00:01:36.540 - 00:01:57.410

Mhm Sherry, Mariano Crawford, Welcome to cinema sounds. Thank you for inviting me to be here. Of course I'm just adjusting a few things there. And what did we just hear? Well you heard of probably the most popular Miss America ever composed. Uh It's been heard in

00:01:57.410 - 00:02:15.710

dozens of movies, including Scorsese's documentary on italian americans in America. A lot of people don't know about that one, but it is available to to view and his parents are in it. So he featured that there, Woody Allen has put it in his travel, Leo travel.

00:02:15.710 - 00:02:38.360

The Asano is a very interesting piece even though it might sound in the mainstream of Mazurkas, but it has an interesting history and in my book italian mandolin uh musician or italian mandolin mandolin, what is the name of that? Italian mandolin heroes in America Um as

00:02:38.360 - 00:02:57.040

a whole chapter two itself, that's how important it is. Yeah, so it's a miracle, one of the, one of the uh of several dances that you would hear in a, you know, a dance hall in 1900 And that's, it was written about 1913 from the most

00:02:57.050 - 00:03:17.650

famous music publisher in New York City and that's Oh, no free will develop and who is the composer composition credit? Petro fourth day may have studied in paris there's good evidence for that. I talk about it in the same book, but he came over to America

00:03:18.140 - 00:03:36.160

and I guess you composed it but at the same time he ran into another equally fabulous italian composer named louis or Luigi Carnera. And when Pietro Forte said I've had enough America. I'm going back and going back to Italy or I think it was southern France,

00:03:36.160 - 00:03:52.340

I forget where he went. Um it was during the war of all times ago and while he was there, he was on a hunt hunting expedition, he somehow got hit, went to the hospital and died in the hospital. So then cannery row took over sort of

00:03:52.340 - 00:04:09.150

the ownership of that piece and he may have actually kind of finished it or fine tuned it but cannot always gets credit, but it's probably really Pietro Forte and general came in and kind of cut his teeth, so to speak because he knew the bar was

00:04:09.150 - 00:04:28.680

pretty high, that was again, you know, above what else has been, had been coming along at the time. So it's an unusual piece and when did you learn it? Oh gosh, well that's the biggest story of all, is that, that's a hard one to pin down.

00:04:28.690 - 00:04:51.080

But I'll tell you this is the story behind Accordions in my age, which is baby boomer. Um Mhm the music publishers in America, the italian ones who were basically more or less boycotted by a lot of anglo Saxon protestant type publishers and that's a whole nother

00:04:51.080 - 00:05:17.950

story, but this song and all these other mazurkas, these dances um totally saturated the mandolin market when the biggest publisher, one of the biggest in new york city is open Ghani, when Paganini met up with the earliest generation of according this people like Pietro Darrow for

00:05:17.950 - 00:05:40.760

example, he began to publish according to music. Well the best, best music around for dancing was the mandolin music. So he bought up the mandolin trios and hired mandolin composers and then got ahold of a couple of great accordion composers who took the mandolin rep and

00:05:40.760 - 00:06:02.320

not only composed their own, but arranged specific mandolin music for the accordion. So a lot of this stuff I learned, even though it was published in maybe early fifties, mid fifties in the pagan e catalog and were arranged by people like frank Taviani. Um they were

00:06:02.320 - 00:06:23.940

taking these songs that were 30 40 50 years old, revamping them, making them suitable for the accordion. So that's how I learned it in the, you know, the late fifties, early sixties and that was in a Sicilian ghetto down in san Jose. It's Maybe a couple

00:06:23.940 - 00:06:40.930

of blocks from the Civic Center. I mean this area of we're talking about was 1900 because my grandparents came over in 1903 and then they came out from Chicago and went over to san Jose and that became known as little italy. And there there were lots

00:06:40.930 - 00:06:59.660

of Sicilians there, which is my heritage there and the this one fella named George Gregorio opened an accordion studio, he was a pianist, he was a composer, so we had to learn his music because obviously he was pushing his music in the studio and uh my

00:06:59.660 - 00:07:17.160

cousins learned like cousin Kenny, my sister took accordion. We all learned very similar repertoire and that's, that's how, that's the big story of how I got tuned into it. So after I moved to san Francisco and I discovered this whole cafe tradition is really alive and

00:07:17.160 - 00:07:33.640

well and cafe trieste was the hub uh, was at san Francisco state and uh, I was just astonished. I say, oh, I thought this was like dead music, you know, just music that I would play for my pleasure, but people are still playing this. So that

00:07:33.640 - 00:07:59.220

was an illumination. So I read your book, mandolins like salami, which for those watching or listening is um, a lot about that cafe tradition in san Francisco and the players. Um, and one thing that I took away from it is that Sicilians seemed to have an

00:07:59.220 - 00:08:23.880

outsized role um, in the scene that fair to say like the regions of Italy, that when you talk about the immigrant musicians that the Sicilians have, it kind of cornered. Yeah, I would say so. I would say so. In fact, I'm gonna show you something just

00:08:23.880 - 00:08:48.790

this one map by the way, this book took like 4.5, 5 years. Right? But here's what you're saying the back, I have several, I have huge indexes in the back. So there is where your musicians came from, The dominant are calabria and Sicily the vast majority

00:08:48.790 - 00:09:08.760

are way south of Rome, that's the music that came here and um, well in that book, the mandolins like salami is, it's taken from, you know, the mandolins are hanging on the wall like salami, pull them down, you play on them while you're waiting to have

00:09:08.760 - 00:09:29.800

your hair cut barbershop. Well, that's, yeah, that's the tradition and almost everybody in that book, Oh yeah, I would say we're Sicilian. Um, Gino Pellegrini was not, he came uh, over here. He was not born in Italy. He ran the aurora. Well he ran the aurora

00:09:29.810 - 00:09:52.620

mandolin orchestra, but he was born in Stockton but his, his parents were from around Pisa up there Luca in that area, but they were kind of a later wave of italian immigrants. But most of the ones in there are the earliest immigrants. Pete tarts calabria and

