for local politics and cultural preservation, the każini wittingly or unwittingly challenged British rule. But they were also the arena in which the Maltese lived their (repressed) political life before the time came when they had their own sovereign State. This is why the book that narrates the story of one such każin had to be 1,200 pages long. It contains the political, social, and cultural history of one Maltese community (in this case, the Mosta community), bringing to life challenges, victories and low points, initiatives and opposition, struggles and conflicts of differing scope, severity, and scale - in short, all the ingredients of politics, understood in a sense wider than that relating only to sovereigns and states.
A book such as this alters the meaning of "national" in the context of a (former) colony: from the politics of the foreign power that owns the State governing the "natives" to the political life of the "natives" who, due to circumstances, are unable to have any meaningful impact on the State regulating their lives. Blondy's assessment, which we mentioned above, is predicated on the idea that history exists only in relation to the Nation-State. But one can argue - probably with equal validity - that history can also exist outside of the Nation-State, as demonstrated by this book that tells the history of one of the nation's communities, Mosta, and its theatre of political operations, the każin.
"Nation-State" can be understood as a compound noun. But it is also a compound adjective. If we use it in this latter sense, we can say that the narrator brings to the fore the Nation-State tensions in Malta when he narrates the history of the każin (the arena where the politics of the nation-without-an-own-State play out) in parallel with the unfolding of that moment in national history when the nation's sovereign Nation-State comes into being. This telling contrast materialises in the book's Seventh Part, which deals with the turbulent years spanning 1956-1971, the years leading to national independence and the first years after that watershed. This part is vital to appreciating this book's cultural and political value.
Il-Mosta u l-Ewwel Banda Tagħha owes its existence to funds provided by the European Union and the Government of Malta. The Maltese book market being so tiny, no such production would be possible in Malta were it not for such aid. It is money well spent, as the book offers a series of glimpses into the small details of life in a town that gradually grows in importance, and of the hub of that town's social being. But it also offers invaluable insight into the mentality of an entire epoch, spanning a good part of the long 19th century, all of the short 20th century, and the beginning of the new century, on the eve of its second quarter.
This is a book that will enrich every library of which it will form part and every reader's understanding of Maltese history if read with the right mindset. It's a book for all Maltese, be they Mostin or not.