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Works"All I Ever Wanted to Do Was to Open an Italian Restaurant"
Music video pioneer ("Beat It"), film director ("Dinner Rush")and New York restaurateur Bob Giraldi talks about 9/11, wiseguys, and his abiding love for cucina italiana. A Profile of Bob Giraldi (112.0KB)
Very Cellular Songs
The ISB embodied hippie counterculture values and were forerunners of world music. Fledg'ling Records has re-released their late 60s albums and they hold up surprisingly well. The 'Lion' of Salsa
From Descarga: An Appreciation of the great Venezuelan salsa singer Oscar D'Leon An Appreciation of Oscar D'Leon (133.5KB)
New Italian Routes
Sicily's Carmen Consoli, Calabria's Massimo Ferrante, and Naples' Enzo Avitabile offer an alternative italianita' in their new albums The Massa Meltdown
Why the fall of New York Congressman Eric Massa isn't (just) a laughing matter The (Eric) Massa Meltdown (133.1KB)
Mexican-Celtic Fusion, Joe Cuba's Nuyorican Soul
"San Patricio" and "El Alcalde del Barrio": great Latin fusion, then and now Levon Helm's Electric Dirt
Many years after the acrimonious breakup of The Band, drummer/singer/mandolinist Levon Helm returns with the best record of his career Personal Choice, Political Act
Not only a loss of faith motivates former Catholics to choose "de-baptism" The Beat Goes On
The pizzica, a southern Italian folk music and dance born out of poverty and oppression, now is a foundation for forward-looking new music An Offer We Can’t Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America
(Faber and Faber/Farrar, Straus, Giroux) "For years, Italian antidefamation groups have denounced "The Sopranos," as well as such films as "The Godfather" and "GoodFellas," for reinforcing stereotypes ... De Stefano elevates this argument beyond a routine diatribe into a thoughtful, thorough analysis tracing the evolution of these vexing pop-culture icons, why their "dangerous allure" remains an enduring attraction, and how they impact perceptions about Italian-Americans." --Boston Globe
"It's All 'Too Much'"
Labor journalist Sam Pizzigati on American inequality, corporate malfeasance, and Obama's economics A 'Finook' in the Crew: Vito Spatafore, The Sopranos, and the Queering of the Mafia Gangster Genre
David Chase took the mobster genre to places it'd never been, and one of his boldest moves was to introduce a gay gangster to The Sopranos “A Burning Hatred for the Ruling Class”: Frank Barbaro’s Radical Life, from the (Brooklyn) Docks to the (New York) Supreme Court
Former New York State Assembly member and State Supreme Court Justice Frank Barbaro, born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York to immigrant parents from Sicily and Calabria, is one of the last living links to a milieu that has been called “the lost world of Italian American radicalism.” Barbaro achieved success in electoral politics without diluting his radicalism. The Hugh Tracey Recordings:
Colonial Dance Bands and Bulawayo Jazz Bulawayo Jazz and Colonial Dance Bands comprise some 50 tracks that Hugh Tracey, the noted English collector of African music, recorded between 1950 and 1952, before liberation movements transfered power from Europeans to Africans. |
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