Forgiare la musica. Da Tubal-Kain ai mastri ferrai siciliani

The idea of the “blacksmith musician” was widely spread in the ancient world: from the biblical myth of the blacksmith Tubal-Kain, half-brother of Jubal, inventor of musical instruments (lyre, psaltery, flute), to the legend handed down in Helleno-Latin literature that attributed to Pythagoras the discovery of musical intervals as he walked past a blacksmith’s forge. In the christianized Europe of the medieval-Renaissance period, the link between music and metallurgy, associated with the biblical blacksmith and the Greek philosopher, undergoes significant reworkings, both in the iconographic tradition and music literature. The ethnological investigation also offers numerous examples of musical practices associated with the work of blacksmiths in African and Asian societies. In European folklore, the case of the martinete can be mentioned: the song punctuated by the blows of the hammer on the anvil that the Andalusian Gypsies consider one of the original tonás of the cante jondo. However, the most significant persistence of the myth that associates the origin of music with the beating of blacksmiths on the anvil is found in Sicily: from oral testimonies collected around the beginning of the 20th century by the musician-ethnographer Alberto Favara to what it was recorded with modern devices in the last thirty years.