Articles by: Eleonora Mazzucchi

Louis Prima: ladies’ man, jazz legend, creator of some of the most infectively danceable and engaging music ever made. The latter was evidenced just last week by the expectant murmurs that turned to soft rhythmic tapping, and then to distinct by-the-beat knee drumming, from an audience who couldn’t help themselves when “The Wildest” (1999), a documentary on Prima by Don McGlynn, opened with one of his catchy musical numbers. Prima and Keely Smith, his doll-faced singing partner, appeared on screen delivering a jazzy swing tune. It was a performance so full of Prima’s characteristic verve that it must have taken the strength of God for those audience members not to jump out of their seats and sing along to the refrain, “I Ain’t Got Nobody”. Maybe it was the black-and-white 1950’s-era ambiance, the big band with an energetic brass section or—most likely—as one of the documentary’s interviewees put it, Louis’ “playing for the people”, his drive to entertain listeners, “make them smile and laugh” above all else.

 Prima was a New Orleans-born Italian American, reared on music from an early age. “The Wildest” emphasized that it was in the New Orleanian soul to love music and that the whole of the city thrived on it, made its living off of it, particularly in the 1920s jazz age in which Prima lived. As a boy he played the violin and constantly peered into black gospel churches whose musicality, and probably musical physicality, he drew on for inspiration. It wouldn’t take him long to pick up the trumpet and then strike out on his own, stealing the stage with singing and instrumental styles that seemed to separate him from other performers—even though, listening to his gravelly voice, one can hear traces of another great Louis from New Orleans: the unforgettable Armstrong. Indeed, when Prima was trying to secure one of his first gigs in New York the timber of his voice and his southern Italian swarthiness militated against him, leading some club owners to believe he was black, or at very least, too close to black for comfort.

But that same southern Italian element would turn to his advantage—and not just to win the hearts of sex symbols like Jean Harlow. Many commentators in the documentary, including radio host Ron Cannatella and jazz-pop authority Will Friedwald, agree that Prima’s background set him apart musically and the results are best observed in pieces like the much-adored “Angelina” (1944) and the humorous, anecdotal “Please No Squeeza da Banana” (1945). Prima would also use, to comic effect, a gibberish Italian dialect in the middle of his songs. It was part of an onstage game he played with his most famous female collaborator, Keely Smith (there would be many female costars over the years, and more often than not, they also became Prima’s wives). Prima, a wild crazy kid on stage, spouted the mangled old-world Italian phrases while Smith, a poised girl with a pixie haircut and a dead-pan stare, tried to repeat them for laughs. Louis Prima’s Italian identity was the twist he brought to jazz-pop in the 1940’s and 50’s and possibly, along with his eager-to-please repertory, what has prevented him from being fully considered a jazzman by jazz wonks. In the estimation of many historians his music wasn’t pure enough, and his style too much that of a showman. But if being the consummate showman produces timeless hits like “Sing, Sing, Sing” (1936) and puts Louis Prima in the ranks with Frank Sinatra—with just as much or more charisma than Old Frankie had—being impure may not matter so much after all.

At the CUNY Graduate Center of Journalism, in a program presented by Joe Sciorra and the Calandra Institute, the screening of “The Wildest” ended on a high note. The lights came on and it became obvious that the audience that filled the room, apart from some young folks brought in by their parents and grandparents, was for the most part, straight out of Prima’s generation. And when it came to interacting with “Wildest” producer Joe Lauro, who sat in for a post-screening Q and A with Prof. Anthony Tamburri, it was clear that Prima’s legacy as a seducer of the female masses was intact. A white haired woman took the opportunity to exclaim: “We used to go see Louis all the time at the Hotel Comodore without our parents knowing it. We even had a Louis Prima fan club!” “You know,” she added defensively, scoldingly, like a woman whose lover has been defamed, “we considered him a very serious musician.”

(Multimedia selected and edited by Giovanna Landolfi)

(Photo by flickr)

From the window of my 2^nd floor hovel on Bleecker St., I’m always catching little earfuls of conversation from passersby. There are more noises and sound bytes coming from them than from within my own apartment, and it’s safe to say that over the last highly political years, the topics I’ve heard the most have always pertained to the latest controversies in the halls of power. My opinionated neighborhood sitting at the intersection of all of downtown’s villages, a mélange of students, prematurely wealthy loft- dwellers, workers in the service industry, moribund immigrants of the old guard and artists, could provide the perfect sample study for the latest item in the news: Pope Benedict coming to town.