00:09:52.630 - 00:10:13.470

matteo Kasserine. Oh, Sicily, yeah, so you're right to pick up on that. And would they have spoken and your family as well? But they have spoken Sicilian rather than italian at home. Oh yeah, because even, I mean Sicilian is not, they can call it a dialect,

00:10:13.480 - 00:10:34.090

but it's it's own language just like Naples, the Neopolitan diet dialect. It's its own language. And the only recently, recently I think came up with a, you know dictionary, that is the Neopolitan dictionary. It's just, yeah, nobody ever bothered to do that. But um, and you

00:10:34.090 - 00:10:51.840

know, it gets very political to because Mussolini did not want this kind of music to be heard. Travel your son. Uh, he didn't like it and he didn't like dialect at all. He would he, when he came in with his educational reforms, nobody was supposed to

00:10:51.840 - 00:11:12.370

learn dialect only italian, you know, he was trying to do the genetic perfection thing or something. I don't know exactly how one explains all that stuff, but that's what happened. So that may be squashed a lot of this enthusiasm for the, what I call the village

00:11:12.370 - 00:11:34.050

music and that's what these immigrants, which in in this, in the italian mandolin book, I, I think I traced something like 200 of them. It came over here from villages, very few of them, very very few came from the big towns like venice Pogany is from

00:11:34.050 - 00:11:56.080

that area. Open Ghana and he played mandolin too as well as running the biggest, you know, music publishing business around. So yeah, mm Why, why do you, why do you think it is that? Because in the barrier there are a lot of northern Italians who immigrated

00:11:56.090 - 00:12:16.570

as well from Genoa and even from Switzerland and what do you think it is that the southerners had such a role. Oh, see that's a PhD dissertation. But you see there's a much more interesting history in the south where the call it's called the to Sicily's

00:12:16.570 - 00:12:37.730

the calabria or the toll of italy down there and Sicily run by Arabs the Normans invaded, has his rich rich culture, everything became kind of amalgamated in the north where you couldn't really see where the, even in language like where's the, you speak, you're from France,

00:12:37.730 - 00:12:59.370

you speak french, no, there was this swiss area of Canton, Cantons where the french and the italian kind of mishmash together I guess you could call it a um a twat in a way now here in Sonoma County though the biggest influence and again west coast

00:12:59.370 - 00:13:20.500

is a whole different scene but they, the, that if you walk through any cemetery, I say all of them in fact um you're gonna see nothing about italian names but they're all northern italian names because they're very strong in the dairy industry and this was perfect

00:13:20.500 - 00:13:38.170

dairy country as you probably know from living in cinema, there's a lot of cows around that still live here too, so the accordion, in fact, there was an article called music and we'll os I see that talks about this, this tradition of the italian Swiss, you

00:13:38.170 - 00:14:01.270

know, vote these restaurant in Petaluma is the kind of the hub there before I ran into the cafe trieste, there's that Volpi, so they were that northern italian or Swiss italian tradition came over here that way and many of pictures, I've run across of, you know,

00:14:01.280 - 00:14:17.030

late night dairy farmers having their parties on the weekends and there's always an accordion on the stage, there's no, there's no mandolin, but there's always an accordion because they all kind of learned it, I was over at the la Vio ranch the other day and you

00:14:17.030 - 00:14:32.880

know Giacomo La Vio, they had a huge cattle ranch out there in Petaluma and I mean he's going to play chess on in a Missouri to, you know, he's remembering these things that he learned, he's forgotten him now, but somehow they stuck in my head, so

00:14:32.880 - 00:14:56.370

there is still there. Okay. Mhm, mm hmm. And how did the accordion enter the tradition? Uh, well if we're talking about the dance tradition, there's nothing more versatile than this, you've got your rhythm section over here, the melody or chords over here so you can command

00:14:56.370 - 00:15:15.140

a lot of attention and not, yeah, even with, with some brass instruments, the accordion depending on how hard you want to pull it and push it um, can dominate the scene. So very often they were not only in a band, you know, but they were the

00:15:15.150 - 00:15:34.460

front man was the accordionist, so he dictated what was going to happen and that was very, very common when you add to that. Okay, now that I think of when you add to that, the, you know, this dairy tradition and what have you and then um,

00:15:34.940 - 00:15:57.840

a lot of the Italians maybe because just because san Francisco is inviting for many industries like fishing for example, but pretty soon the accordion manufacturers just thrived in the bay area and you know, there's a directory of the san Francisco directory going back to like 1920

00:15:58.240 - 00:16:19.220

it has like 40 accordion factories and they're all in the North Beach area. So if you're turning out Accordions, somebody's buying those because they're not sitting on the shelf and that's kind of how the first generation before mine, the people like George gregorio or my teacher,

00:16:19.230 - 00:16:41.480

Anthony is up acosta, that's, you know, they bought their Accordions for, from Colombo Accordions on uh columbus street in fact, right, right next door the Guerini or the Guerini Accordions right next door to what is now city lights. So there were a, there was a proliferation

00:16:41.490 - 00:17:02.580

of Accordions and that just went into then my generation after World War Two. Yeah, so, and plus, you know, some came over here like my grandfather who, please, I never saw him play but I was told that he used to play the concertina. So there's that

00:17:02.580 - 00:17:19.960

sort of tradition that was already there in italian families, but now you had the piano accordion and everybody wanted to play it. And uh, you know, stroll with it, you can make money. Um, you can throw it over your back, you don't have to hold on

00:17:20.540 - 00:17:42.350

piano around and they're not as expensive as a piano, but these improvements that were going on with the accordion, I consider them very important that once this whole mechanism was perfected and the keys and the length and so on and so forth that it became um,

00:17:42.360 - 00:18:03.490

much more versatile than I think anybody would have imagined. So that's um maybe what give it, you know, it's success. But there weren't a lot of italian publishers on the west coast, not till later. But what happened was the mandolin publishers going back to the agony

00:18:03.490 - 00:18:23.900

and others in Manhattan began to find jobbers and what have you on the west coast because that's where the Italians were going. They were going to Portland, we're talking 1900 going to Portland, they were going to Seattle the vote. The vaudeville lane was basically san Francisco

