Story of a Sax

This photograph, taken on the streets of downtown Bangkok one day about fifteen years ago, worked long within my subconscious. It pushed me to purchase, just a couple of years later and without feeling a particular need for it, a musical instrument almost similar in shape to the one played by that wise Asian musician who scratched his head under a flyover.
The sax I saw in a junk dealer's window in Asunción, Paraguay, was not a clarinet, though its shape was reminiscent of one: a "soprano" with an elongated form, the most difficult to play. I took it without haggling over the price. Once back in Italy, I cared for it down to the smallest detail, restoring it and equipping it with a precious vintage bakelite mouthpiece from the esteemed Otto Link company of New York. The passion did not fade even when I realized I would never produce anything more than the wail of an elk!
And yet, that instrument communicated something inexplicable to me that I was never able to decode—something that perhaps had to do with the music I had heard played masterfully by that legless Asian musician who interpreted Benny Goodman so well amidst the honking horns of evening traffic. That "something" pushed me to be content with just polishing the sax and holding it in my arms while I listened to music. A feeling had been established such that I would not have sold it for any reason in the world; even without knowing how to play it, the same thing had happened to me with my first camera. Perhaps it was just a matter of time, and perhaps I might have even played something on it sooner or later, who knows.

However, a few months later, during the winter, an Argentine musician appeared in Turin—a good man I had met in Buenos Aires. He told me he had come to Italy on a mission to stock up on musical instruments to equip his radio station and the new recording studio he had put together with great sacrifice, aiming to involve and educate the "street kids" of the Argentine capital through music.

I did not hesitate. Father Eduardo Meana, moved, accepted my gift, which in this way, through him, took the road back home with a new and sparkling luster. It is right this way: the circle closed in the best possible manner, without regrets. What is a peripheral? And what is a prosthesis? A prosthesis, like an artificial limb, allows one to articulate movements and interact with the surrounding world, while a peripheral functions like the interface of a computer or a smartphone. In some way, they perform the same function, albeit virtually. To which of the two categories should cameras and musical instruments belong, since they perform equally vital functions for the artists who use them?


Luca Periotto
NP December 2025