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                             Folklife Center News
                           American Folklife Center
                           The Library of Congress  
                                  Summer 1992
                              Volume XIV, Number 3
                  ISSN 0149-6840  Catalog Card No. 77-649628
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The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S.
Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through
programs of research, documentation, archival preservation,
reference service, live performance, exhibition, publication, and
training. The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture,
which was established in the Music Division of the Library of
Congress in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of
ethnographic material from the United States and around the
world.

Administration
Alan Jabbour, Director
Ray Dockstader, Deputy Director
Timothy Lloyd, Assistant to the Director
Doris Craig, Administrative Assistant
Hillary Glatt, Program Assistant
Camila Bryce-Laporte, Program Coordinator
Jennifer A. Cutting, Program Coordinator

Acquisitions
Joseph C. Hickerson, Head

Processing
Stephanie A. Hall, Archivist
Elaine Bradtke, American Memory Project
Catherine Hiebert Kerst, American Memory Project

Programs
Peter T. Bartis, Folklife Specialist
Mary Hufford, Folklife Specialist
David A. Taylor, Folklife Specialist
Publications
James Hardin, Editor
Public Events
Thea Caemmerer, Coordinator

Reference
Gerald E. Parsons, Reference Librarian
Judith A. Gray, Folklife Specialist

Administrative Office
Tel: 202 707-6590
Reference Service
Tel: 202 707-5510  
Federal Cylinder Project
Tel: 202 707-1740
 
Board of Trustees
William L. Kinney, Jr., Chair, South Carolina
John Penn Fix III, Vice Chair, Washington
Nina Archabal, Minnesota
Lindy Boggs, Louisiana; Washington, D.C.
Carolyn Hecker, Maine
Robert Malir, Jr., Kansas
Judith McCulloh, Illinois
Juris Ubans, Maine
 
Ex Officio Members  
James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
Robert McCormick Adams, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Anne-Imelda Radice, Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the 
Arts, Lynne V. Cheney, Chairman, National Endowment for the
Humanities, Alan Jabbour, Director, American Folklife Center

FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS
James Hardin, Editor
Timothy Lloyd, Editorial Advisor
David A. Taylor, Editorial Advisor
John Biggs, Library of Congress Graphics Unit, Designer

Folklife Center News publishes articles on the programs and 
activities of the American Folklife Center, as well as other
articles on traditional expressive culture. It is available free
of charge from the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center,
Washington, D.C. 20540-8100. Folklife Center News does not
publish announcements from other institutions or reviews of books
from publishers other than the Library of Congress. Readers who
would like to comment on Center activities or newsletter articles
may address their remarks to the editor.
  
FOLKLINE
For timely information on the field of folklore and folklife,
including training and professional opportunities and news items
of national interest, a taped announcement is available around
the clock, except during the hours of 9 A.M. until noon (eastern
time) each Monday, when it is updated. Folkline is a joint
project of the American Folklife Center and the American Folklore
Society. Dial: 202 707-2000

.................................................................
Editor's Notes

MLA Lists FCN

The Modern Language Association has notified us that Folklife
Center News will be listed in the MLA Directory of Periodicals
and indexed for inclusion in the MLA International Bibliography.
Volume 5 of the annual bibliography is devoted to folklore.

Service to the Profession

The American Folklife Center has begun a project to evaluate and
improve the services it provides to the field of folklore. The
Center's current services include its publications
(bibliographies, finding aids, Folklife Center News, and special
publications); its Folk Archive reference service; its
documentary equipment loan program; the Folkline job and
professional opportunity telephone information recording; and
collaborations with academic and public programs and with
individual folklorists on fieldwork and other activities. Based
on the rankings of possible new activities requested in a survey
sent to academic and public programs in the field, the Center may
add other services to the list. The results of this survey will
be distributed before the end of the year to all to whom the
survey was sent, and will appear in a future issue of Folklife
Center News. For more information, contact Assistant to the
Director Timothy Lloyd, who is coordinating the project.

"In-County" Performers on PBS

On July 13, 1989, folksingers Bull Durham, Dolf Droge, Chuck
Rosenberg, Bill Ellis, and Bill Dower gathered at the Library of
Congress for a concert and symposium called "In Country," based
on the Vietnam-era soldier songs recorded by Gen. Edward G.
Lansdale and donated to the Archive of Folk Culture in 1975 and
1977 (Folklife Center News, vol. XI, no. 3, summer 1989). A
number of these performers will be featured on PBS's "Austin City
Limits," a Veteran's Day special, November 11, with Kris
Kristofferson as host, at 10:30 P.M. eastern and 9:30 P.M.
central time.