00:18:23.900 - 00:18:42.490

through Oregon up to Seattle and even into Canada where the, you know the caribou area and the strike it rich. I mean there was some silver stuff going on silver mining. What have you that made this instrument absolutely vital because it was kind of silly. You

00:18:42.490 - 00:18:59.220

got a piano on your belly, you walk out onto stage, they dress you in a cause uh you know a costume and you play some little dilly thing that to the audience. It looked silly, but it's complex and it's played on an instrument that is nowhere

00:18:59.220 - 00:19:22.990

even close to this magnificent instrument, even though it might look the same with keyboard. These things were not weighted properly. They, you could not bliss, you know very easily. They were yeah, not ergonomically perfected. Not yet. So as like potatoes in Seattle, they perfected gender 23

00:19:22.990 - 00:19:40.150

generations, I think they're onto their fourth, we're in business for 100 years, which was about the same as Guerini. Well, it got to be better, but it was becoming a more vital instrument because of its role on, you know, in vaudeville too. I think because you

00:19:40.150 - 00:19:55.930

had some really flash, I mean that's some flashy players in spite of the clunkiness of the keyboard. They, you know, they conquered it and played it very well. So, and you know, it's funny people say, well, how many accordance do you have? Well, I know people

00:19:55.930 - 00:20:16.990

who have dozens. Okay. They're just, they're just, yeah, but if you've got a good solid, what they called dry tuned accordion, that's good playing with vocalists or wet tuned or um use it. That's good for the folk. And then the french french music, I mean, yeah,

00:20:17.000 - 00:20:36.230

okay, so then you want a button bucks, I play Cajun on another one, you know it? But um but you cannot play like that Shostakovich piece, can't play, play it on a friday. It doesn't have kony's, this little french thing. It's a sweet little accordion, but

00:20:36.240 - 00:24:17.540

it's missing. It doesn't have a diminished row. It only has 90 buttons. So you're limited. You can't really go into too many sharps or too many flats, but it's good for what it does under paris skies. Anything can happen. It should ended in a major on

00:24:17.540 - 00:24:36.180

a major chord, but I like ending it on a minor chord. It's much more existential that way. Nice little dissonance, their way to kind of send you off the french songs tend to be that way, there's the strength, here's this nice little story of the family

00:24:36.180 - 00:24:48.680

and the kids and they're doing this and that and then the woman jumps off the bridge and least Children on its like, where does that come from? And it's a happy little wall. So you're just playing along and then you go and read the lyrics and

00:24:48.680 - 00:25:13.360

go, well that's the french for you. Just have a little twist at the end there. Okay, oh, forgot, let's see if it'll work. There's still too much lighting. Oh no, there they are, There the lights. Isn't that pretty? Yeah, George Payton found his wife found this

00:25:13.740 - 00:25:35.940

In a pawnshop in Napa for about 60 bucks. And of course George takes home used Accordions, like some people adopt feral cats or you know what? He's written a book on how to repair and restore. Well this, he restored and a beautiful restoration and made it

00:25:35.950 - 00:26:04.610

with a french music. Yeah, um, switch, which means it's going to be just ever so slightly attitude in a beautiful sense. And uh, so it's my strolling french accordion that in and her name, Sylvia only because the accordion itself comes from the soprano family out of

00:26:04.610 - 00:26:24.390

the, you know the mecca for Accordions, which is called castel feed Ardo. So this fella Virgilio, he was from. So when the piano accordion really started coming on was with this family, the soprano family and they, they believe that they were the first ones to manufacture

00:26:24.400 - 00:26:45.050

officially in in Italy And that was probably about 1860. It may or may not really hold water when you investigate. But certainly um for some reason they ran into some wayfaring pilgrim who played the accordion, we think the man might have been from like Switzerland or

00:26:45.050 - 00:27:05.360

Vienna and came down with a very early accordion possibly constructed by um you know, there's an early patent by a guy named darien forget Darius. And so somebody had an accordion that looks sort of like this, played it for this family in a village and then

00:27:05.360 - 00:27:30.470

somehow instantly the soprano family started manufacturing them. How that happened is I think a story for Hollywood, Thanks. So this is french musette and uh you might hear it in one of the game gets and the dance, whole dance halls, but also because I should say

00:27:30.480 - 00:27:53.060

that the cafe Shanta tradition is the singing cafe where they have a singer and an accordion player and they, that's it and they entertain for the evening and that was very, very popular just as it wasn't Italy, but it was called cafe concerto. Um and that

00:27:53.060 - 00:28:06.330

brings up this other point that somehow, okay, you had these two worlds, you know, you had a sort of isolated classical world where you went to the theater and you paid a lot for a ticket and you sat down, you shut up, you know, listen to

00:28:06.330 - 00:28:22.630

the music. Then you have this other context, the cafe, anywhere you go in, you don't pay anything, you get drunk, you're allowed to be fairly loud and enjoy yourself and get this marvelous music is heard. So people like, you know, Edith piaf was in that tradition

00:28:22.630 - 00:28:40.390

for a long time before she found her agent and then got catapulted to these larger venues. So they say she wrote this, she composed, I said, of course, that's like saying Homer composed the Iliad and the odyssey. Um he didn't compose anything. He had a marvelous

00:28:40.390 - 00:28:57.560

memory and somehow that's how that happened. So she did not compose Levian Rose, but she, the melody came to her and when she got out of her sort of isolation in this hotel where she was depressed, she called in one of her best and said, help

00:28:57.560 - 00:30:56.180

me write this down. I want to sing this. I think I know what the words are and that's how it came about. So, I'm going to rip off the Claude wc for the opening. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Thanks. Mm, mm. Okay, that

00:30:56.180 - 00:31:20.790

was beautiful. Thank you. Um Well, you're welcome. Sylvia did all the work. Yeah. How did you get interested in the french tradition? Ah well, in, in another book, I wrote the french Suarez, all of them are available on E day and elsewhere on my website. But

00:31:20.790 - 00:31:39.360

the french Suarez surprisingly well, it's kind of a, I had a french, I was, I had a french minor, I lived in cuba back worked at the world's fair there. So I had this french background, I never really explored that much of the french, So about

