The recent Grammy Awards inspired this blog, the title of which is a spin on a famous song by the 1960s folk group the Kingston Trio: Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Once upon a time, Italian Americans gobbled up Grammys like Pac Man, and in every conceivable category: pop (Madonna), jazz (the late Chick Corea), classical (Luciano Pavarotti), movie soundtracks (Henry Mancini), and the Great American songbook (Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett). Not anymore.
It’s worth remembering that the very first Grammy winner for Best Song in 1958 flew over here straight from Italy: Volare by Domenico Modugno.
Cut to 2023. The only recognizable Italian face at the Grammys – of sorts, given the horrible Botox job – was singer Madonna’s. Now seen as the Den Mother of Destabilization, Madonna encouraged the new generation of music-makers to continue being “controversial.” And so they did: The duo she introduced was Sam Smith and Kim Petras – the former gay, the latter a transgender woman. They performed their Grammy-winning hit, Unholy, during which the portly Smith, shoe-jammed into a tight, red devil outfit, gyrated suggestively, while Petra sang out to him from a locked cage.
From a song about flight to a song promoting flights of S&M!
Poor Domenico would turn “blu, nel pinto di blu” himself.
That said, here’s a link to a Feb. 6th article from America Domani listing Grammy winners of Italian heritage over the past decades. Some names may surprise you:
https://americadomani.com/culture/italian-grammy-winners/
The awards show, and the America Domani article, also made me wonder about another disappearing act – namely, how Italian Americans seemed to have lost their love for music, either performing it via an instrument or simply singing out loud for the sheer joy of it.
When I interviewed the late, great jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli in New York some years ago, he related how, during the Great Depression, Italian families would visit each other after Church on lazy Sunday afternoons – and it wasn’t always just to eat. As Bucky put it:
“Music wasn’t just in my house, it was in everyone’s house. If you wanted to have a good time, you brought a guitar and banjo with you. It was just a part of your life. Whatever was played was absorbed.”
He mentioned watching a collection of home movies one of his relatives had recently put together: “I hadn’t seen those films in years. I noticed that people were always playing things: mandolins, guitars, banjos, and ukuleles. Then I realized that my own granddaughters are now playing the piano and the violin. Music is being passed down to the younger generation. That’s the way it should be.”
Indeed. But that no longer seems to be true. With rare exceptions, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those Italian immigrants have become so assimilated and Americanized that the innate Italian love of music has been muted. In one generation, we went from popular singers like Connie Francis and Dean Martin, who often sang in Italian, to Madonna herself, whose biggest non-English song was in Spanish (La Isla Bonita).
And Lady Gaga? Her heartfelt collaborations with fellow Italian American singer Tony Bennett have yet to morph into anything substantive in terms of genuine italianità.
The expression that Italians wrote the book on music is literally true. An 11th century monk, Guido D’Arezzo, is credited with developing the musical notation scale, using the first letters of the sentences of a Latin hymn: Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. It laid the foundation for Western music. The printer Ottaviano Petrucci is cited as the first publisher of printed music.
And anyone who plays classical music gets a quick-course in the Italian language via the musical terms which guide both conductors and musicians: adagio, allegro, cadenza, crescendo, diminuendo, forte, glissando, largo, scherzo, vivace, etc.
Didn’t the Italians also invent the pianoforte and violino? Isn’t Claudio Monteverdi considered the father of opera?
In our own nation, wasn’t it the jazz drummer Louis Bellson (real name: Balassoni) who invented a new type of drumskin? Yes. Wasn’t 1920s crooner Russ Colombo the original template for both Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra? Also yes.
The list goes on and on.
If Italian Americans obsessed over music the way they do for food, it would move us back up the pop culture ladder in a hurry. We would once again be flying those blue skies with Signor Modugno. -BDC
And let’s not forget Louie Prima and Mario Lanza!
As I said, the list goes on and on. Play on!
St. Leonard’s church just celebrated its 150 birthday, we have been in the U.S. for a long time. In my own family my great nephews and nieces are the 5th generation Americans. Assimilation has taken its toll. For years I shouted we need schools to teach our young people about their Italian heritage like other ethnic groups have. I hope we wake up to the facts they face us even in own families. We need to solve the problem, or we face a bleak future.
People are stunned when I tell them that President Jefferson reorganized the U.S. Marine Band in 1804 by hiring Sicilian musicians under the baton of Gaetano Carusi.
Some of the earliest Italians here during the Colonial Era were also music teachers.
Play on!
Still on a high from an all-Italian American composers concert performed at the Italian American Heritage Foundation in San Jose. The concert was a grassroots project in collaboration with the Mission Chamber Orchestra. The conductor was also Italian American, Emily Ray. While the classics may not get the PR as the Grammy’s, many of the composers are certainly on the national and international scene, It’s just “trying to connect the dots” and promote the contributions of Italian Americans in the classical music scene. It is a rare experience. As a community, we really need to do a better job at whatever level we can to promote these amazing artists. We can’t wait for mainstream media to take any leadership, so bogged down in political correctness, that our heritage and talents get lost, save for our intervention. There is an interest that we have to develop and tap into. since it is very much a dialogue between the talent that exist and our support of that creativity.
Agree with you 1000%. Play on!