Remarks: 2017 Outstanding Italian American in North Carolina

Memory My Way

L. D. P. Vellani

Raleigh, NC

October 23, 2017

Madam President … Distinguished Officers … loyal lodge members … past honoree Coach Mike Miragliuolo … fellow guests … amici tutti …

It is with deep humility that I accept this recognition …

… When I reflect on the lives and accomplishments of the first four honorees: … Professor Joseph DeSimone, Judge Ann Marie Calabria, the late George Cattelona, Coach Michael Miragliuolo … one an inventor and scholar; one a shaper of laws and judicial opinions; one a marine veteran who survived the battles for Iwo Jima; one an author and a mentor to generations of young minds, hearts & bodies …

… being humble is no chore nor obligation for me … this evening, it is a necessity …

… and please allow me to embrace this special moment, not just for me alone … I accept it on behalf of my wife, Peggy Boswell, whom, in spite of or perhaps because of her unconditional love for me, I have never ceased to amaze with the half-wit ways I’ll spend my time, and the myriad projects & causes I’ll say “Yes!” to …

… I accept it on behalf of my son & daughter, Ben & Ginny, who, besides owing half of their DNA to me, have received untold opportunities to learn patience and forbearance in the face of my unbridled enthusiasm for obscurandum & pointless, irrelevant cultural observations …

… I accept it on behalf of my late parents, who successfully raised to adulthood seven unique individuals —my six siblings and me—my parents who believed it was equally important to know where you come from, as it is to know where you’re going …

… I accept it on behalf of my fellow musicians … tonight with us, in addition to my musician spouse, Peggy, the gifted vocalist, percussionist, song writer, and fellow Mebanesville co-founder, Sherry White Lea, from Graham, NC, and the talented guitarist and vocalist, Mike Gasperino, from Mebane, NC … and the so many, many others of you who  have taken the time to learn about our songs and stories and melodies, and have put up with—as my family—so many of my crazy musical and performance ideas …

… and last,  but never least, the community, our community—people in this room and around this state and nation and world-- who work to organize cultural events and who come out and support la nostra bellissima musica even as we, the musicians, are fortunate enough to be able to perform it.

… You see, an award to a performing artist is truly an award to an entire community—beginning with the people in this room and then … beyond …

… and, today, beyond here, al di lâ, where is our community going? Better yet, as my folks would say, where did this community come from … where did you, where did I come from?

… What are the memories, shaping our thoughts and feelings and beliefs … that guide our passing from a shared yesterday into a shared tomorrow …

.. What, in particular, shapes Italian campanilismo—from the word campanile for a town’s place-marking church steeple, campanilismo--sort of a uniquely, incredibly-binding Italian hometown pride that can create quarrels about the superiority of my village patron saint over your village patron … or even a kind of world-scale campanilismo, where one person or community might see Cristoforo Colombo first as a patron of innovation, a single- minded, internationalist, entrepreneur, promotor of individual initiative … or another community to see him, first, as a devilish, conquistadoring, hired gun, in service to avaricious 1 per-centers of his era … or, even ultimately, to see him in chiaroscuro … in the all-too-familiar human shadowland of “somewhere-in-between” …

… Where do we come from? It shouldn’t be that difficult to answer, should it? …  Just like Maria in the Sound of Music, shouldn’t we start at the very beginning … do, re me, the first three notes … (audience responds, “just happen to be”) … see, like you, …, story and song are very important … and have a way of sticking in your mind and heart …

… So, where does your past begin? Where does my past begin? Where does our past together begin?

… Tonight, for me, it begins … once upon a time … there was born a little baby in a tiny cross-roads settlement outside of the town of Correggio in the province of Reggio Emilia in the ancient region of Emilia in north-central Italy. His parents named him Leonida—after the Greek patriot, Leonidas, who helped hold off the invading Persians at Thermopile Pass …

… When Leonida was less than one year old, his mother, Maria, died. His father, Agostino, then married another woman whom Leonida came to love dearly. However, she also died before Leonida turned 10, as did his eldest sister Desolina.