00:31:39.370 - 00:31:58.380

2008 or so. I ran into Mike Michael then why he, we were doing really well with our Italian Italian repertoire, playing in all the vineyards and most mostly Italians like Coppola. And, and then one day he blurted out that he in new french, I said, well

00:31:58.380 - 00:32:14.580

you're holding back on me, we could be doing all this french friends. So, um, so I learned, I had to learn a little bit because I was, you know, pretty unfamiliar basically, even though I have a background in it and we put together a nice little

00:32:14.580 - 00:32:33.020

french playlist and we went on the road and our french stuff just took off. A lot of people wanted to hear it. Um, so the story about the french music, which again, dance music, cafe music music that you would hear in a public venue of some

00:32:33.020 - 00:32:59.350

kind. Very interesting story in my french. Sorry, I talked about the fact that Maybe 90% of all the compositions Save that one here by Edith Edith P off italian immigrants who traveled up to paris particularly after the, oh, I don't know, but early 18 nineties been

00:32:59.350 - 00:33:15.800

a big flood of italian immigrants, composers, musicians, people like Pietro Forte went to live in paris, I mean it was kind of the thing to do, just like maybe people from Britain, you know, they had to go to the continent into the tour, the grand tour

00:33:15.810 - 00:33:36.200

in Italy while the Italians went north and uh, they were the composers of all this french music that I loved and I went, wow, these two incredible branches. I mean hundreds of composers coming to America to composed, but they were also people like joseph Colombo, the

00:33:36.210 - 00:33:59.770

one of the biggest names probably composed all the best songs, you know, he went up there and did that as well. So the french dance halls were all music composed by Italians, italian immigrants. Pretty amazing story right there. Yeah, I mean a few italian names french

00:33:59.770 - 00:34:22.560

here and there, but mostly it french french I guess you would say italian french or french Italians or whatever the hyphen you want to use in there, but it became very, very successful. Some of them died horrible, you know, suicides, all sorts of things too. Because

00:34:23.040 - 00:34:42.660

if you talk about this rise in popularity, you also have to talk about the fact that once jazz comes in and kicks everybody's ass, so to speak. Um, not only here in new york but in France in particular and gersh one, people start losing the Gershwin,

00:34:42.670 - 00:35:05.040

certainly using the jazz, jazz is overtaking this incredible couples, couples, couples dancing tradition and now it's like hang loose, it's jazz, whatever it doesn't have that structure. it's more improv and Django becomes really popular is I'm sure a lot of people go and that kind of

00:35:05.040 - 00:35:29.440

replaces this, this nostalgia for these dances that your grandfather and your grandmother danced. So I'm afraid to say there were some italian immigrant composers and paris who didn't quite make it and you know, some sad, very sad stories that came out from those, but while they

00:35:29.440 - 00:35:57.190

were on top of that wave, they were doing really great and yeah, I was there any overlap between them, the two traditions? Were there any players that played both styles and italian village music? Well, if the word, I don't know any um because and that that's

00:35:57.190 - 00:36:24.350

an interesting question, I'd certainly like to get to the bottom of it. Um somehow maybe yes, they would share the same thing like a walls or a polka or a Missouri, but the style for the italian musicians composers, there's just just slightly different. Maybe it's more

00:36:24.830 - 00:36:43.880

informed of the multi multicultural stuff that was in the south because that's where you get most of your composers year. Whereas I think and I have to go back, I have to go back and read my book, but the Italians, the Italians that came over to

00:36:43.880 - 00:37:01.800

paris had made this trek from northern, mostly northern Italy come across, they hung out in the Auvergne region. I think this is kind of a plateau in the south and that's where they pick up steam and then boom up to paris. So to begin with their

00:37:01.800 - 00:37:34.850

education, if they had any. And I'm sure some of them did. Was not this multicultural context that the southern Italians grew up in a very different scene. So like I'm just gonna, there's the Arabic scale, A Harmonic 3rd In There, a that's really more of a

00:37:34.850 - 00:37:54.500

Middle Eastern, but that's still, it comes up a lot in the italian mazurkas, but you don't hear that sound in a french. It just wouldn't, you wouldn't hear it, you just stay on the straight and narrow. Basic minor scale, but don't put in that, that naughty,

00:37:54.510 - 00:38:17.440

you know, kind of the interval is what I'm getting at interval you wouldn't hear. So there is a certain flavor for each and never between, I don't know of any composers that went into both areas. Yeah, no, I sure don't. So um speaking of the multicultural

00:38:17.440 - 00:38:40.700

aspect, um, one thing that struck me reading mandolins like salami too is um, the influence of latin music in, in san Francisco. Yeah, I was thinking about a lot of Italians also went to genocide race. So astor Piazzolla is of italian but is so important to

00:38:40.700 - 00:39:04.370

tango. Um, I'd just be curious to learn more about that if you have any insight about how tango became incorporated. Well, um, you know, of course on the west coast, uh huh we were under mexican territory, I was thinking about this even earlier today, this whole

00:39:04.380 - 00:39:22.930

accession, you know, suddenly California becomes the state. Well, how does that happen while they take over? And the spanish tradition is so strong that it doesn't go away now, it finds its little niches. But as we know in northern California, at least possibly in the south

00:39:22.930 - 00:39:43.940

as well. But in the north there is just a strong hispanic tradition, just never went away. Um, By the time you got through the 20's And you're starting to hit the 30s. It was a time of depression though. Uh, starting to be. Um, what was also

00:39:43.940 - 00:40:02.330

happening is that there have been this, at least in the composition world, this influx of the latin dances, the tango, the rumba, the pass adobe. So they had to build a while. Like, you know, was there much tolerance for it? Maybe not. But pretty soon remember

00:40:02.330 - 00:40:22.050

the belly to belly dancing. Well, guess what? Latin belly to belly is really nasty. It's, I mean, they touch each other's butts. They do things like that is that's so you can imagine with the opening up of, you know, maybe liberating the sexual mores of the