"I don’t even know his papal name. Benedict something or other? In Catholic school the Pope was just the Pope. I read he added new mortal sins to the existing ones which seems odd to me. He’s a former Nazi in the running; you’d think the Church would be more careful about picking someone like that. I just wish the Church would recognize it has an image problem."

“This Popes’s got the typical self-hating behavior of a gay man. The nature of his vitriol against gays, his writing of explicitly anti-gay tenets and his demeanor all point to that—are all homophobic symptoms of a man who deep-down is gay. And not to mention his suspect relationship with his personal secretary… everybody in the gay community thinks he’s a homosexual. But I’d just like to know he can spread all this hatred? It’s anti-Christian. Jesus himself said, ‘there shall be a new law that supersedes the old: Love each other.’ Everything he does seems to be dictated by hatred.”

“I don’t think the abuse cases are really the Pope’s fault. What can he do about them from the Vatican anyways? And I don’t think the Pope has to be an Italian. John Paul II wasn’t Italian and I was perfectly happy with him. Frankly I don’t want to say anything bad about the Pope.”

“This Pope scares me. He used to head this draconian Vatican division, under John Paul II, that was like the modern version of the Spanish Inquisition. He’s a Pope straight out of the Middle Ages.”

“I think he tries to help people, you know. But my boss says he’s a Nazi.”

“The Church wouldn’t exist without gay men—meaning gay priests. It’s disgusting the way the Pope attacks the gay community. I just wish the Catholic Church would credit the pillars of the institution for what they are, credit them for helping the Catholic faith survive basically. I’m relieved someone’s addressing the problem of molestation but this Pope isn’t doing enough about it. I wish there were another Pope assassination attempt! I mean, not like I would do it!

“I don’t think most people know much about the current Pope. Just that he’s a hardliner and a meanie compared to the last Pope. The last Pope had a much friendlier face. As a Jew, I felt warmer toward him.”

“I miss the old Pope. It looked me to like he used to go to South and Central America more—didn’t he go like six times?—and that he cared more about Latinos. And when it comes to sex scandals I just think it happens in all the religions. I mean, look at those people in Texas—what religion are they?—that trapped like hundreds of kids and were abusing them! Some of my Mexican friends are going to go see the Pope at Yankee Stadium but I don’t really feel like going.”

“The Pope is irrelevant. Nobody gives a crap about him and he can’t rebound from these recent scandals anyhow.”

“I don’t like this new Pope all that much. He’s flat and he has a way of speaking that’s without emotion and dry. I miss my old Pope but maybe there isn’t anyone who can be good like he was. He was for the young, the old, the sick. Maybe because I’m a Polish girl I felt very close to him—closeness I don’t feel at all with this Pope. Pedophilia is a delicate argument but I don’t think this Pope is doing enough about it.”

“I think the Church has an image problem. It bothers me and I don’t think this Pope is helping matters any. To me it’s why so many people are converting to other Christian faiths, like Evangelism.”

“As a Pope he’s pretty milk and toast. But as a Cardinal, Ratzinger was vicious, a Grand Inquisitor. And from my perspective as a Protestant, what he said when he was elected Pope just revolted me: 'The church will be healed by my presence'. Like he’s a deity or something. I think Ratzinger was brought in just to contrast John Paul II and undo Vatican II. And he’s misogynistic, against nuns saying mass because they don’t have penises! He hasn’t really done anything to piss me off yet, but I’m sure he will.”

“I think everybody should love each other and that’s that. I don’t know if I like this Pope or not but the key thing is having respect for everyone and a respect for all religions.”

“At first when this Pope was elected I was disappointed. He’s against the idea of women priests. Changes are just so slow in the Catholic Church… And I’m tired of these endless arguments about abortion and stem-cell research. Even if I’m a practicing Catholic I’m pro-choice and for stem-cell research and I don’t think it should be the church deciding on these matters. It might just be that since I came to America my views have liberalized a bit. On the pedophile scandals, I’m not sure how I feel because I know a priest who’s been accused of that. His name is Kavanagh; he’s sort of a big-shot in the Catholic Church in New York, a fundraiser, a friend of Cardinal Egan’s. He married me any my wife. And now he’s been removed from his post and he’s waiting to hear judgment on his case. My hunch is that the accusations are false. I want to be a good Catholic but I’m not sure the Pope is leading us in the right direction. I’m a Democrat and I don’t want that to conflict with being a Catholic. It’s not a black-and-white world and this Pope’s black-and-white mentality is something I think he has in common with Bush. I miss John Paul II, but I’m still willing to give Benedict a chance and see what he does.”

