The Project

In the Sardinian language, Modas means the plurality of local expressions that characterize Sardinian cantu a tenore singing. The main objective of our project is, indeed, to safeguard and promote this expressive wealth that connects singing and singers to their own communities, of which they are a living expression.

For this reason, Modas articulates a comprehensive initiative aimed at safeguarding, studying, and promoting this musical practice: from the census of singing linked to academic activities, audiovisual documentation, and ethnographic research, to the creation of a cantu a tenore singing network, to the recovery and development of the contexts of traditional roles and the involvement of the younger generations through public events in the communities to which they belong and, also, didactic activities in schools. All these cultural actions directly involve the singers, thus favoring an interaction between the various communities.

The different actions that are intended to be developed within the frame of this project are extremely diversified and able to offer a spectrum of proposals that favor research, empowerment, and protection of cantu a tenore singing in the local contexts where this practice is active, leveraging on its strengths and solving its critical issues.

"Modas: Safeguarding and promotion of the practice of cantu a tenore, respecting its local expressions" is a project of the Istituto Superiore Regionale Etnografico [Higher Regional Ethnographic Institute] (ISRE) financed through Law 77/2006 of the Ministry of Culture. "Modas" was born through the direct collaboration between ISRE and the cantu a tenore singers, represented by the Associazione Tenores Sardegna, which represents 50 singing groups representing 50 different towns, from the Associazione Boches a Tenore, which represents about 25 groups of singers from 25 different towns, and by the Associazione CAMPOS, which represents 500 musicians and singers of the Sardinian oral tradition, including over 350 cantu a tenore singers.

Technical-Scientific Manager for the project: Diego Pani

Head of the Cantu a Tenore Singing Network: Sebastiano Pilosu