00:40:22.050 - 00:40:44.380

twenties, anything goes. Um, and so you're coming into the thirties pretty soon that latin influence, it's being heard in the, you know, maybe the darker venues, the nightclubs and that's how people made success as a composer or as a musician, you have to learn What a

00:40:44.380 - 00:41:01.730

tango was, you had to play it exactly as it was supposed to be. To me, the 30s were kind of opening up again of this, this multicultural thing. But to bring in the latin traditions and see the couples who knew how to dance those things, teaching

00:41:01.740 - 00:41:36.240

other people well, you can't get, you know, I can't play it really on a music. But yeah, can't play it all the way through because I'm missing. This is a strolling according, it doesn't many keys. So I go to get

00:41:36.240 - 00:41:57.540

something. But that hard driving rhythm is what I was trying to go after. That is what those, those latin numbers do and wow, that's just completely different experience for the accordion to play? And the accordion has a real, real success with the latin rhythms, whereas the

00:41:57.540 - 00:42:15.830

mandolin is kind of doing its little thing, but it can't tackle the man, the tangles that an accordion council that to me is you as you come out of the World War Two and everybody's coming back home. All of that is readily available available, at least

00:42:15.830 - 00:42:42.060

on the west coast learning this tradition, that tradition, whether it's french latin or italian. Um, yeah, so did I answer that question? I'm not sure. I did think you did. Yeah, Well it's like, so then where were these accordionists playing? Well, that's a really good question

00:42:42.060 - 00:43:04.650

after World War Two. Um, here is the accordion even getting further mm, It was being adapted in in ways that nobody had considered 30 years ago when they were starting to really manufacture and by that I'm saying that the dance bands that became more and more,

00:43:04.660 - 00:43:21.850

I mean she's a dance holes up and down the, you know the peninsula here south of san Francisco. They were everywhere and there were, there were social organizations that were coming along and they had to have a dance every month. So if it's the athletic club

00:43:21.850 - 00:43:44.800

or the ladies auxiliary, this, you had to have a, you know, an ensemble and they had to play the variety of stuff and not just the popular stuff, but soon in that mid that early to mid fifties italian pop singers got into the american pop scene

00:43:44.810 - 00:44:07.030

and so you know Domenico Landano Volare, Everybody was singing Valerie. I don't know what it meant but they were singing it in some kind of pidgin pidgin italian. And there are other examples of that to, as let's say, hmm you know, uh kurt vials song mack

00:44:07.030 - 00:44:27.920

the knife is it? It was coming in here through bobby darin. Well then you know, uh, then it became an american tune with, with math the knife. And so these things were happening. How radio, Okay, pure and simple. Radio NBC had their network in fact this

00:44:27.920 - 00:44:46.730

is where Rudy cipolla got started with his Argentine trio From coast to coast, you could hear Rudy playing with this Argentine trio in 1931 and that took him through, you know the hard times of the 30s. So once the war was over and everybody came back,

00:44:46.730 - 00:45:05.830

they turned on the radio and what have I been missing. Well, you know, with a greater, let's say opening in terms of immigration, more things were being heard over here. Whether they were bringing it to Carnegie hall or to some other small little dancehall, somebody was

00:45:05.830 - 00:45:20.150

listening to this music. I want to learn how to play that. I want to play that. Then movies play a role too because you've got a great music and you know, uh, premiering in a way, just debut ng and people going to the music store the

00:45:20.150 - 00:45:45.020

next day. I, I want to play that on piano or whatever instrument. So yeah, it's, uh, and it was an exciting time to grow up. You know, I chose music for all sorts of reasons, had an italian a music teacher In 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th

00:45:45.020 - 00:46:04.300

grade, he wasn't an itinerant music teacher as they have today. We're He teaches five classes in seven different places and you know, he's part time in all of them and they can't, you know, so thank goodness. I mean, I lived in a, well, probably a good

00:46:04.310 - 00:46:19.890

solid mile or more from a school that he would come down to the corner and pick me up with my flute because that was my first instrument and then, you know, drive me into orchestra rehearsal and we would play Mozart and I went, wow, this guy

00:46:19.890 - 00:46:43.360

is cool. I like Mozart. But even though Mozart didn't really like fruits that very, not much anyway, so I'm told, but he wrote great stuff for flute and that kind of took me through high school, you know, marching bands and piccolo and glockenspiel. Yeah, everybody like

00:46:43.360 - 00:47:07.750

that. But then I did accordion pretty much, You know, starting around like probably about 7th I think 7th or 8th grade, I don't really know for sure. And uh then piano when I was in college because yeah, accordion can't learn accordion, so flute and piano became

00:47:07.750 - 00:47:34.110

my major instruments, you know, so what took you from flute and piano to writing about mandolin? Yeah, that's a peculiar one. Um because I get asked a lot. Um you know, I think what happened was again, I was shocked when I began to my librarian. My

00:47:34.120 - 00:47:59.090

latent librarian thing comes through. But when I started, I don't want to even show you the amount of sheet music I have. But when I became aware, wait a minute. This Pogany piece, Carlina Mazzuca was written by a clarinet player, italian Sicilian clarinet player wrote mandolin

00:47:59.090 - 00:48:21.250

trios and I really liked that music. Well that just became the thing is that there, I've never met an italian Mazzuca written for mandolins that I didn't like because I learned it under some different arrangement 40 or 50 or more years later, but it's the same

00:48:21.250 - 00:48:44.240

Darn piece, it's like somebody thought it was that good to keep, you know, people again working maybe just as a staff or a house arranger, maybe you didn't get paid very much, but he, you know, he took the time to study the original manuscripts and convert

00:48:44.240 - 00:49:05.060

them over to accordion. So I have a deep respect for the accordion, um, composers and arrangers and I suppose that's how, that's how I got connected with the mandolin world. And then when I went to cafe trieste, the first time I went, oh, this is interesting,

00:49:05.070 - 00:49:25.680

it's still going on. And then suddenly, I don't know what happened. I'll tell you what happened, I spent 25 years teaching college humanities classes, I never had time to do anything. I don't know. I, you know, I would have liked to have received a sabbatical, but