Behind every piece of music, every musical genre, there is a story. On the preliminary night of the Neapolitan Music Society's concert event, Professor Robert Gjerdingen was on hand to bring one such story to an audience who was discovering, and hearing, for the first time what Neapolitan classical music is.

From the stage of an intimate concert hall at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Gjerdingen, a professor of Music Theory at Northwestern University, explained how it was that Neapolitan music was overlooked by historians. Humorously he hinted that it was perhaps that those eighteenth-century Neapolitan musicians had "names that sound like pasta"-- in other words, that they were foreign and outside the frame of reference of mostly northern European music historians. But, as academics know now, it is very likely that those same forgotten musicians served as teachers and inspiration to the likes of Mozart and other Austro-German greats. In fact, as Gjerdingen pointed out, Mozart had himself referred to as "Signor Mozart" and Johann Schwartzendorf as "Jean Martini". These were typical efforts at Italianization because at the time, it was Italian music that was most prized.

Tracing back what this Neapolitan music was all about, it is critical to note how the musicians of the genre were formed. Inside 17th and 18th century conservatories, where the Neapolitan style itself was hatched, orphans were being raised into a musical army. Over 10 years of training-- during which, if they could not properly undertake the musical curriculum, they were thrown out on the street-- the orphaned boys learned basic compositional patterns (it was a mechanical process Gjerdingen described as "monkey see, monkey do"). As they progressed they added their own elaborations and flourishes to these foundations, analagous to a blues musician who creatively adds to his chords. The boys could fashion their own advanced pieces of music from an early age, and the result was generations of successful musicians who in, all probability, deeply impacted the history of music.

Prof. Gjerdingen delivered this lecture with passion and earnestness, using an onstage piano to illustrate the evolution of musical pieces over the course of the orphans' training. It seemed that, every time he touched the keys, or played a lovely Romanesca, the audience became moved. Visibly, they were ever eager to hear more.

Luci basse, bicchieri di cristallo che tintinnano insieme, una sala a vetri in cui gente raffinata si muove a passo di pavone. Avevo l’impressione di essere capitata in qualche concerto di beneficenza per una malattia ad acronimo—MS, HPV, CAPD (più lettere ci sono, più è favorita dalla New York bene!)—questo potrebbe chiamarsi “L’Associazione dell’Atrofia Muscolare Spinale vi invita ad una serata intima con Tony Bennett”. Invece no, l’acronimo di stasera era tutt’altro: Pdl.


I candidati all’estero del Popolo della libertà. Il partito li ha riuniti lunedì sera a Le Cirque, famoso ristorante chiccoso di midtown, per introdurli ad un pubblico decisamente benestante. Gli uomini indossavano abiti fatti su misura, le donne vestiti lunghi a spalle nude, una signora una spilla d’oro grande abbastanza da essere usata come arma letale. Poteva sembrare un ambiente impenetrabile, un tempio sotterraneo consacrato alla politica  di centro-destra di un gruppo esclusivo di italo-new yorkesi, ma presto si è rivelata  quella vecchia tendenza di fare il discorso, di convincere, forse anche di convertire. E le facce dei candidati, irrigidite sui depliants della  campagna elettorale, sono apparse dal vivo—due aspiranti alla camera, Cesare Sassi e Vincenzo Arcobelli, uno al senato, Augusto Sorriso.


Gli uomini erano diversi—il siciliano Sorriso, con ampi gesti della mano, essudava esperienza politica, Sassi, un abbronzato imprenditore milanese trapiantato in Florida, grande “bonhomie”, e l’aviatore in congedo Arcobelli, austerità militare—ma le loro politiche erano identiche. Sembrava che nell’arco dei loro discorsi si fossero divisi l’incarico di coprire tutti gli argomenti in linea con la politica estera del Pdl: diffusione della lingua italiana, problemi di riacquisto della cittadinanza italiana, critiche del sistema elettorale “partitini” e biasimo dell’attuale senatore all’estero all’opposizione, Turano (Sorriso dichiara veemente che il senatore del Pd “in Italia non è nessuno” e che una volta al senato, ha tradito “la propria comunità”, cioè quella degli italoamericani). Sorriso, i cui poster quella sera erano notevolmente più numerosi di quelli degli altri, si era espresso indignato nei riguardi della RAI International, lanciandosi in una lunga diatriba contro i suoi “programmi politicizzati, solo in un certo verso” e il fatto che la rete televisiva “aveva trascurato” i candidati di centro-destra, quando invece la rete stessa lo stava in quel momento filmando. Il candidato Arcobelli si è espresso in modo simile sul quotidiano “America Oggi”, paragonandolo al famoso (o infame, secondo il punto di vista) giornale comunista l’Unità.