Internet

The Folklife Center has recently put several of its free
publications on the Library's Sequent computer linked to the
Internet online network. Anyone in the world with network access
may read or download (retrieve) these documents using File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) at no charge. Currently the file includes
the new Zora Neale Hurston finding aid, the Brazil, Kentucky, and
South Carolina finding aids, a bibliography on the folk revival,
and the American Folk Music and Folklore Recordings 1990: A
Selected List. All the files are in basic ascii format.  
Those wishing to use Folklife Center publications online should
FTP the Library's computer at "seq1.loc.gov" and sign on as
"anonymous." First select the "PUB" or public directory. There
you will find a subdirectory called "Library.of.Congress" (please
note the case usage, as the computer is case sensitive). Within
this subdirectory there is a subdirectory called "about.LC" where
an "amer.folklife.ctr" subdirectory may be found. In this
subdirectory are the Center's brochure, and lists describing
Center publications. In the "Library.of.Congress" subdirectory
there is also a subdirectory called "research.guides." In this
subdirectory there is another "amer.folklife.ctr" subdirectory
where research publications may be found. This subdirectory will
be expanded as machine readable files are made available.

                                       
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Folklife Exhibition Celebrates Italian-American Ties and
Attachments

                                By James Hardin
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The truck from the Library of Congress pulled into the driveway
of Kerry Nick Fister's home in Price, Utah, on July 12, just as
members of the Nick family began to arrive for their 1992
reunion. The truck was there to pick up items Mrs. Fister had
agreed to lend for an exhibition sponsored by the American
Folklife Center called Old Ties, New Attachments: Italian-
American Folklife in the West.  

The Nick family will be represented in a section of the
exhibition on the transformation of Italians in the American West
into Italian-Americans.  The very surname Nick (changed from
Nicolavo) encapsulates one part of that story. Many Italians felt
obliged to change or anglicize their names, either to disguise
the fact that they were Italians (and thus avoid discrimination)
or simply to make the name easier to pronounce.
The Folklife Center's exhibition was the talk of the Nick
reunion, as might be expected. The usual subjects of exhibitions
are Egyptian pharaohs, treasure houses of Britain, French
Impressionist paintings, and other such products of "elite"
culture. Why have one on the everyday lives of Italians in the
western United States? What, for example, is so special about the
hog-sticking knife Kerry Fister's father made using an old file
from the Carbon County coal mine where he worked? 
The Nicks and many other contributors were puzzled at first that
the Folklife Center wanted to display their garden tools, linens,
photo albums, and other items. But when fieldworkers explained
the way ordinary objects often come to symbolize the experiences
of a lifetime, most warmed to the idea. Fieldworkers discovered a
deep sense of family pride in the western communities they
investigated, and most Italian-American families agreed that
their stories deserved to be told.

Folklife Center director Alan Jabbour proposed the Italian-
Americans in the West Project as one element of a Library of
Congress program to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the
voyage of Christopher Columbus, the Genovese explorer whose 1492
landing in the "New World" eventually led to British and European
colonization. The Folklife Center conducted a field study in five
western states during 1989 and 1990 to investigate the present-
day lives of one ethnic immigrant group for whom Columbus has
become especially important.

Inspiration for the project can be traced back to an earlier
field survey the Folklife Center conducted in Paradise Valley,
Nevada, in 1978, when fieldworkers documenting cowboy culture in
the region discovered that many ranchers were Italian-Americans.
In 1988, when Congress asked the Center to consider a project to
commemorate the Quincentenary, Jabbour thought that a more
extensive look at Italians in the West would be an appropriate
Columbian Quincentenary undertaking. He explained that "most
Americans associate Italian-American life, history, and culture
with the urban East, but an important and much less understood
aspect of Italian-American history is to be found in the American
West. In the mid-nineteenth century, large numbers of Italian
immigrants settled in California and other Western states. They
brought with them a number of cultural skills and arts--
agricultural techniques, wine culture, stone masonry, and many
others. More than most people realize, these Italian-Americans
helped shape the cultural landscape of the modern West."
Jabbour asked historian John Alexander Williams to write an
overview of Italians in the West in order to provide a framework
for the field study. Williams's detailed account described when
and why Italians came to this country, where they settled, and
how they fared in the new land. Williams focused on two cultural
developments, pan-Italianism and the transformation of Columbus
Day celebrations (see Williams's three articles for Folklife
Center News, vol. XI, nos. 2, 3, and 4, 1989). Italy did not
achieve political unity until Victor Emmanuel II became its first
king in 1861 (for centuries it was a territory of city-states and
small duchies and kingdoms). Italian-American culture was
essentially something new, resulting from the common interests in
America of people from different regions in Italy. As with many
immigrant groups, Italians formed organizations to help one
another survive and prosper, and these were prominent building
blocks of Italian-American ethnic identity.