00:49:25.680 - 00:49:46.870

I never had any time off my summers were preparing or if I got lucky and I had some extra cash maybe, you know, going to europe and learning a little bit about my own roots. So yeah, you know, it, um, really started to happen for me

00:49:46.880 - 00:50:07.090

when I, when I probably don't want to give way my age, but probably as I began to see the door that said retirement, that just sounded so boring. So while I was in, well, I'll tell you one thing after I quit teaching, I did a horizontal

00:50:07.090 - 00:50:23.770

thing. I didn't go up, went over to the communications, I worked for NPR and PBS and we won't get into that whole chapter. But uh I had time on my hands. I could leave at five o'clock and not have to go and prepare something else or

00:50:23.770 - 00:50:43.780

go and do this or that for the next thing. So it's like I had more time. So I I I'll show you what I did right here. That's right. I got a second computer here. I've got my midi keyboard and I began with a program called

00:50:43.780 - 00:51:06.310

Sebelius. And Sebelius was a really nice software. In fact, I just upgraded to a really a fine addition of it. So I began to um say, well gee, all this music, what's going to happen to it? I don't know, I just began to so I produced

00:51:06.310 - 00:51:20.360

a mandolin melodies. I think that might have been my first for I started there. But then I thought gee I know all these mandolin players, there's gonna be some story here. So as I kept meeting these mandolin players, they were telling me stories. I was like,

00:51:20.360 - 00:51:35.800

well I better do something with this. I just the thought of it just evaporating well who's doing this? Nobody, no mandolin is I know we're doing anything, you know, and I talked about it, but so I don't know, something took over and part of that is

00:51:35.800 - 00:51:56.060

having leisure time, having some discrete time where I devoted myself, I interviewed people, I summarize things and pretty soon I had this collection of biographies, which is the same thing, you know, in this one, this is the, you know, hundreds of people who just, they were

00:51:56.070 - 00:52:15.600

in the dust, there was not much left of them and I found myself interviewing people who said, oh my God, you know more about my great, great grandfather than I do. Mhm So I got busy, I had a free time, I could do it, you know,

00:52:15.600 - 00:52:30.920

it was still pretty alert and it was a big learning curve at first and I've never thought of myself as any kind of a writer. I mean, I, you know, I, you know, I just don't, so but if you, you know, if you know your topic

00:52:30.920 - 00:52:50.270

fairly well, are you very interested in it? I guess it doesn't matter. So in no time, in a matter of like, You know, I could say about 15 years, mhm mandolins like salami cane, then mandolin melodies and french, sorry, and then italian mandolin heroes in America

00:52:50.950 - 00:53:15.810

um and why manda lands again, history, it's much more uh in depth, there's more in depth documentation about mandolins than I could find on Accordions, I have yet to write a book on Accordions or really accordion centric, even though at the end of the italian mandolin

00:53:15.810 - 00:53:32.210

heroes in America book, I take it into the accordion world, in san Jose and that connection of how I was playing the accordion, but I was playing all these mandolin pieces that I didn't know where mandolin pieces until I got older and I went, why do

00:53:32.210 - 00:53:50.520

I know that, that's a mandolin piece and I'm playing it on accordion, How did that happen? So I had to find out, I that was the quest, find out how that happened. Yeah, and I think I think I answered the question yeah, when did you start

00:53:50.520 - 00:54:09.580

going to cafe trieste? Well, you know, I was in at san Francisco state right on the tail end of the, you know the strike, I transferred up there in the winter of 68-69 and finished upper division of classes and I would go down to North Beach,

00:54:09.590 - 00:54:25.470

which I knew was italian because I could go to the back elbow which was around the corner from this and listen to opera who was probably, it's time I was up in the city living there, she was probably 40 to 50 years old and she was

00:54:25.480 - 00:54:43.100

great, great, great, you know somebody cousin and uh so and or cousin mary we used to call her was a big upper freak and her husband would drive her down to the Opera House. So anyway, I got hooked on opera from her and I would be

00:54:43.100 - 00:54:57.490

playing in these uh you know the opera orchestra for whatever they were doing that semester. So he's down North beach going to the, to the bocce ball and there was another great music there, but that was a big draw and cafe transfers right around the corner.

00:54:57.490 - 00:55:15.230

And if you were down there late at night, there wouldn't be any mandolin music at 10 at night. But over the years I learned that it had a, it was a musical musical hub. So when I finally did get up the courage to move just to

00:55:15.230 - 00:55:36.860

North Beach and that was insane, making a commute nearly every day from, from North Beach down to Saratoga where, where I was teaching for most of the eighties, that was uh, it was just, I felt like I made it home, you know, just the friendliness, the,

00:55:37.740 - 00:55:57.260

the family, the johnson family started the cafe in 56. They were just wonderful and of course I walk in one day have a flute and an accordion. Well home, sweet home, I started playing and I started playing these fellas that I, you know, talk about like

00:55:57.270 - 00:56:20.700

matteo, matteo kasserine. Oh, and then, I don't know, just sort of like says, how do you get drawn into sometimes? It's just weird circumstances. But yeah, I felt I was at home there and felt really welcomed and just, it felt like a little, you know, a

00:56:20.700 - 00:56:40.910

little part of europe dropped right into the middle of san Francisco. So, and at that time I also by coincidence a total coincidence I forget how this happened, but I ran into Rudy Cipolla who has become a big part of my life and I'm working on

00:56:40.910 - 00:57:01.930

him, the mandolinist Rudy and put together a little slide presentation for the classical mandolin society and for this november and hope to give that. And I'm just, I've done a lot of research now and uh, and I'm converting all of his manuscripts, which It's just like

00:57:01.940 - 00:57:18.340

chicken scrawl, that's what I've been doing is over the last 20 years is putting that into something that's readable so that people can actually plays music because his eyesight was really bad and you know, he just scratched her out and who knows, he had all these

00:57:18.340 - 00:57:40.610

different versions. It was a nightmare. So I guess I like cleaning up things to clean up all of his skull. But we're now having Rudy Cipolla rehearsals in Alameda in preparation and they now, you know, they can read my arrangements in my very, you know, the