… After the deaths of his mother, step-mother, and sister, his father sent Leonida to live with his elder cousin, Francesco Pacifico Vellani. Cousin Don Pacifico was the parish priest for the Church of San Niccoló in a neighboring town. Leonida worked on the parish lands and learned much about the tending of grape vines and the management of dairy cattle, as well as improving his literacy. Leonida was shocked when his dear cousin and mentor, Don Pacifico, died suddenly, while saying mass in the parish church. Don Pacifico was only 44 and Leonida had just turned 17 … already having lost his mother, step-mother, eldest sister and now his mentoring cousin …

… Leonida had to move out of the parish rectory … eventually, he met and fell in love with a lovely, intelligent young woman named Virginia. Like the start of so many courtships in the turn-of-the-20^th century Emilian countryside, Leonida first saw Virginia leaving the local church one evening after vespers. It was love at-first-sight. Virginia and Leonida were married within the year ...

… The young family grew. First their daughter Maria Caterina, then, Desolina Margherita, then their first son, Bruno Pacifico, and then their third daughter, Ĕlena Virginia ...

… A landless bracciante—from the common Italian word for arm, braccio, similar to our English work “field hand”—Leonida—a bracciante--worked hard on the local dairy farms ...

… After his surviving sister, Caterina, married, his father, Agostino, joined Leonida’s household. But Leonida was restless, at times quarrelsome with the local parochial authorities who had replaced his late cousin at the parish church, and anxious about Italy’s wars in Africa, and the growing threat of world war among the European kings and emperors ...

… Early one Sunday morning, so the story goes, Leonida was tending cows, when a church official—was he a priest, was he a sub-cleric involved in collecting the obligatory payments from the landless braccianti who worked the church lands—magari the cleric, sciur padrun, “Mr. Boss Man,” stopped to harass Leonida for not being at Mass. Leonida and the official got into a heated argument that soon came to blows, severe blows, as Leonida struck the man with a farm implement, fearing he may have severely injured, if not killed the man ...

… Leonida knew he was in trouble. Of course, the church official did not die—as the saying goes, chains rust slowly, but the broth goes down quick-- regardless, Leonida was in deep trouble. Soon he had slipped away, alone, across the Po River, over the Alps, and into France, taking passage from Le Havre on the English Channel to Ellis Island in New York harbor, aboard the steamship Niagara … or, nee-ah-GAR-a, as he continued to prefer to say for the rest of his life ... for the rest of his life ...

… nee-ah-GAR-a … for you see … that’s the one part of this story I can honestly say that I know for sure … because I heard him pronounce the word that very way, nee-ah-GAR-a …Yes, I knew Leonida. He was my dad’s dad, my nonno.

... My interest in traditional Italian story and song begins with him, my grandfather, Leonida Tranquillo Vellani, and some of his daughters, my aunts, mie zie, particularly Aunt Desolina, or Aunt Lena, and her younger sister Aunt Emma …

… Leonida was an indefatigable community singer, with a repertoire of traditional and contemporary melodies, as well as anti-clerical and syndicalist songs. Whether in the church choir, or at a company picnic, or a family reunion, or simply in his kitchen playing briscola or scopa with neighbor friends, or in his basement making his own wine, nonno would lift up his voice, and perhaps a small glass of wine, at the drop of a hat ...

… Leonida and his wife and children were from the central Po River plain, a region—like nearly all regions of the Italian peninsula--with a rich tradition of community singing, as well as the home of one of Italy's most famous traditional singers, Giovanna Daffini from the province of Mantova in the Veneto, just across the river from Reggio Emilia. Her almost equally famous, beloved accompanist-spouse, Vittorio Carpi, was from the town of Gualtieri in Reggio Emilia …

… As a teenager, borrowing a friends primitive reel-to-reel recorder, I was able to capture some of Leonida’s and his daughters’ songs on audio tape late in his life. I also was able to capture some of his stories from his youth and young adulthood, as well as some from his later life in Columbus, Ohio in the first half of the 20^th century …

… I have to credit at least one additional, important source, outside of my immediate family, who helped fuel my commitment to studying and performing Italian folk and popular song, Alessandro “Sandro” Portelli. Sandro has enjoyed a distinguished career at the University of Rome, usually referred to as La Sapienza (Wisdom). Sandro is one of the foremost scholars of oral history in the world today …

… I was attending meetings for work at a very special, unique conference center in eastern Tennessee, the Highlander Center, and Sandro, about ten years or so my senior, was at the center studying American folk song, particularly songs about social justice, songs that help preserve social memory, as well as inspire people to work for a better future ...