Italian community leaders found in Christopher Columbus (first
celebrated in Yankee New England in 1792) an established American
hero perfectly suited to their needs for ethnic pride and unity,
and they set about reinventing him as an Italian hero. During the
late 1800s, Italians in the West were influential in promoting
Columbus's Italian origins. By 1885, Columbus Day in San
Francisco had changed from a Yankee holiday of solemn assemblies
to a festival of parades declaring Italian identity. In 1907,
Colorado was the first state to adopt Columbus Day as an official
holiday. Joseph Cervetto of San Rafael, California, began
portraying Columbus at San Francisco's elaborate Columbus Day
pageant in 1957: "I do it because I believe in the greatness of
the man," he said to fieldworker Russell Frank. "Columbus
represents for Italians the most important person." In recent
years, Cervetto's son, Joseph, Jr., has taken over the role.
At the Folklife Center, David A. Taylor was assigned the task of
directing field research for the Italian-Americans in the West
Project, and, in 1989, Taylor and four other researchers began
work in the maritime community of San Pedro, California. Other
sites visited by fieldworkers during the two-year field study
were: the agricultural community of Gilroy, in California's Santa
Clara Valley; several mining and ranching communities in central
and eastern Nevada; the agricultural valley surrounding Walla
Walla, Washington; the coal mining district of Carbon County,
Utah, and the city of Pueblo, Colorado, where Italian-Americans
have long worked in steel production and truck gardening.
In addition to Williams and Taylor, nineteen fieldworkers were
engaged to work on the project (when possible, they were from the
particular study areas and had already done pertinent research):
Susan Anderson, Bee Bergold, Douglas L. Banks, Thomas Carter,
Douglas DeNatale, Russell Frank, Andrea Graham, Ken Light, Jens
Lund, Paula Manini, Maria Notarianni, Philip Notarianni, Blanton
Owen, Valerie Parks, Bea Roeder, Steve E. Simmons, Steve Siporin,
Paola Tavarelli, and Myron Wood.

"Fieldworkers devoted attention to Italian-American involvement
in the distinctive occupations of the several regions," Taylor
explained. "The investigation of stonework by Italian-Americans
led to a better understanding of the diffusion of immigrant
artisans and their integration into areas of Western life not
usually perceived as being ethnic. Research in coal and precious
metal mining communities shed light on the role Italian immigrant
labor played in building extractive industries, and revealed
family and cultural connections between Italian-American
settlements in the West, their counterparts in the mining areas
of the East, and the home communities in Italy. 

"We also documented many other aspects of contemporary Italian-
American culture, such as food traditions that play an important
role in Italian-American identity, community-based sacred and
secular festivals that disclose continuity and change of old-
world traditions, and new forms of expression (including Columbus
Day) drawn from the popular cultures of the United States and
Italy.

"We wanted to know if the informants contacted in the study
communities were Italians or Westerners or both. Had they shaped
the contemporary culture of their Western subregion, or had it
shaped them? These were the central questions the Center's
researchers asked."

And responses to these and many other questions have resulted in
an immense collection of material for the Folklife Center's
Archive of Folk Culture: three hundred hours of video and sound
recordings, twenty-five thousand photographs, and a thousand
pages of field notes, logs, and other manuscript materials. A
computer program enabled fieldworkers to speed the process of
recording and indexing data, and now facilitates research using
the collection (see Stephanie A. Hall, "Building a Better Shoe
Box," Folklife Center News, vol. XIII, no. 1, winter 1991).
Washington area folklorist Marjorie Hunt sifted through the
material to do a preliminary outline for an exhibition. (Hunt won
an Academy Award for The Stone Carvers, her documentary film on
the Italian stone carvers at the Washington Cathedral.) And
later, folklorist I. Sheldon Posen was asked to serve as curator.
Posen has done a study of the giglio tradition in Brooklyn and
its connection with Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles
(the giglio is a tower carried through the streets in celebration
of the Feast of St. Paulinus, the patron saint of a small village
near Nola, Italy, to which many Brooklyn residents trace their
roots). Center deputy director Ray Dockstader took on the job of
coordinating exhibition activities at the Library and at other
sites around the country, and the Leone Design Group of
Larchmont, New York, was hired to design the exhibition.
In the summer of 1990, as fieldworkers were completing their
research in Pueblo, Colorado, a major effort in fund-raising
began. Although the Folklife Center received an allocation from
the Library's Columbus Quincentenary special appropriation, which
it used to conduct fieldwork, it was necessary to raise money for
the exhibition from private sources. Renee Kortum, a professional
fund-raiser from the Bancroft Group, Washington, D.C., was hired
for the job, and her early efforts were highlighted by a $100,000
donation from Henry Salvatori of Los Angeles.

The fund-raiser begins by asking the question "Who cares?" And
the answer to that question, Kortum discovered, was the Italian-
American community itself. Most of the private contributions came
from Italian-American individuals and small companies, and
raising it in that way was a good deal more complicated than by
identifying and pursuing a single source. 

Kortum enlisted the aid of Murphy Sabatino, a community leader in
northern California, and Countess Angela Dandini, of Reno,
Nevada, who formed fund-raising committees with her help. Both
organized gatherings, endorsed the project, and urged their
friends and associates to contribute. While the project never
came to the attention of Frank Sinatra, one fund-raising event
featured Sonny Bono, who was running for the U.S. Senate at the
time and welcomed the opportunity to address the California
voters. 