00:57:40.610 - 00:58:03.850

clear the clarity of the score means everything and that's what they're working from is the scores that I have been Converting over the past 20 years and who else is working on that project? Nobody hope anybody. Yeah, the players though, Oh well the players come from

00:58:03.850 - 00:58:26.250

all over the Bay area and we have almost a full complement of a mandolin orchestra. We've got the, I am mando cello mandala, which is like the viola, the mandolins, guitar. Rudy wrote full scores though. So it would be great to have a double bass player

00:58:26.260 - 00:58:51.090

because he wrote that's as well, I don't have any mando basis. I don't even know anybody, still plays that or whether anybody even, how would you get one? I wouldn't know. But there um, they come from all professions, you know, doctors electricians, you know, weather workers,

00:58:51.090 - 00:59:10.210

I mean there's just a whole array of musicians who enjoy playing the mandolin, some of them knew Rudy, Some some of them played with him or just knew him through Gino's guitar shop, which is across the street and so it's just kind of a gigging. The

00:59:10.210 - 00:59:38.430

80s were big gigging decade, you know, lots of people happy getting married and a lot of weddings. Uh huh. So mm I'm, I'm curious, uh it seems like you knew Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is that correct? He passed earlier this year. How did you meet him? And what

00:59:38.430 - 00:59:58.290

was his relationship to the seem like? Well, first of all, he was a huge mandolin fan and he would come out for the concerts with the Nicholas wind borne we did at the North Valley with the san Francisco mandolin orchestra, I think she called it the

00:59:58.290 - 01:00:17.090

play trim orchestra. So he was a big fan, he supported it, he loved hearing them, he always loved coming in on saturday mornings and listening to the mandolins but my, you know infatuation with him was back I guess when I started to move from Palo alto

01:00:17.090 - 01:00:33.630

up to san Francisco and kind of hang out at night at the cafe and meet, you know, I mean Gregory corso was still there and uh many of the others, I've met them all. So I guess that's where it started. I always used Ferlinghetti in the

01:00:33.630 - 01:00:56.380

classroom and he just inspired, you know, whether it was his poetry or his philosophy, he, he stood out, he wasn't like all the other so called beat, you know the beat generation, he gets lumped in there, but somehow he doesn't always fit the corners, don't really

01:00:56.380 - 01:01:14.190

fit with him and but he just, he, he supported me when I started to, when I was working on the salami book um he helped me get a printer, a publisher, he sold it, you know, he's kind of believed in it when I thought I'm just

01:01:14.190 - 01:01:30.080

gonna want to read about, you know, I mean I showed the mandolin is like salami titled to mike marshall one of the most famous and I, he and Rudy and I, we, we hung out. He's wonderful cook, we had great times. I played with a couple

01:01:30.080 - 01:01:53.480

of his ensembles or his first wife's ensemble, but I don't know, he um, I lost my train of thought. There probably need some water. Um yeah, but that's kind of how that started, I think with, with Ferlinghetti just, he was just so always so open and

01:01:53.490 - 01:02:14.090

willing to talk about anything and said, you know, he was, he had a blunt instrument, he just said it how should be said and you know, there was also a nostalgia thing because you know, I went to some Allen Ginsberg things at stanford and you know,

01:02:14.090 - 01:02:36.010

when he was turning on his little machine, I figured that zipper, like thinking, I just was fascinated by anybody who could live in this world, live by your own rules, so to speak and not be intimidated. That to me is the ultimate in self expression that

01:02:36.600 - 01:02:57.450

nobody can say one way or the other, whether you're, what you're doing is right or wrong. But if you're, if you're just expressed how you feel, hopefully somebody is going to come in on it and and play it back to you. And that report was kind

01:02:57.450 - 01:03:11.710

of what the whole beak poet thing was about. So I made some wonderful people still, I'm friends with many who is still there in North Beach, still livin the dream live in the beat world, the post feet world. And now there's a big museum across the

01:03:11.710 - 01:03:27.400

street. If you go, now you can actually see the desk that he worked that Ferlinghetti worked at. They have a whole, they've done a kind of a mizzen scene thing by, you know, giving the context, recall what he was doing while he was, you know, writing

01:03:27.400 - 01:03:49.680

his books and, and of course, you know the self expression with Ferlinghetti um, you, he was, you know, willing to go, well, he never went to jail, but he was willing to go to jail to sell, you know, Ginsburg's, how uh, he didn't go to jail,

01:03:49.680 - 01:04:09.780

but they did arrest shit. Who was the Japanese co owner I think or managerial, the one who actually said and here's your book and they said and you're arrested. So that whole courtroom, that was always a fascination. I love courtrooms. I study courtroom trials. I, I

01:04:09.790 - 01:04:26.660

used to do simulations of courtroom trials starting with people like edifice. Is he guilty? What, what, what is he guilty of? Did he is a first degree murder sided. You know, those kinds of questions are intriguing and so I would take that as well. So his,

01:04:26.670 - 01:04:49.750

his trial and what he went through for self expression message more so today than ever. So you want me to talk about my little flags here sure are hiding my have four I think four flags. The Basic one is the French flag. Everybody knows that Here's

01:04:49.750 - 01:05:09.590

the Italian one green boyfriend. Then you have these specific flags, this is the flag of paris. It only flies in paris and it has a whole, you know, I don't know if they put the latin on the top, but it's something about the ship will never

01:05:09.600 - 01:05:35.060

uh sink and then the italian Savoy, the Savoy foot, I think I have that upside down now that I see it, the Savoy flag with the House of Savoy Crown way up there and there's this at the Savoy Crown um to me that's, that's the interesting

01:05:35.060 - 01:06:04.050

part like when we talk about this french italian connection, you know, these country borders were porous, you know, they lived on along the ALps or what, you don't really feel connected to Rome, you kind of feel connected to this little region. Uh huh So you know

01:06:04.050 - 01:06:24.570

having, I mean that nationalism thing that always bears its ugly head. Um some of these areas, you just didn't feel that. So when you really start studying the history, you know, like World War one, World War two, uh the number of people who were partisans who

