One of the hats which many people thought it was slightly funny to see you wearing was that of honorary president of the Ghaqda tal-Ghannejja u tad-Daqqaqa (Society of Folk Singers and Players). Presumably you followed with special interest the three-evening Ghanafest held over the past weekend at the Argotti Gardens. Did you enjoy it?

Since last year, the festival has had a new director, Reuben Zahra, who succeeded the greatly missed Gorg Mifsud Chircop. As was to be expected from a musician who is both a prize-winning composer of classical music and a performer on traditional Maltese instruments that he himself has done a great deal to revive, the new director has given a different slant to the festival.

Mifsud Chircop was a stickler for traditional forms. He did not welcome the innovations that an ghannej such as the late Frans Baldacchino, Il-Budaj, had introduced, including using ghana in opera and in English. On the contrary, Zahra devoted a principal part of the festival to the incorporation of ghana into classical musical settings.

The precedent for this fusion of popular and sophisticated art forms had been set by Charles Camilleri, to whose memory this year's festival was dedicated. Some songs by the former virtuoso accordionist, who later became Malta's national composer with lyrics by Joe Friggieri originally written for Mary Rose Mallia, were arranged for a trial of excellent performers on classical instruments by Zahra, who himself brilliantly played the zummara.

This combination of traditional Maltese folk instruments with classical ones is in itself as rich in potentiality as the use of ghana melodies.

I excitedly look forward to Zahra making even greater use of it in more ambitious compositions. This would add more local colour to works whose original character is partly made up of creative abstractions from our Mediterranean sound-scape.

I enjoyed very much hearing some of my best-loved prejjem (guitarists) and ghannejja, foremost among them L-Izgej, singing the Bormliza (high-pitched, mostly vocalising).

There were several other non-participants who confided to me their regret about not having been able to perform. In these days of the European elections, some other old time ghannejja recalled nostalgically the political commitment of a lost icon such as Il-Bambinu. I myself missed women ghannejja rather more.

I calculate that over the three days some 2,000 people attended, including many non-natives who were not ignored by the presenters.

The variety and quality of the indigenous products available at the stalls, ranging from liquors to lace handmade on the spot, to books and much else, surprised me. This festival was a true celebration of Maltese cultural identity.

What about the setting in the Argotti Gardens?

The director chose not to utilise the scenery evoking a Maltese village tavern in the good old days on the stage, but there were tables at which one could sit and drink and nibble as in the most typical ghana setting. The Argotti is an excellent place for this kind of event, but I could not help being sad that the botanical gardens that are sited there have not yet been restored to their former glory, although some notable improvements have been made. I have no doubt that, properly developed, the gardens could become a major tourist attraction.

In the early 1980s, I used to be chagrined when I visited countries ranging from Mexico to Malaysia and, as is my habit, walk through the botanical gardens there, since flowers and plants symbolise for me not just the transitoriness of this-worldly existence but also the sheer beauty of creation. Invariably, I would be shown some cacti or succulent plants that I would be told came from Malta, but when I came back I failed to find their originals at the Argotti.

At the time, the botanical gardens had been removed from under the care of the University and had become a sad shambles.

When I was University rector, steps began to be slowly taken for the Argotti to become once again a place for research and a resource for education in the biological diversity of our island environment.

I never deluded myself that Argotti could become the equivalent of Kew Gardens in size or attractiveness for tourists. But where botanical gardens of decent quality exist and are prominently advertised, they are crowd pullers.

With Renzo Piano stressing the importance of the axis from Argotti to St Elmo, with City Gate and Palace Square as the two main nodal points on the way, it is devoutly hoped that Argotti will not remain the one point of the four to be left in total neglect.

Argotti has obviously a key role to play in the excellent projected plan for a tourist route along the gardens (nearly a score of them) on the bastions and elsewhere around Valletta and Floriana. Along that route and in close relationship to Argotti, it was also planned to have an artists' village.

Do you think the realisation of that prospect will have to wait until the European Union accepts the French insistence on including culture among its important competences?

I still hope in the depths of my heart that the rising awareness of the importance of environmental ethics, together with what Unesco calls "the intangible heritage" (such as ghana) will lead to a renaissance of Argotti Gardens even without European funding. This hope is not due to utopian optimism but to a firm belief that both politicians and businessmen arrive sooner rather than later at a good assessment of where investment yields results.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.