Old Ties, New Attachments is an exhibition in three parts. The
first part depicts a typical Italian-American home in the West,
showing how living rooms, kitchens, and gardens display and help
to sustain family history and values. "You have to understand the
nature of Italian people," Jerome Lucido told fieldworker Russell
Frank. "We are family-oriented people." The theme was sounded
many times during field research: family business, family
loyalty, family ties. A video terminal offers a digitized display
of a family photograph album, with a voice-over narration by
informants to explain the significance of particular images.
Included in the home section is a representation of a St.
Joseph's Day Table, a spectacular presentation of flowers,
candles, baked goods, fruits, vegetables, fish, omelettes, all
prepared according to traditional specifications. The St.
Joseph's Day Table originated in Sicily centuries ago when
peasants prayed to St. Joseph, the island's patron saint, to end
a period of famine and suffering. When their prayers were
answered, they offered up in thanksgiving their most prized
possession--food. Today, in this country, practitioners ask for
help most often to cure a family member's illness, promising to 
create a table in the home to show their gratitude. The community
is invited to share in the feast, with certain persons invited to
represent the Holy Family and other saints. Thus the tradition
depicts the intersection of family, community, and personal
faith.  

The second part of the exhibition presents occupational history,
highlighting the experiences of western Italian-American families
involved in enterprises from ranches to restaurants, fruit stands
to fishing vessels, steel mills to retail stores. The entrance to
this section recreates Gus' Place, a Pueblo, Colorado, tavern
located in what used to be one of the city's principal Italian
neighborhoods. Video terminals placed here and in the third part
will serve as "story stations," with interactive touch screens,
to tell immigrant stories of "the great journey" many family
ancestors made to America, and of the discrimination many
suffered in the work place. 

The third part examines the transformation of Italians in the
American West to Italian-Americans. Charlie Cuchiara of Pueblo,
Colorado, reported that his father "wanted to become a citizen so
bad he used to go to night school to study. I think the day he
got his citizenship was one of the happiest days of his life."
Within one generation of arriving here, Italian families were
mingling new American ways with those they had known in the past.
They blended worlds not only of food and occupational skills, but
also of songs and stories. For example, the children of Giovanni
and Maria Nicolavo--the Nicks of Price, Utah--grew up during the
1920s in a home that echoed with classical opera and Italian
popular tunes, as well as American cowboy and romantic songs. "We
were just absolutely cowboy crazy. That is, cowboy music," said
Kerry Nick Fister. 

Part three also looks at how Italian-Americans have helped shape
the West and explores some of the many ways Italian heritage is
expressed in the region today. That heritage provides a
repertoire of cultural choices in day-to-day life--what to eat,
how to dress, what language to speak, how to behave. For some,
Italian heritage is ever-present; for others, it belongs to the
past or is reserved for holidays, family gatherings, and special
events like religious festivals. Some Italian-Americans imported
local saints from their home places in Italy, and one display in
the exhibition represents the festivals for Madonna del Lume and
Santa Rosalia, two saints now honored in California.

About two hundred years ago, one story goes, several fishermen
from Porticello, Italy, were caught in a storm. They followed a
light that led to a cave, and there they found a bronze statue of
the Madonna. They brought the statue to Porticello, but the next
day it was found to have been mysteriously restored to the cave.
The fishermen vowed to build a church in the Madonna's honor,
and, eventually, a festival honoring Madonna del Lume grew from
the story to become a central ingredient in the identity of the
town. The festival was instituted in San Francisco in 1936 by
Rosa Tarantino, with a procession from Saints Peter and Paul
Church to Fisherman's Wharf. Her daughter-in-law, Frances, has
organized the festival since 1975 and continues the work "for the
love of the Madonna," she says.

Santa Rosalia is the patron saint of Isola delle Femine, a small
island off the coast of Sicily. She was a real person, living in
the seventeenth century, who was canonized for her good works. A
festival in her honor was begun in Monterey, California, in the
1935, by four women who came there with their husbands in the
early days of the sardine fishing industry. Celebrations have
waxed and waned with the growth and decline of fishing, but in
1973 Jerome Lucido organized the Italian Heritage Society for the
purpose of ensuring that the festival would survive. Thus, three
Italian traditions (for honoring St. Joseph, Madonna del Lume,
and Santa Rosalia) have become ways of reinforcing family ties
and sustaining Italian-American heritage.

Camila Bryce-Laporte, a program specialist at the Folklife
Center, coordinated the effort to assemble artifacts for the
exhibition. Nearly two hundred items borrowed from many of the
three hundred or so informants from the project were selected:
family portraits, linens, hard hats, soft hats, buttons, tools,
the glass-encased model of a blast furnace, cowboy gear, union
paraphernalia, and many others. 

Al Gagliano, a retired deputy sheriff from Gilroy, California,
carried a portable phone and rummaged through his things the day
Bryce-Laporte called, and many of the items he touched, touched
him. He is donating a pair of ravioli cutters, hand-made of wood
by his carpenter father. "How do you feel when you use them," she
asked. "I feel like my father felt," he said, expressing the way
familiar objects reinforce ties between generations.
Others grew more emotional at the thought of parting with
treasured items (the exhibitions will travel for two years).
Frances Tarantino of San Francisco donated her mother's picture
and her dowry linen, which has remained starched, folded, and
packed away for years. "It's never been used," she said with a
tremor in her voice.

