Caraglio, 19th November 2025,
My name is Sergio Berardo. I play the hurdy-gurdy and other traditional Occitan instruments, and I’ve been singing in Occitan for many years. The hurdy-gurdy is an iconic, totemic instrument in our valleys in northern Italy, comparable to the Celtic harp in Ireland. But not so long ago, no one was interested in the hurdy-gurdy, because it was considered old-fashioned.
In the 1980s, I took up the art again. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the travelling musicians from our mountains, who, since ancient times, have travelled through the most diverse territories, with only this hand-cranked instrument. I have played in the valleys throughout Occitania, I’ve also played in Europe and even beyond, and everywhere I’ve been, I’ve taken my hurdy-gurdy with me.
Right now, I’m talking to you from Caraglio, in the Italian Occitan valleys, which are the easternmost extension of the Occitania territory. It’s a very diverse region where, sadly, the Occitan language is spoken less and less. I belong to a generation whose parents wanted something different for their children. They spoke the dialect, but spoke to us in Italian. They tried to cut our ties with the past.
However, I realized that I needed those roots to be able to reconnect with my history, and to reestablish ties with my valley. When I realised that this valley was part of a linguistic and cultural area that stretched to the Pyrenees, and to Catalonia, I decided to embrace this “Occitanity”.
From the late 1960s onwards, an autonomous Occitan political movement developed here. However, it wasn’t able to find a foothold. Today, it’s channeled through the realm of culture and music, while retaining these identity-based motivations.
When you say the word “identity”, people take you for a member of the Ku Klux Klan. That’s absolutely not the case; my identity is not based on any supposed supremacy. The very fact that I choose to sing in a local language to talk about important issues, and not just to play for my own people, is exactly the opposite of those who want to build walls at the borders. Occitan music seeks to tear down these walls, to convey ideas, emotions and local culture across political borders.
Occitan music can be political for several reasons, one of the main ones being that I continue to sing in a language that everyone thought was dead. When I compose a song in Occitan and people learn the lyrics, the language lives on, but for this to happen the song has to be beautiful and evoke emotion. Then Occitan conquers its right to exist.
When I started out, song lyrics were often linked to folk music and pastoralism. These old themes are obviously beautiful, but they don’t correspond at all to what we might want to say today. So with my band, Lou Dalfin, we started performing songs that respect the folk dance style, but with lyrics that are personal to us.
I’m not interested in people reviving Occitan traditions out of some kind of cultural duty. If a tradition has to be defended, that’s when you know it’s dead. To keep it alive, you always have to bring something new to it. It’s a very important form of resistance: rejecting a certain type of homogenisation without playing the victim or wanting to represent a deviant subculture, but simply doing what your ancestors did, but in today’s society.
Nowadays, everyone talks the same way, eats the same things, dresses the same, thinks the same and lives the same. But here, we are on a “talvera”, the part of the field where the oxen stopped, because they had reached the edge, turned around and went back again. The fact that there are still talveras, islands, boundaries, differences, places that proudly refuse to conform to certain clichés, places where freedom reigns, I think is a treasure for humanity, not just for Occitania.
Sergio
