Alborosie Keeps the Roots of Reggae Music Alive

By Ron Spence, ICI Press Staff

In an era of massively commercialized music, one artist has kept the flame of traditional reggae alive. Is he from Trench Town? Brixton? Ethiopia? Nope, none of the above. His name is Alborosie and he’s Italian. Born Alberto D’Ascola in 1977, the Sicilian born Alberosie has climbed to the top of the reggae charts.

Alborosie’s interest in reggae stemmed from his early love of Motown music and vintage musical sounds from the 1960s and 70s, in particular Whirlitzer piano-organs and Spring reverberators which add a vintage echo to his sounds. His biggest hit to date, ‘Herbalist,’ released in 2006 (about perils of drug culture), or his follow up track ‘Kingston Town’ (a raw track about the rough side of the city) can be mistaken for a track from a Peter Tosh Jamaican-based album.

His vintage sounds lack the party feel of Terror Fabulous’ party track ‘Action’ or Shaggy’s pop vibe of a relationship gone wrong in ‘It wasn’t me,’ and provide an edge to the reggae scene celebrated by artists for maintaining the roots of the genre. “He’s one of the guys carrying the original roots of reggae culture and taking it international, a lot more than many current Jamaican artists,” said Terence Forsythe, lead singer and songwriter for the New York based reggae band Jahva. “This make me feel good as an artist because a lot of people in Jamaica are worried that the younger generation in the country are not keeping the traditions of the music. The original beats and message have changed and if an artist keeping the roots alive comes from Italy or even Germany, that’s great,” Forsythe added.

While many songs and different music genres expressed conflict and social unrest such as the breakdown of inner-city life of the in Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s early hip-hop classic ‘The Message,’ and the murder of a civil rights worker in Simon & Garfunkel’s folk song ‘He was My Brother,’ reggae served as a constant source of news for poor people in Jamaica who lacked any media outlets. Reggae was one of the earliest, if not the first music genre to take on apartheid. South African civil rights icon Nelson Mandela, upon his release from prison, made Jamaica one of his first stops in order to thank the Jamaican people and reggae artists for battling the evils of apartheid through music and keeping it in the news.

With Alborosie currently living in Jamaica, does reggae have appeal in a country in a different hemisphere separated by an ocean? “Reggae is huge in Italy,” Forsythe added. “One of Bob Marley’s last concerts before he died in 1980 was in Milan, and it drew 100,000 people. There’s a huge reggae market in Italy. Reggae artists tour there all the time.”

Until next week,

Ciao!        

La Dolce Lingua: Italian language classes at the IIC NY begin this Tuesday!

By Ron Spence, IIC NY Press Office

It’s still not too late to register for Italian language courses at the IIC New York! "La Dolce Lingua"  is an 8 week beginners/introductory language course organized by and held at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York. The course will be held for 8 weeks twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays from 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM) and starts this Tuesday January 31^st.

The course covers the building blocks of Italian:

·         The alphabet/grammar

·         Basic conversation & pronunciation

·         Reading comprehension & writing

In addition, students will be given a ‘crash course’ in common Italian phrases that could come in handy on a trip, including greetings, appropriate dining phrases, expressing likes and dislikes, asking someone to clarify word meanings, wishing people well and more!

In keeping with the Italian flair for conversation, students will learn the language through conversational role-playing through a series of situations, and repetition, which will enhance understanding of Italian culture.

In addition to being an engaging way for learning Italian, the course serves as a great preparation tool for two language competency certifications exclusively offered for residents and visitors of New York by the Italian Cultural Institute. The certifications are recognized and can be used for proving official declarations of linguistic competency. Whether you are a student soon to be traveling abroad, a businessman or businesswoman with clients in Italy, or an aspiring diplomat the course is a great way to delve into details of the Italian language.

For more information please contact the IIC NY at 212-879-4242 or lang.iicnewyork@esteri.it

Grazie!   

Exhibition "150 years of Italian Genius- Innovation Changing the World" will close on Thursday, February 9, 2012.