But more than displaying the objects themselves, the folklife
exhibition seeks to convey the meanings that surround and infuse
them as a result of the people, places, and experiences with
which they are connected. "Folklife is defined by context," says
curator Sheldon Posen. "To an outsider, for example, the singing
of a lullaby may have neither meaning nor appeal, but to the baby
who hears it and the mother who sings it, the song can strike a
chord that echoes through their lives. . . . The curator's job is
to make the viewer understand and appreciate the artifact in the
same way as the owner and the community." The St. Joseph's Day
Table is an impressive sight to behold, but it also embodies all
the complex meanings of family ties, faith, and heritage. The
section of the exhibition on the steel industry is not about how
steel is made, but about the steel workers' sense of community.
Posen's favorite artifact from the exhibition is the creased and
faded snapshot Archie Royal (Achille Reali) sent to his
girlfriend and future wife, Albina, a few years before they were
married in 1920. She was helping her parents run a boarding house
in Mount Harris, Colorado, and he met her when he worked in the
coal mines there. The photo shows Archie dressed as a cowboy with
hat and chaps, looking quite pleased with himself. To Posen it
embodies all the pride and self-confidence with which Italians
settled the West, and shows the good-humor with which Archie
"bought into the whole western American cowboy scene." To Albina,
of course, it embodies complex meanings, and is a family
"treasure."

All the things on display are "treasures," but they are treasures
within a particular community, Posen explained. The purpose of
the exhibition is to knit together all the assembled artifacts of
different kinds, from lariats to breads, in such a way that they
tell a story, and that story is one of ties and attachments still
felt by Italian-Americans living in the American West. If the
effort is successful, the viewer will come to understand the
power of folklife in the lives of Italian-Americans in the West--
and in their own.

Old Ties, New Attachments: Italian-American Folklife in the West
opens at the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara, California,
October 12, 1992, and travels to four other sites: The Nevada
Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada (December 16, 1992, thru January
27, 1993); the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los
Angeles, California (April 6 thru June 13, 1993); The Museums at
Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York (June 19 thru September 18,
1994); and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (October
12 thru December 1994). 

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MARIA DALTOSO: "WALLA WALLA SWEET" ONION FARMER AND BALLADEER

                                 by Jens Lund
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In the Walla Walla Valley, on the Washington-Oregon state line,
lives a small Italian-American community, whose origins date to
the 1870s. They have nurtured a local horticulture industry, in
recent years centered on the "Walla Walla sweet onion," a variety
developed in the valley from Corsican stock brought there around
1900. The community is about evenly divided between northern
Milanese, most with ties to the village of Lonate Pozzolo (now a
Milan suburb), and those called "Calabrese," whose families came
from Calabria and other places in the south of Italy.

The onions are raised today as a specialty crop. They are open-
pollinated, with each farmer producing his own seed, and they are
still harvested largely by hand, because their high moisture
content renders them too fragile for machine harvesters. "Walla
Walla sweets" are a gourmet slicing onion popular all over the
West, and they are shipped as far as Alaska, the East Coast, and
Japan.

The settlers' descendants still speak of the life their ancestors
left behind in the old country. Most of the immigrants were
neither peasants nor landowners there, but hired laborers. They
lived in large families in Italy, some of the Northerners raising
silkworms in their homes and working in the local silk industry.
Ermanno Olmi's 1978 film _L'Alberi dei zoccoli_ ("The Tree of
Wooden Clogs") depicts a way of life in the late nineteenth-
century Po Valley similar to that which some of today's old-
timers heard about from their parents. Group singing during work
had played a prominent part in the northern Italian laborer's
life. 

Retired Walla Walla immigrant farm wife Maria Daltoso remembers
singing while working in the fields with her children as late as
the 1950s. Signora Daltoso came to the United States in 1928 as
the wife of Mario Daltoso, who had gone back to Italy from Walla
Walla to find a bride. Both were from Casale di Scodosa in
Veneto, but his family had moved near to Milan during World War
I. Signora Daltoso was the last of the original immigrants. She
says that her children did not mind working with her in the onion
fields, if she would sing her Italian songs with them:

Especially when we topped onions. It's hard! And nobody wanted to
come. It's early in the morning to late, about three, four
o'clock in the afternoon, in the onions. That's what we used to
do. And the kids in the summer, they were home. You'd have to
help and they'd come, yeah, "But you have to tell me a story. You
have to sing." And they'd sing with me, and we'd go and they'd
come behind me. They'd stay.

Signora Daltoso remembers much of her repertoire of ballads,
humorous and religious songs, and narrative poems, and performs
for family and friends. Some of it, especially the poems, she
learned as a child in school in Veneto. Some of it, she learned
from her family. She still keeps a number of song sheets written
down in longhand by her father, brought over from Italy. Her
repertoire is a rich mixture of tragedy, piety, courtship, and
some humor. One of her ballads, "Una bella e graziosa fanciulla"
("A Beautiful and Gracious Girl"), is a tragic tale of murder,
family violence, and insanity:

################# INSERT MUSICAL TRANSCRIPTION ##################

     Una bella e graziosa fanciulla,
     che di nascosto faceva l'amore
     sentirete quel vile genitore
     poverina che fine la f.

