CATENE D’ORO E COLTELLI D’ARGENTO
Short seminar on the symbolic values and uses of wild herbs in local tradition and concert/presentation of an audio CD

Circolo Culturale Contadino di Colognole, Pontassieve (Florence, Italy)
June 21st, 2025

Activities developed by La Leggera as part of the Tramontana Network project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme.

In Tuscan tradition, the summer solstice is not celebrated on 21 June, the day of the astronomical phenomenon itself, but on 24 June, the day dedicated to St John the Baptist. The night of St John is generally considered magical and many sacred and profane rites still survive around it. The initiative will include a short seminar on the harvesting of St John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum, also known as “witch’s herb” or “St John’s herb”) for the production of medicinal oil or for burning in ritual fires, the harvesting of walnuts for the preparation of the traditional liqueur called ‘nocino “, and the gathering of wild flowers and other herbs for the preparation of ‘St John’s water”, considered beneficial for beauty and propitiatory for love.

While waiting for the most ‘magical’ night of the year in the rural calendar, we have chosen to invite Placida Staro (vocals and violin) and Ricardo Tomba (vocals and percussion) from Monghidoro (Bolognese Apennines) to present their latest audio CD: ‘Golden Chains and Silver Knives’. Here is what they write in the presentation of the work: “Chains of Gold and Knives of Silver is a cruel tale with raw features. We use stories, experiences and sounds as scalpels of the soul and rings of strength, silver knives to cut the deadly winds of the ridges and golden chains to bind wandering people and precarious dancers.

The people of the Apennines do not “name” pain or love, nor do they act or convey their effects through sound, song, dance or celebration. These are forces of death and life that flow, binding experiences and breaking boundaries. Thus, having renounced adaptability, having refused innocence, we expose the strident contradictions of sounds and movements, the very ones that, in celebration, as musicians, we honour and govern differently. For this journey is dedicated to ourselves, to the dark side of celebration, to those who have accompanied our lives. A thousand dedications from our memory, each song a breath of other lives.