01:06:24.570 - 01:06:41.970

were like, they were during the save themselves from Mussolini and from Hitler and they had a very strange responsibility but I think part of that is that they, their loyalty was just something higher than this. You know, this figure that was there saying, oh you've got

01:06:41.970 - 01:07:00.230

to fight for us, you know, you've got to fight for us. So um so music is more interesting when you're in those blended areas. So in a sense that's a form of multiculturalism, but it's not as uh as deeper tradition as it would be like still

01:07:00.230 - 01:07:17.900

in the south today in the southern part of Italy and particular in Sicily those are my little flags, just kind of saying this is the cafe tradition, the the accordion has been a part of it for a long time, I don't think it's ever going to

01:07:17.900 - 01:07:34.690

leave, but the said if I can have a sad note here is that I run the student scholarships at the Qatari according to festival and I've been doing it for several years. I woke up one morning saying, what are we doing? Is anybody playing the accordion

01:07:34.700 - 01:07:54.830

that's under age 50 maybe understand nobody. And but what I discovered was pretty soon after starting it and doing some fundraising, getting some money in the kitty that there were teachers out there and there were some kids learning accordion. So like several years ago he got

01:07:54.830 - 01:08:18.370

started almost all chinese Children for whatever reason. And but now this one fella who's going to play his last one this month, going to do it virtually. He's going to Harvard in the fall like, whoa, what happened there? Yeah, so it was really, really cool to

01:08:18.370 - 01:08:32.760

see what he's gonna do. I have three judges who will evaluate the performances are all going to be virtual and taped on Youtube and I don't know yet how public we're gonna make them, but I just figured we had to do it because I just, you

01:08:32.760 - 01:08:52.040

know, in the the world is so uncertain right now. Yeah, we're playing at the festival, but they're just going to be the, the live competition that the kids did. It'll all be pre recorded. Okay, so it was canceled last year, correct? The accordion festival and the

01:08:52.040 - 01:09:11.990

year before that you were kind of the, the head honchos, weren't you? Well, it was the, the honorary director, They may be an honorary director and I got to be it for two years because there wasn't any last year, so, and but this year I'm writing

01:09:11.990 - 01:09:34.350

a kind of an obit article on in Memoriam one of the accordionists who died last year and I'm sure they're going to be more, we'll hear about them once we get to the festival. So that'll be in the souvenir program and I'm gonna take his place,

01:09:34.350 - 01:09:48.870

even though I can't quite do that. But I told the executive director that I wanted to play the polka tense, never played in the polka tent. Love the Pope at that. So I'm going to be there saturday and sunday mornings from 9 30 to 12 and

01:09:48.870 - 01:10:06.850

then the steve village band takes over. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. But my own little twist on the poker 10 because you know, you're going to find a tango or rumba and when is that, when is the festival? It's a case September 25

01:10:06.850 - 01:10:26.160

and 26 September 24 is the fundraiser, we're going to have that for the scholarships and that will be at the Church of the oaks, that's a free event and you get a real intimate setting with accordionists, nothing like seeing an accordion on safe, right there, 20

01:10:26.160 - 01:10:43.970

ft from, so we'll probably we can accommodate in the social hall at the church of the folks we accommodate about, I'm gonna say 100 people, so we'll have some fabulous accordionists, some of them like, you know, the great more Ghani and paul Batken and jerry's Siegler

01:10:43.970 - 01:11:01.800

and they're going to come down, I think pam tom is going to play and sometimes she'll pull out something like, you know, from 100 years ago, pietro Guerrero stuff that nobody else plays. So I'm looking forward to hearing and hopefully getting some donations to pump up

01:11:01.800 - 01:11:20.370

the, you know, the scholarship fund and that'll be the friday night before and then we'll go to the website is starting to come together, they're listening some of the musicians who are going to be there before we wrap up um and maybe you could play us

01:11:20.370 - 01:11:44.040

out after this um where can people find your books and your music? Well, I have a website and ziggy Bachi dot com, which is a mouthful, but you can always just look at my name and google my name, it will come up, Ebay has my books

01:11:44.050 - 01:12:07.350

and I don't sell them anymore in stores, I didn't find that very successful. Mhm So um and uh that's, that's pretty much yet, you know, if I go to a conference, I may sell some at the accordion festival be possible. Yeah, and as far as the

01:12:07.350 - 01:12:31.380

fifth book, I don't know if I've got 1/5 book in me, it's a lot of work, It's a lot of work, I've known, yeah, what kind of work that is entailed, I'm not sure this was, this was the toughest book by far because the breadth of

01:12:31.390 - 01:12:52.770

all these musicians and finding getting all the sheet music because it's about the sheet music there wouldn't have been. And that's where it all started. The first italian music store in the United States, I would say. Maybe not the first, but certainly one of the most

01:12:52.770 - 01:13:16.270

well known philadelphia. Mhm. The Stefanos music store, that photo came from the family and it's like dated 1880. So that was a, that was amazing. They, they let me put it in the book. So it's a long history, a long tradition and it's alive and well.

01:13:17.150 - 01:13:40.370

So what do you want to take us out on? Hm. I'm not sure how far I'll get with this. Some of the, some of the best accordionists and of course that's a debatable opinion, but maybe the Russians, oh my God, every time I listen to a

01:13:40.370 - 01:14:00.770

Russian, according as my jaw just drops and they use their flying on a mm hmm on a button system that there's the bi chromatic called the bi chromatic and c chromatic. Well, it's a whole, it's a pattern, It's like you're memorizing a pattern here and you've

01:14:00.770 - 01:14:20.790

got this other pattern going on over here. I don't know how they do it, but some of the best music is written by the Russians and performed by them as well. This is from, believe it or not. It's, it's this is from Dmitri Shostakovich's second walls

01:14:20.790 - 01:14:46.000

and it seems to be a traditional walls that's played maybe for military events, uh big ballroom things that are going on. But it's still in that same walls tradition. It just has a very Russian flavor to it. Yeah, we're going to risk I want to risk

01:14:46.000 - 01:16:05.440

that falling down and setting my pants on fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.