Schedule: Monday - Friday from 10am to 4pm at the Italian Cultural Institute

686 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10065
telephone: 1 212 879 4242
fax: 1 212 861 4018
email: iicnewyork@esteri.it , italcultureny.press@gmail.com

 

Intorno al Corno: Around the Horn with America’s Pastime in Italy

By Ron Spence, ICI NY Press Office

Playing sports is a great way to exercise the body and mind in friendly and fun competition. Sports also play an important diplomatic and humanitarian role in the world by bringing people from different ethnicities, nationalities, and religions together. The 1914 Christmas Truce, in which British and German soldiers stationed along the Western Front in World War I, tired of the horrors of war, came together and celebrated Christmas Eve & Day with a friendly game of soccer. The United Nations implemented the ‘International Year of Sport & Physical Education’ in 2005 in order to promote what it called ‘a Universal language’ of peace- sports. In New York City, where ‘the big four’ American sports reign supreme- baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, it’s not uncommon to see life-long Yankees and Mets fans skip a few baseball games while the World Cup soccer tournament is on (myself included), and swap a mug of Budweiser for a half-liter of Hefeweizen. While Europe’s national pastime of soccer (or as it’s referred to in the continent as association football) has made huge in-roads in the American sporting community, America’s national pastime of baseball is growing in Europe, and, in particular Italy.

The origins of baseball in Italy go back to the late 19^th century with the arrival of two American naval ships in the port of Livorno (in Tuscany), the USS Lancaster and the USS Guinnebaug. To pass the time the Americans held a baseball game (128 years ago today) on January 23, 1884 at the Campo d’Osservazione (Observation Field), which attracted crowds and enough attention to make the pages of Livorno’s newspaper La Gazzetta Livornese. With baseball having reached Italy, early baseball pioneer Albert G. Spalding (whose middle name, Goodwill, should be noted) decided to serve as a ‘Goodwill’ ambassador of the sport (and to promote his sporting goods company which developed what was to become a fixture on the streets of New York- the ‘spaldeen’ ball used for stickball games) and in 1889 held baseball tournaments in Florence, Naples, and the Eternal City- Rome. The tournament was a success and attracted many curious on-lookers including Italy’s King Umberto I and Queen Margherita. During World War I the American Army, in order to foster closer ties with the allied Italian Army, taught Italian soldiers the sport and held baseball games between the two armies. Captain and future beloved Mayor of New York Fiorello LaGuardia even served as a baseball coach for these games.

Throughout the inter-war years an Italian-American and baseball enthusiast named Massimo Ottino (who Americanized his name to Max Ott) ,and Guido Graziani, an Italian physical education teacher promoted the game, but upon the rise of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, the game was soon banned for being labeled American. It wasn’t until after World War II that baseball experienced a Renaissance in Italy, and under the leadership of Ottino and Graziani the Lega Italiana Softball and the Lega Italiana Baseball leagues were born. The first modern professional (and historic) baseball game between two Italian teams was held before 2,000 baseball hungry fans on June 27, 1948 at Giurati stadium in Milan. These two leagues would eventually evolve into what is today known in Italy as the Federazione Italiana Baseball-Softball, the governing body of baseball in Italy.

In recent years Major League Baseball has made a huge effort to promote the sport worldwide, and this promotion has led to a growing interest of the game’s development in Italy by American players and teams, including the New York Yankees and the New York Mets. In fact, the Mets, as part of a goodwill effort, have allowed the Italia (Italian) Olympic baseball team to play games at their Port St. Lucie, Florida baseball complex. Italian-American players on both the Mets and the Yankees have tapped into their Italian roots and played on the Italia Olympic baseball team, such as Yankees catcher Francisco Cervilli (who was born in Venezuela but whose parents  emigrated from Italy). In 2006 Mets future Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza played for Italy in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), the international goodwill baseball tournament sponsored by Major League Baseball. Piazza currently serves as Italy’s WBC hitting instructor, and no doubt imparts his experiences and hitting techniques on the club.

One Italian baseball organization in particular is fast becoming a major league in its own right- the Italian Baseball League (IBL), founded in 1948, and which is comprised of teams from the following cities (plus one country San Marino)-

·         San Marino (although not technically part of Italy it is still culturally Italian)

·         Bologna

·         Parma

·         Nettuno

·         Rimini

·         Grosetto

·         Godo

·         Novara (which replaced Sicily’s team, the Catania Warriors, in 2011)

These eight teams compete in a 42-game season and use only wooden bats and Wilson baseballs. Up until 2010 the league had a very interesting incentive for the teams to compete rigorously, in that whichever team finished in last place would be demoted to the minor leagues, and the team with the best minor league record would be promoted to the IBL. It would be interesting to see if this idea were to be implemented in Major League Baseball how this would shake up the competition, and could provide an even bigger incentive for teams to remain competitive throughout the season. Each team is allowed to have up to four non-Italian citizens, and each team must have at least six Italian citizen baseball players on the field at any given time. Former American players have found a second home in the IBL, including Jay Palma who was the 1980 sixth-round draft pick of the New York Mets and now coaches the Novara United team. Younger players hoping to one day break into Major League Baseball have also found a home in the IBL including Josh Phelps, who plays ‘Primabase’ (first base) for Rimini. The league has also honored Italian-Americans who have contributed to the game including former Los Angeles Dodgers catcher and current Los Angeles Angels Manager Mike Scioscia.