     La sua madre aveva fatto il pane
     da poco tempo lo aveva infornato
     disse ella, io vado al mercato
     quando e cotto lo devi levar.

     Cos rispose la giovanella:
     "Va pure e non dubitare,"
     e si mise cos a lavorare
     intanto il suo damo arriv.

     Da molto tempo non si erano parlati
     si misero assieme a sedere
     dissero: "Che gioia, che piacere,"
     intanto il pane le venne a bruciar.

     Quanto torna il padre dal lavoro
     sorprende la figlia in quell'ora,
     che non voleva faccesse l'amore
     quel giovinotto via subito ando.

     Allora il padre domanda alla figlia
     se dal forno il pane ha levato
     disse ella: "Non ci ho pi pensato
     forse troppo cotto sar.

     Allora il padre and ad aprire il forno
     vide il pane che sembrava carbone
     e li quel vile prese un forcone
     e la figlia volle infilar.

     "Del caro padre perdona, perdona
     se ho sbagliato sar mal di poco,"
     ma li quel vile prese pi fuoco
     con un colpo la figlia infil.

     Quando torna la madre dal mercato
     di colei, della figlia dimanda
     ma nel vedere la scena tremenda
     impazzita la madre rest.

     E quel vile fu subito arrestato
     parea che avesse il demonio
     nessuni per un matrimonio
     non avreberro mai fatto cos.
     
      A beautiful and gracious girl
      That hid her love for someone,
      Listen what a villain of a father
      Did to that poor girl.

      Her mother made some bread
      And had put it in the oven.
      She said, "Now, I am going to the market
      When it is ready, you must take it out."

      So said the girl, as she worked,
      "Go ahead and do not worry."
      And so in the meantime, her suitor
      Came to her, as was intended.

      It had been a long time, 
      Since they talked to each other,
      So they sat saying, "How joyous and pleasant,"
      As the bread was burning.

      When the father came back home from work,
      He suddenly discovered
      That his daughter was in love.
      And the suitor ran away.

      Then the father asked of his daughter
      If she had taken the bread out of the oven.
      She said, "I forgot all about it
      And perhaps it is overcooked."

      The father then went to the oven
      And he found that the bread looked like charcoal,
      Then that villain took a pitchfork
      With which to stab his daughter.

      "My dear father, pardon, please pardon
      I made only a little mistake."
      Then that villain became even more angry
      And with one blow, he then stabbed his daughter.

      When her mother returned from the market,
      She asked about her daughter,
      Then she saw the terrible tragedy and
      It made her lose her mind.

      The father was immediately arrested,
      Appearing possessed by a demon.
      How could anyone, just because they wanted to marry,
      Ever do such a thing to them?

Signora Daltoso sings the ballad quietly, very slowly, a
cappella. One of her neighbors, a woman of the second generation,
often stops by to visit and asks her to sing the song. "I don't
know why, but that is the one she most wants to hear," she says.
Other songs and poems in her repertoire include:

      1. The poem "Fior' di spina" ("Flowers with thorns") tells
of a little orphan girl, adopted by a rich woman and dressed in
fine clothes, who still misses her mother.

      2. "Mortante da guerra" ("Killed in the war"), tells of a
poor girl who gathers firewood for her mother to sell, because
her father was killed in World War I.

      3. The ballad "La spazza camino" ("The chimney sweep") is
about the wandering chimney sweeps, poor boys who travel around
earning money for their families. When one of them returns with
money for his mother, she has just died and been buried. The boys
never have enough money, because they have to buy straw to sleep
on.

      4. The humorous song "Io son matematico," about a
mountebank:

     Io son matematico, son metafisico, 
     son pure geologio, son pure astrologo, 
     faccio il bottanico, ed anche il chimico,
     l'archeologo, ed il frenologo. . . .

     I am a mathematician and a metaphysician
     Also a geologist and also an astrologer
     a botanist, and also a chemist,
     an archaeologist, also a phrenologist. . . .

      5. A humorous poem "Il pollaio" ("The Chicken Coop"). A
proud peacock declares himself king of the coop because of his
beauty. The other poultry take him to task for not having good
meat like the ducks and geese, and not crowing "ciricici" at dawn
on a pretty day, saying, "When you can lay eggs every day, we
will call you king!" The peacock then runs away in shame.

      6. The song "La bella campagnola" ("The beautiful
farmworker"), a young woman fieldhand goes to work each day and
endures proposals sung to her by the boys who work alongside her.
She no longer wishes to go, because she is afraid that if she
marries one of them, she will be a farmworker all of her life.
She wants to live in a proper house, sewing and caring for her
family, not  condemned to a lifetime of manual drudgery.