Ad ognuno il suo stile. Sassi, durante e dopo gli atti ufficiali, si sentiva fra colleghi di stampo Bocconiano e parlava al pubblico con familiarità`, sparando le sue frasi a velocità record in staccato accento milanese. Era gioviale quando ha chiuso le sue parole con uno slogan inventivo di cui sembrava ampiamente soddisfatto: “Tirate Sassi in parlamento e fatelo con un Sorriso!”. Il Comandante Arcobelli a suo turno insisteva di non essere un politico, ma “un operativo”, “un soldato della comunità”. Ha aggiunto con appropriata serietà che gli “piace essere efficace, andare subito al target” e, anche lui usufruendo dello zeitgeist politico americano, ha dichiarato di credere “nella speranza”.


 Lo spirito della riunione ha raggiunto comunque il suo vertice quando, su uno schermo dietro ai candidati, si è proiettato un video saluto di Berlusconi. Il Cavaliere—come si fa chiamare dalla stampa italiana—sottolineando un cambiamento necessario per riparare ai danni del governo Prodi, metaforicamente ha chiamato alle armi “le donne e uomini d’Italia che amano la libertà”. E dunque quelli che—a differenza del resto del popolo—amano la libertà, si sono messi subito al lavoro. Studenti, fornai, maestri, ed operai d’Italia, ovvero la classe lavorativa, appaiono come cantanti in una sorta di video musical, talmente meschino da sembrare adirittura una parodia, un gesto inusualmente auto-critico ed umoristico da parte di Berlusconi. Ma vedendo gli ascoltatori attorno a me stranamente commossi e rispettosi, o per lo meno non piegati da risate incontrollabili, ho capito la verità. È seguito lo shock: era sul serio. I protagonisti sorridenti del video, che cantavano frasi come “Viva l’Italia, l’Italia che ha scelto di credere ancora in questo sogno”,  “Canto così, con quella forza che ha solamente chi è puro di mente” ed il coro “Presidente siamo con te, menomale che Silivio c’è!”, mi hanno fatto venire i brividi, come stessi assistendo ad una di quelle manifestazioni staliniste dove i contadini sfilano e cantano sincronizzati. Ho sentito, non necessariamente dai candidati presenti, che tendevano ad occuparsi della comunità italoamericana, ma da questo video, il pieno risveglio del culto berlusconiano.

I tre politici si sono mescolati fra gli invitati, giovani impiegati dell’azienda che ha sponsorizzato l’evento, MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) e le mogli anonime sparse in una sala prevalentemente maschile. In un angolo, Sassi—che mi ricorda una particolare classe politica americana, quella dei good ole’ boys del Sud—esclama ad un gruppo che si è formato attorno a lui “Ho vinto la regata nell’Adriatico!” Dirà anche senza inibizioni che è entrato in politica perché si è “rotto le balle” della situazione italiana, e che lui comunque, non ha niente da perdere. “Ho cambiato la moglie, quella nuova ha vent’anni meno di me. La vedi lì, è quella bella. Se la campagna non mi va bene, vado in barca.” Cose più scontate ribadite dai candidati erano il bisogno di sostenere il “Made in Italy”, di migliorare l’immagine dell’Italia colpita dallo scandalo dei rifiuti, e di motivare i giovani—come e quando, non si sa bene.

 

Quello che si sa è che questi candidati andranno a pesca di voti, uno a uno, se necessario. Mentre stavamo parlando, Arcobelli ha interrotto la conversazione per agganciare un signore, compaesano e potenziale elettore, che voleva il suo biglietto da visita. Gli ha parlato per ben venti minuti, calcando l’accento siciliano ed alleggerendo la retorica militare. “Cavallo di battaglia” l’ha detto solo una volta.