While I wouldn’t want to see baseball displace soccer as Italy’s national pastime, it would be fun to see Italy in time develop a ‘big four’ sports pantheon which could include baseball. While this may not happen in the near future, judging by the baseball seeds planted in Italy through its cultural exchanges with the United States, there is hope that this could become a reality.

Until next week, Ciao!

Ron  

150 Years of Italian Genius Exhibition Extended by Popular Demand

By Ron Spence, ICI NY Press Office

2011 was a big year for Italy as the country celebrated its 150^th anniversary of Unification.  In the United States, citing the historical bond between the U.S. and Italy, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation marking March 17^th as a day of celebration and study of Italian Unification in America. Celebrations of Italian Unification were held across the United States including the Italian Cultural Institute of New York (ICI NY), which played a leading role in commemorating the genius and influence of the Italian nation since before and after unification through music, art, and science exhibitions and symposiums on politics and history.

To cap off the year of Unification celebration, the ICI NY coordinated a program expanding upon and celebrating the scientific developments of Italians within multiple facets of science and life, and how these advances will continue to develop world society. This program, “150 Years of Italian Genius:  On the Frontiers of Creativity & Science,” kicked off on December 6^th at the Consulate General of Italy in New York, and featured renown international experts and speakers on Italian scientific discoveries which shaped and enhanced the American Industrial Revolution. Names which I remember hearing in Mr. Sterling’s science class at Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island (Fermi, Marconi, and more) were vividly brought to life and their discoveries expanded upon. On December 16^th the Institute opened to the public an interactive thematic exhibition on the topics discussed. Initially the exhibit was to run through January 27, 2012 but due to popular demand the exhibition has been extended through February 3, 2012.

The exhibition is a treasure trove of science and history and caters to all levels of awareness in the field of science. First time visitors who are curious will be able to navigate the interdependencies between Italian science discoveries and the world via interactive smart-pads.  Historians and scientists will be able to see in person physical prototypes of those inventions which changed our world including early computers, radios, and examples of transportation technologies. Public health experts will be able to trace the development of vaccinations via the discoveries made within the University of Turin that are on display. The exhibit is also a great venue for school teachers and classes of all ages and private tours can be held upon request.

True to the Italian vision of creativity the exhibit itself is designed to engage the visitor through multiple levels of interaction within five major areas of discovery-

1.       “Experience the New”

·         This thematic room contains Italian discoveries of the ‘nuts & bolts’ developed to produce light bulbs, typewriters, rubber tires for automobiles, and Moplen plastics that are used for receptacles and other day-to-day activities.  Sections within this area explore the discoveries and improvements of Primo Levi, Antonio Meucci & the telephone, Alessandro Crutto & the light bulb, Giovanni Battista Pirelli & pneumatic tires and electric wires and more.

2.       “Traveling & Learning”

·         Today many New Yorkers ride Vespas to work, but how many know that the Vespa was an Italian invention? The impacts of Italian science on the development of the automobile are innumerable and featured within this area. Dante Giacosa, Fiat and the development of the utility car, Corradino D’Ascanio & the Vespa, Enrico Forlanini & the dirigible, and Giuseppe Gabrielli & the airplane are a select group of inventors and inventions included within this section.

3.       “New Frontiers”

·         Ever hold a conference call or make a dinner reservation via cell phone? Like the oceans during the Age of Exploration, space and the infinitesimal are now considered to be humanity’s final frontier. The development of communication through space and the analyses and discovery of the smallest particles are some of the areas explored upon in this section. Guglielmo Marconi & the wireless telegraph, Enrico Fermi & the nuclear reactor, and Giuseppe Colombo, Franco Malerba & the development of the tethered satellite systems and more are given their due in this fascinating learning station on what Italian breakthroughs in new frontiers mean for humanity and the future of the unknown.

4.       “More Efficient & Pleasant Working Conditions”

·          The laptop computer I’m using to type this blog has its origins in the creation of the first computer by Piergiorgio Perotto, whose computing contributions are on display at the Institute (and also featured at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom). Other works within this area, such as those of Federico Faggin & the microprocessor (which forms the core functionality of personal computers) and others are on display.

5.       “To Heal is to Live”

·         Discoveries and major developments in neurology, bacteriology, microbiology and more are featured within this section. Battista Grassi and Ida Bianco and their work in the field of malaria, Giulio Bizzozero and his work on the understanding of modern anatomy, Salvador Luria and his work in bacteriology, and Giacomo Rizzolatti and his developments within the field of mirror neurons among additional scientists and their work are assembled together here.

