On the table, two bottles of Angelo De Caro’s home-vinted red wine, two plates laden with slices of the De Caro brothers’ righteous soupy, and chunks of cheese and Italian bread, and, for good measure a few steps away, Arc Ferraro’s 83-year-old mother, Maria, sitting in on tambourine.
Calabria Bella, a band of brothers, literally and figuratively, from Acri, in Calabria, in the “boot,” in southern Italy, is in session. Only the bass player, Nino Ianella, is from away. He was born in Naples. They’re practicing downstairs at Arc Ferraro’s place, on Oak Street in Westerly.
Three De Caro brothers — Angelo on accordion, Sal on guitar and lead vocals, and Mario on keyboards — together with Ferraro, another accordionist, and Ferraro’s cousin, Adelmo Intreri, on drums, all raised in Acri, are the core of Calabria Bella. On this recent Saturday afternoon, Mario De Caro was absent and Intreri was visiting in Italy, so it was Angelo and Sal De Caro, and Ianella, the Neapolitan, and Ferraro working on their traditional Italian folksy, joyful and sometimes ribald set.
New Year’s Eve, at the Calabrese Club on Pleasant Street, was the band’s most recent public performance, and there’s talk of another gig on March 19 at Clydesdale Tavern on Canal Street, for an “Italian Night” celebration.
This is the second generation to perform as Calabria Bella. The members, in their 50s and early 60s, took over from those who founded the local group in 1976 — including a parent or two, several members of the Luzzi family and Antonio DeGiacomo, now 80 and still playing tambourine occasionally. The families were living on Pierce Street in Westerly, after emigrating from Acri.
The original Calabria Bella performed far and wide, and the current group, though not as well-traveled, has played around, particularly in Newport and Mystic, besides Westerly, and is most proud of appearances in the summer of 2013 at the renowned Lowell Folk Festival in Lowell, Mass., and its Market Street Stage, recorded for posterity and posted on YouTube.
Arc Ferraro, who owns 14 or so accordions and concertinas, and Angelo De Caro, adept, like Ferarro, on both the piano accordion and concertina, were featured in an “accordion masters” presentation at the Lowell festival that also included Cajun, Merengue (from the Dominican Republic) and polka performers.
Ferraro and the De Caros did not know one another in Acri, but met after their families settled on Pierce Street in the 1970s. Several of the band members worked as teens in the former Guild guitar factory on Industrial Drive. Salvatore De Caro first learned the guitar while working there. Ferraro has had a landscaping business for 30 years. Angelo De Caro worked at Electric Boat and then in real estate and is retired. His brother, Sal, works as a pit boss at the poker tables at the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Nino Ianella, acknowledged by the others to be the most gifted musician, once played on cruise ships. He, too, is retired.
Ferraro’s accordion collection includes instruments made in Italy and Germany, several of them virtual works of art in wood. He said he learned to play when he was 8, following the inspiration of his father, Vincenzo, who also played the accordion. Mostly, said Ferraro, he picked up the tunes by ear, though he did take some lessons in Westerly. Angelo De Caro learned to play at about the same age, but while tending herds on his family’s farm in Acri. “I had the whole day to myself, learning on a tiny concertina,” he told the audience at the Lowell Folk Festival.
Though the venues are not as abundant for Calabria Bella as in the early days, these men, playing together, as old friends as well as paesani at Ferraro’s home, or at the Calabrese Club on New Year’s Eve and wherever else they’re invited, are sustaining a folk tradition as important to the Westerly community and cultural history as any music.
They are fine musicians, and their waltzes and polkas and Tarantellas and even a few slower love songs, not to mention familiar standards to American ears like “That’s Amore,” resonate with the obvious pleasure they find in playing and sharing.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington. He was a longtime reporter and columnist for The Day of New London. maayan72@aol.com
On the table, two bottles of Angelo De Caro’s home-vinted red wine, two plates laden with slices of the De Caro brothers’ righteous soupy, and chunks of cheese and Italian bread, and, for good measure a few steps away, Arc Ferraro’s 83-year-old mother, Maria, sitting in on tambourine.
Calabria Bella, a band of brothers, literally and figuratively, from Acri, in Calabria, in the “boot,” in southern Italy, is in session. Only the bass player, Nino Ianella, is from away. He was born in Naples. They’re practicing downstairs at Arc Ferraro’s place, on Oak Street in Westerly.
Three De Caro brothers — Angelo on accordion, Sal on guitar and lead vocals, and Mario on keyboards — together with Ferraro, another accordionist, and Ferraro’s cousin, Adelmo Intreri, on drums, all raised in Acri, are the core of Calabria Bella. On this recent Saturday afternoon, Mario De Caro was absent and Intreri was visiting in Italy, so it was Angelo and Sal De Caro, and Ianella, the Neapolitan, and Ferraro working on their traditional Italian folksy, joyful and sometimes ribald set.
New Year’s Eve, at the Calabrese Club on Pleasant Street, was the band’s most recent public performance, and there’s talk of another gig on March 19 at Clydesdale Tavern on Canal Street, for an “Italian Night” celebration.
This is the second generation to perform as Calabria Bella. The members, in their 50s and early 60s, took over from those who founded the local group in 1976 — including a parent or two, several members of the Luzzi family and Antonio DeGiacomo, now 80 and still playing tambourine occasionally. The families were living on Pierce Street in Westerly, after emigrating from Acri.
The original Calabria Bella performed far and wide, and the current group, though not as well-traveled, has played around, particularly in Newport and Mystic, besides Westerly, and is most proud of appearances in the summer of 2013 at the renowned Lowell Folk Festival in Lowell, Mass., and its Market Street Stage, recorded for posterity and posted on YouTube.
Arc Ferraro, who owns 14 or so accordions and concertinas, and Angelo De Caro, adept, like Ferarro, on both the piano accordion and concertina, were featured in an “accordion masters” presentation at the Lowell festival that also included Cajun, Merengue (from the Dominican Republic) and polka performers.
Ferraro and the De Caros did not know one another in Acri, but met after their families settled on Pierce Street in the 1970s. Several of the band members worked as teens in the former Guild guitar factory on Industrial Drive. Salvatore De Caro first learned the guitar while working there. Ferraro has had a landscaping business for 30 years. Angelo De Caro worked at Electric Boat and then in real estate and is retired. His brother, Sal, works as a pit boss at the poker tables at the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Nino Ianella, acknowledged by the others to be the most gifted musician, once played on cruise ships. He, too, is retired.
Ferraro’s accordion collection includes instruments made in Italy and Germany, several of them virtual works of art in wood. He said he learned to play when he was 8, following the inspiration of his father, Vincenzo, who also played the accordion. Mostly, said Ferraro, he picked up the tunes by ear, though he did take some lessons in Westerly. Angelo De Caro learned to play at about the same age, but while tending herds on his family’s farm in Acri. “I had the whole day to myself, learning on a tiny concertina,” he told the audience at the Lowell Folk Festival.
Though the venues are not as abundant for Calabria Bella as in the early days, these men, playing together, as old friends as well as paesani at Ferraro’s home, or at the Calabrese Club on New Year’s Eve and wherever else they’re invited, are sustaining a folk tradition as important to the Westerly community and cultural history as any music.
They are fine musicians, and their waltzes and polkas and Tarantellas and even a few slower love songs, not to mention familiar standards to American ears like “That’s Amore,” resonate with the obvious pleasure they find in playing and sharing.
Steven Slosberg lives in Stonington. He was a longtime reporter and columnist for The Day of New London. maayan72@aol.com