      7. "Bimbo bello" tells of the love that grows between a
little girl and her baby brother. (At first she asks why they
have bought such an "old" baby, with no hair or teeth.)

      8. "For Christmas, I want my mother" is about an orphan girl
who cannot be comforted because she has lost her loving mother.

      9. "Il pastorello" tells of a poor shepherd boy adopted by a
king, who is miserable amidst the luxury of the court. He almost
dies of heartbreak, before his mother comes and fetches him back
to a life poor in material goods but rich in love.

Since the early 1980s, the Walla Walla Italian-American community
has established an active program of ethnic celebrations led by
the local Italian Heritage Association, founded in 1983. An
annual parade on Columbus Day weekend proceeds to the statue of
Columbus on the county court house lawn. (The statue, reputedly
the oldest Columbus statue on the West Coast, was raised in 1911,
paid for by subscription by the Italian immigrant farmers.)
A weekend-long celebration features dance, music, food, and
performances by local groups and performers from Vancouver,
British Columbia's large Italian community. Maria Daltoso does
not perform at public events: her quiet and modest style of
presenting songs and recitations is not suitable for large
gatherings.

In the midst of the festivity, there is still discomfort among
some older Italian-Americans, who suffered prejudice and
stigmatization. During Prohibition, home wine makers were
ostentatiously harassed by local authorities who looked the other
way when non-Italians violated the law. 

The rigid patriarchal structure brought over from Italy was
extremely oppressive to women, and some of today's third- and
fourth-generation Italian-Americans, which include many teachers,
engineers, and real estate agents, know tales of this harder
life. One story heard is that of the young girl in the community
who was whipped and humiliated by her mother for declining to
dance with a prominent local padrone. The gloomy material in
Signora Daltoso's selections may be a reminder of some of the
negative aspects of immigrant life.

Old-world Italian traditions were best conserved when hand-labor
was a family affair, and Walla Walla's pioneer gardeners had many
children. As family labor was replaced by mechanization and
Mexicans, and subsequent generations sought jobs outside of
agriculture, the daily interactions in which old-world folklore
could be performed faded. But the traditions of Maria Daltoso are
still very much alive in her circle of family, neighbors, and
friends.

References

Locati, Joe J. The Horticultural Heritage of Walla Walla County,
1818-1977: A Comprehensive Review of Fruit and Vegetable Growing,
Shipping and Processing, Focused on Walla Walla County--With a
Section on the Italian Heritage. Walla Walla, Washington:
privately printed, 1978.

Milani, Ernesto. "The Lonatese Experience in the Americas." In
Lonate Pozzolo--history, art, society, translated by Ernesto
Milani and Lorenza Garzoli Ucchino, 19-34. Milan: Nicolini
Editore, 1986. (English translation of "L'Esperienza lonatese
nelle Americhe." In Lonate Pozzolo--storia, arte, societ. Franco
Bertolli, Elisa Bottini, and Rino Garatti, eds., 361-70. Milan:
Nicolini Editore, 1985.)

Nicandri, David L. Italians in Washington State: Emigration,
1853-1924. Tacoma, Washington: Washington State American
Revolutionary Bicentennial Commission, 1978.

.................................................................
Jens Lund is a teacher in the Liberal Studies Program of the
University of Washington. He was a fieldworker for the Folklife
Center's Italian-Americans in the West Project. Thanks to Daniela
Ghiselli Moats for Italian translations and to Julian Adamaitis
for musical transcription.

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New Publications for Fall 1992
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Documenting Maritime Folklife: An Introductory Guide
By David A. Taylor
Soft cover, 79 pp., 40 illus. Includes bibliography.
S/N 030-000-00236-9   $ , including postage and handling.
Available from New Orders, the Superintendent of Documents, P.O.
Box 371954, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15250-7954. Make checks
payable to the Superintendent of Documents.

Documenting Maritime Folklife provides an introduction to the
methods for identifying and documenting common maritime
traditions. The guide is intended for nonprofessional researchers
and community groups who wish to explore their own maritime
heritage. But it will also be useful both to professionals in
fields such as marine biology, fisheries extension, community
planning, and education who are trying to understand cultural
aspects of maritime activities, and to students and lay persons
working on projects under the direction of professional
folklorists, anthropologists, historians, preservationists,
cultural geographers, and other specialists in cultural studies.
In addition to examples of common maritime traditions and the
methods that can be used to document them, Documenting Maritime
Folklife includes suggestions for projects to disseminate
collected information and appendixes containing examples of
fieldnotes, a step-by-step description of the documentation of a
small boat's hull shape, and sample forms for collecting and
organizing information and obtaining informants' consent.

Yiddish American Popular Songs 1895-1950: A Catalog Based on the
Lawrence Marwick Roster of Copyright Entries
Compiled by Irene Heskes
Hard cover, 527 pp., 13 illus. Includes bibliography.
S/N 030-000-00242-3  $44, including postage and handling.
Available from New Orders, the Superintendent of Documents, P.O
Box 371954, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15250-7954. Make checks
payable to the Superintendent of Documents.

