“That's Not Italian Music!”

8 “That’s Not Italian Music!” My Musical Journey from New York to Italy and Back Again John T. La Barbera s a musician with many memorable experiences of a lifelong journey through Asouthern Italian traditional music that has taken me from New York to Italy and back again, I wish here to let my memory speak by sharing my musical auto- biography. How many times have I heard, after my performances of traditional music, “That’s not Italian music!”? I have engaged with this music for over thirty years, and it is time to explain why it is Italian music, why this music has been so misunderstood in America, and most of all, what it means to me. It all began with my first guitar, a fifteen-dollar “Stella” that my father bought for me one Friday night when I was about ten years old. I had merely wanted to play and sing some of the music I had heard around the house. I never expected then that I would be dedicating my entire life to this music, traveling because of it, and reconnecting to the land of my grandparents through it. They had all come from southern Italy by steamship during the period of mass migration in the early twentieth century (ca. 1904) to the lower east side of Manhattan—known today as the East Village. My paternal grandparents, Ciro and Francesca La Barbera, came from Bolognetta (formally known as Agghiasciu), near Palermo, Sicily. My maternal grandparents, Leonardo and Adrianna Mancini, came from Itri, south of Rome, in the region of Lazio. Growing up in New York City in the early 1950s, especially south of Fourteenth Street, I seemed like a curious combination of a young street urchin, a guaglione, from a back street of Naples, set inside a Jewish ghetto of Eastern Europe. We had bocce ball courts on Houston and First Avenue, right next to Katz’s Delicatessen and the outdoor markets of Delancy Street. My mother still tosses Yiddish words in with Italian dialect phrases, creating a New York “mixed salad.” But what I remember most is the music and stories I heard L. D. Giudice (ed.), Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans © Luisa Del Giudice 2009 102 JOHN T. LA BARBERA about Italy and the Italian records played in the shoe repair shop on East Ninth Street and First Avenue, owned and operated by my maternal grandfather, Leonardo Mancini. He always had music playing, either on the Italian radio station or the small Victrola phonograph in the corner of the room, with the arias of Verdi, Puc- cini and, of course, the great Caruso. Since he never actually returned to his home- land, it was this music that emotionally transported him there daily. Sometimes an impromptu visit by my two uncles, Jimmy and Joe La Barbera, and the sounds of their guitar and mandolin, would fill the shop with sweet nostalgia. Known as I Bec- camorti della Notte (“The Undertakers of the Night”), they were popular in the 1930s and 1940s, playing serenades under fire escapes and at weddings and social engage- ments throughout the Village, and often appearing on local Italian radio stations. We were constantly surrounded by music, and my uncles, who gave me my first taste of live music—of guitar and mandolin—had a lasting effect on me. By the 1950s, Italian culture had started to be assimilated into the American mainstream and became somewhat acceptable. Louie Prima, Lou Monte, Connie Francis, Jimmy Roselli, Jerry Vale, and many others had crossed over, blending Italian and American songs and lyrics for American audiences. A few generations before, New York City had been the center of Italian culture in America. Italian theatre, I Pupi Siciliani (Sicilian Puppet Theatre), feasts and processions for the Madonna and Saint Rocco, music publishers, impresarios, instrument makers, and especially the guitars and mandolins made by John D’Angelico and Jimmy D’Aquisto1 could be found all over New York and its boroughs. These various Italian influences made a profound impression on me. At the same time, I was also taken by the American folk and rock craze of the early 1960s. The guitar was the vehicle driving it, and it was going to take me far away from the streets of my neighborhood in Queens, to which we had migrated from the down- town streets of the overcrowded city. Not only was I beginning to teach myself songs that I had heard from the traditional American folk music repertoire—the early Beatles, and the top forty—but I had also begun to play some of the Italian songs I had learned from my family. I was fortunate that, in our neighborhood, there were many great music teachers within walking distance from my house. I studied with Don Felice Alfino, Lou Aliano, and Dominick Minassi, all Italians, and they were familiar with the guitar and mandolin repertoire that my uncles had played. It was great to hear and watch them play as they all prompted me to accompany their waltzes, polkas, foxtrots, and even some ragtime. By 1964, my brother Dennis, together with my best friend and schoolmate Eugene Gregoretti, and I formed my first band called the “Fugitives,” named after the popular TV show. Our greatest moment was playing at the New York World’s Fair in Queens, in September 1965 (see Figure 8.1). From that moment on, as a teenager, I decided to become serious about my music and study classical guitar. To my great fortune, I was accepted into the Hartt School of Music at the Uni- versity of Hartford, in Connecticut, where I eventually received my bachelor of music degree in classical guitar. It was here that I pursued my classical training and began to be interested in Medieval and Renaissance studies, thanks to one of the greatest lutenist and early music specialists, Joseph Iodone. He was a great inspiration and sparked my interest in Italian Renaissance music. Early music “THAT’S NOT ITALIAN MUSIC!” 103 Figure 8.1 The Fugitives, 1964–65, at New York World’s Fair on September 13, 1965. From left to right (front): Eugene Gregoretti, John La Barbera, Dennis La Barbera, and Billy Giramonte. had only begun to be revived in the late 1920s, and Iodone had been a member of one of the first early music consorts in America during the 1950s. Upon my graduation from Hartt, another professor, Dr. Joseph Del Principe, offered me a full scholarship to study in Siena, Italy. I had been planning to move to London, since I was attracted to its vibrant music scene, but I went to Italy first. After my first summer in Siena in 1973, I moved to Florence and entered the graduate pro- gram at Villa Schifanoia in San Domenico, near Fiesole. The Villa was a private arts institute run by Rosary College (Dominican University) in River Forest, Illinois. Italy in the early 1970s was full of political turmoil—and it all seemed very familiar to me, having just come from the American unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Being a student myself and surrounded by Italian students from the 104 JOHN T. LA BARBERA University of Florence, I began to associate with some of their causes. Most of the students I met were southern Italians (meridionali), and they had accepted me as a long-lost relative from the land of all immigrants: America. I felt at home. Among Italian students, there was a desire to reconnect with their roots and break away from the industrialization of the pop culture and music beginning to enter Italy from America. The resurgence of Italian traditional music during this time was not only a political statement but also a call to preserve some of the time-honored traditions that many felt were slowly disappearing and would soon be lost. Stu- dents and workers (lavoratori) wanted to hold on to these traditions. The publication of La terra del rimorso by Ernesto de Martino in 1961 started to make people aware of the impoverished economic conditions and the culture of the Italian South at the same time traditional music was beginning to take Italy by storm. The recordings made by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella earlier in the 1950s inspired others to continue where the earlier ethnomusicologists had left off. This new enthusiasm motivated the younger generation to research its own roots and to present this music to wider audiences in what has come to be called a folk revival. Students now had a voice, and in using it they gave new life to, and helped preserve, a precious cultural heritage. I happened to be right in the middle of this movement. I too was reconnecting to my remote past. How I came to this place and time, and why I met all these wonder- ful people, feels like fate rather than coincidence. In any case, I was certainly “in the right place at the right time.” It wasn’t long before I started playing my guitar in the streets to make some extra money to pay for living expenses. I would set out each day, guitar in hand, searching for the perfect piazza—as well as the perfect cappuc- cino. The Piazza Signoria was that perfect place: the Loggia della Signoria and the corridor of the Uffizi museum provided perfect acoustics. Street musicians and per- formers had always favored this location, and during this period in Italy the streets were alive with spontaneous performances of all sorts—everything from puppet shows to political demonstrations—filling the streets with an ever-present Carnival.

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