… I sang a few bars from a couple of my nonno’s songs, and he instantly recognized them, knew all about them, as well as my nonno’s original world. Sandro pointed me toward other sources for study and recordings, including the pioneering field work of the late Alan Lomax as well as Diego Carpitella and Roberto Leydi, and the contemporary scholarship of Luisa Del Giudice and Anna Chairetakis (Alan Lomax’s daughter) and the singer and cultural organizer, Barbara Spillman Dane, who turned 90 years old this past spring …

… Nonno, mie zie, il professore …

… That’s where much of my musical memory begins. Of course, I like to tell people, because it is true, that I could sing in Latin before I could read in English. And I’ve loved everything musical, as far back as I can remember in my own life--liturgical music; music in and around nonno’s house; 78 records in our living room; Enrico Caruso and Dion DiMucci on the radio; musical acts on television; singing in the parish choir … those memories … and … even more importantly, the human relationships that  ignited and united them with my other life experiences, to propel, and continue to propel me, along my life’s musical and performance journey …

… Where does your memory begin? What are you remembering right now? Why are you thinking about that? Moreover, what are you sharing or preserving within your own family, from among your favorite songs or melodies, from among your deepest, most profound thoughts and memories of your family and friends? …

… It’s interesting how my life journey—and the memories I’ve both received and constructed--have a connection with each of the previous four honorees: like Professor DeSimone, I’ve taught at the undergraduate and graduate level; like Judge Calabria, a good portion of my professional career has involved work in and among law and the courts; like Coach Miragliuolo I’m a former NC-licensed teacher, and have done much work with youth in sports, in church, in court ...

… But my closest kinship may be with the late, Greatest-Generation warrior and 2015 recipient, George Cattelona. Like my nonno, he was a scrappy, no-nonsense, hard-working family man and provider. And, like me, he came to believe that it is important to share your stories, and the stories of your friends, compatriots, and comrades … and not only to share them, but to find ways to preserve them for those who come after him, after us … because you can’t know where you’re going if you can’t tell or don’t know where you’ve come from …

… decide where your own past begins … talk about it … write about it … record it … share it … and … and, in that work, find the connections among us … that’s what makes us community, what binds us together as Italian Americans, moreover, as humans …

… many of us in this room, we know something about the shared story of having roots in the Italian peninsula … former family tongues twisted up in the polyglot of late Latin and invader dialects … the stories of success and shame and love and loss …. Shared stories of travel and change, and, again, loss and gain … sure Aquinas, Assisi, Alighieri, Colombo, DaVinci, Beccaria, Garibaldi (Anita e Giuseppe), Sacco e Vanzetti, Cabrini,  le Staffette, i Fratelli Cervi, Lombardi, Sinatra, Madonna, Bennett, Capone, Falcone, Berlusconi … each are important historical and cultural figures for one reason or another …

… but what about our personal memory … as part of our community’s collective memory … our personal experience as part of our community’s collective experience … what stories have we received, and what stories have we constructed from the bricks & mortar of our own lived experience … you don’t have to go to Iwo Jima or learn a musical instrument to experience, to share life … the riotous, raucous, reverent, irrelevant, ribald, irreverent, retiring experience of the Italian diaspora in music, dance and song … that has been my path … what’s yours? … Know yours, embrace yours, record yours, share yours, … as Mr. Cattelona, said, “Open up, tell your story” … then, and only then, I believe you will have truly contributed to one of my favorite Italian expressions – la storia continua …

Grazie mille, Dio ci benedica,  e alla prossima volta … perche … la storia continua … sempre … avanti …