Diego Pani is the manager of the musical patrimony of the Istituto Superiore Regionale Etnografico (ISRE) and a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His research focuses on the dynamics of music performance of young generations of musicians in reference to the use of media as a learning device, as well as the construction of social meaning via audio and audiovisual materials in the vernacular traditions and popular music scenes of Sardinia island, Italy. Additionally, he is engaged in the production of documentary films, web documentaries, and photo reportages.
The Search’ which is one of Diego's current documentary projects. Every year, hundreds of blues musicians from all over the world participate in the International Blues Challenge, a contest that takes place in many clubs of Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The festival offers musicians and blues music fans an opportunity to embark on a journey to the deep south of the United States, the land that gave birth to many legendary bluesmen and that has experienced the most crucial season in the history of this music. The Search is the story of a journey made in the Deep South by two Sardinian musicians, the Sardinian duo Don Leone. Travelling between Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana, it portrays a cultural landscape still anchored to the memory of those iconic musicians who inhabited the cities and countryside of this enormous piece of America. In the audiovisual material collected, the experience of two young Sardinian musicians is represented in opposition to one of the musicians, organizers, researchers who live in the deep south of the United States, characters deeply linked to those historical places of music-making. Inside this framework, emerges a contemporary musical context that is both related to local communities of musicians and massive musical tourism. This is the main scenario in which Don Leone travels for the first time, scratching the surface of a complex musical world, in search of the Blues