With only three weeks remaining, grab a macchiato, hop on your Vespa and take a ride through our past, present, and future of science at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York!

Ciao!

Ron

P.S. - For a sneak peak of the exhibition please visit the home page of the ICI NY-

 http://www.iicnewyork.esteri.it/IIC_NewYork/

For private tours please contact:

Eva Zanardi, Director of Communications

Italian Cultural Institute of New York

686 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10065

Tel. 212-879-4242 x333

Fax 212-861-4018

Eva.zanardi@esteri.it

Honoring the Memory of Holocaust Victims at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York

Honoring the Memory of Holocaust Victims at the Italian Cultural Institute of NY

By Ron Spence, ICI NY Press Office Staff

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 1980s I used to visit my grandmother Josephine, a proud Italian-American whose parents Michele Rizzo and Teresa DiBuono emigrated at the turn of the 20^th century to New York City from the mountain village of Rutino, after school for home-made Italian cooking. The street where she lived and which shaped my early years as a Brooklynite, 17th Street, was a melting pot of hard working primarily blue-collar immigrant families.  It was a street in which neighbors treated neighbors like family regardless of ethnic or religious differences.

One of my grandmother’s neighbors, Henry Dorzinski, was a Polish immigrant and a gentle soul who helped neighbors with house repairs. While I primarily remember Henry as a soft spoken kind man who always wore handyman attire of jeans and a white t-shirt, always took care of his garden, and allowed my sister and I to play with his Pomeranian dogs Fifi and Baron, the indelible image of Henry that has been seared into my memory was of a tattoo he had on his arm- or what at the time I thought was a tattoo. It wasn’t until years later that I learned from my family what it really was- a barcode of his imprisonment number form his time in a Nazi concentration camp. Looking back on it 20 years after he passed I cannot imagine the harrowing experiences he must have gone through during that terrible time. The pure evil of the Holocaust knew no bounds. Millions of innocent people were murdered out of hate, the false science of eugenics, and countless other indefensible excuses. The aftereffects of the Holocaust impacted millions of survivors across the globe and families from all different backgrounds across neighborhoods in New York City, including my grandmother’s.

To continue the important study of the Holocaust, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York will coordinate a series of symposiums from January 27^th-30^th on the Nazi and fascist persecution of the Italian Jewish community and other Italians victimized. The events include:

·         Friday January 27^th Remembrance Ceremony:  The Consul General of Italy, Hon. Natalia Quintavalle is renewing her predecessors’ commitment to preserve the memory of the victims of Nazi-Fascist persecution. The Consulate, in collaboration with Centro Primo Levi, is organizing the ceremony of the reading of the names of all Jews deported from Italy and Italian territories. This reading is the centerpiece in a series of events presenting and informing on the history of totalitarianism and raising awareness against racism and xenophobia. Giorno della Memoria is held under the auspices of the Consulate General of Italy in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute, the Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo’ at NYU, the John D. Calandra Institute at CUNY, the Italian Academy at Columbia University and the Scuola d’Italia “G. Marconi,” and RAI Corporation. Time: 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM. Location: Consulate General of Italy, 690 Park Avenue (between 68^th Street and 69^th Street), New York, NY.

·         Sunday January 29^th Forging the ‘New Man’: A conversation with Francesco Cassata (University of Genoa) which will analyze the development of eugenics in Italy, from the First International Congress of Eugenics in London (1912) to the establishment of medical genetics during the 1950s. Dr. Cassata will expose the complex interaction between eugenics and “racial science” during Fascism, focusing in particular on the definition of an alternative model of neo-Lamarckian, pronatalist and Catholic eugenics: the so-called “Latin” eugenics. Starting with the institutionalization of Italian eugenics in the early 1900's, Cassata will trace the participation of the Italian scientific community in defining biological racism and a skewed notion of “fitness” that became central to the fascist regime's juridical, social and ideological system. Time: 2:30 PM. Location: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Park Place, New York, NY.

·         Monday January 30^th The World Premiere of the documentary “DP Camp of Cinecitta”: A documentary film by Marco Bertozzi based on research by Noa Steimatsky. The conversion of Cinecittà, one of Europe’s largest movie studios, into a refugee camp is the topic of this thoroughly researched film. The camp of Cinecittà emerges as a startling phenomenon and a prime allegorical tableau of its time. The film explores the historical conditions at the time of the camp’s creation, the magnitude of its population, the duration of its existence and the broader social and political forces that governed its development. Time: 6:00 PM. Location: NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo' 24 West 12th Street (between 5^th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas), New York, NY.