When Peretz Jacob Koppel Sandler arrived from Eastern Europe to
begin work as company musician at the Windsor Theater in the
Bowery at the end of the nineteenth century, one of the songs he
composed, with Yiddish lyrics, was "Eili, Eili," a creation that
brought him neither wealth nor fame because he neglected to
register it for copyright. The song's popularity and wide
publication are evident in the sheet music editions listed and
described in this volume. Many of the more than thirty-four
hundred sheets listed are available today in the collections of
the Library of Congress, because they were submitted for
copyright registration. Many entries have extensive annotations,
and this handsome and easy-to-use catalog includes an index to
composers, arrangers, and lyricists, and an index to song titles.

Old Ties, New Attachments: Italian-American Folklife in the West
Edited by David A. Taylor and John Alexander Williams
Hard cover, 224 pp., 197 illus. $29.95 plus $2.00 (book rate) or
$4.50 (first class) per book for postage and handling.
Available from the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C. 20540-8100. Make checks payable to the American
Folklife Center.

Both region and ethnic heritage are elements of cultural
diversity in America, and the Folklife Center's 1989-90 field
project Italian-Americans in the West enlivens the current
discussion on the subject by examining one ethnic group and one
region that are not ordinarily conjoined in our thinking. (The
Italian-Americans in the West Project is part of the Library of
Congress program commemorating the Columbus Quincentenary.)
American Folklife Center researchers conducted a two-year field
study in five western states: California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah,
and Washington. To what extent do ethnic groups retain their own
characteristic ways, the researchers wanted to know, and to what
extent do they become "American"? To what extent do they shape
the region in which they live, and to what extent are they shaped
by it?

The book's twelve articles, written by the project's folklorists
and historians, provide useful insights and answers, as they
recount immigration stories and describe traditions still
practiced by many second- and third-generation Italian-Americans.
Occupational traditions, such as agriculture, wine-making, and
mining; religious practices; and foodways are covered in the
volume, which concludes with an article on how Columbus Day
celebrations came to serve Italian-American ethnic pride. Old
Ties, New Attachments is sure to be a treasured addition to the
bookshelves of Italian-Americans and many others throughout the
country.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Regionalism and Ethnicity, by John Alexander
Williams

The Royal (Reali) Family of San Pedro, by Douglas DeNatale and
David A. Taylor

The Melting Pot Works: Italians in Central Nevada, by Blanton
Owen

Places of Origin: Calabresi in Carbon County, Utah, by Philip
Notarianni

Folklife and Survival: Italian-Americans of Carbon County, Utah,
by Steve Siporin

The Architecture of Immigration: Documenting Italian-American 
Vernacular Buildings in Utah and Nevada, by Thomas Carter

Walla Walla Sweets: Onions and Ethnic Identity in an Italian
Community in the Northwest, by Jens Lund

Tradition in a Bottle: The Story of the A. Conrotto Winery, by
David A. Taylor

Get on One End of the Rope and Pull Together: Italian Life and
Work in Pueblo, Colorado, by Russell Frank

Personalizing Tradition: Tables for Saint Joseph in Pueblo,
Colorado, by Paula Manini           

California Fieldnotes: San Pedro and Gilroy, by Paola Tavarelli
The Columbus Complex, by John Alexander Williams

Zora Neale Hurston: Recordings, Manuscripts, and Ephemera in the
Archive of Folk Culture and Other Divisions of the Library of
Congress, Compiled by Laura K. Crawley and Joseph C. Hickerson
Pamphlet. 12 pp. Free from the American Folklife Center, Library
of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-8100.

African-American author and collector of folklore Zora Neale
Hurston is the subject of the latest finding aid published by the
American Folklife Center. Numbered 11 in the "LC Folk Archive
Finding Aid" (LCFAFA) series, which was initiated in 1983, this
pamphlet was compiled by Laura K. Crawley and Joseph C.
Hickerson. Crawley, a doctoral student in the Institute for
Women's Studies at Emory University, worked on the finding aid as
part of a summer internship at the Folklife Center.

Generally, the "LCFAFA's" describe relevant portions of the Folk
Archive's unpublished, multi-format, ethnographic collections.
Recently published finding aids have described the Archive's
recorded holdings for Brazil, Kentucky, Maryland, Mexico, South
Asia, South Carolina, and Virginia, as well as for street cries,
radio-related materials, and the Robert W. Gordon collections. (A
complete list of the more than two-hundred available finding and
reference aids is available upon request.) The Hurston finding
aid is unique in that it not only covers the Archive's holdings,
but also those of the Library's Manuscript, Prints and
Photographs, and Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound
divisions.

Featured in the listing are a 1935 recording expedition to
Georgia and Florida that Hurston made for the Archive with Alan
Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle; nineteen songs performed by
Hurston with commentary in a 1939 interview conducted by Herbert
Halpert for the W.P.A.; six songs performed at the 1938 National
Folk Festival by members of a choir led by Hurston from Rollins
College; various correspondence among the Franz Boas and Margaret
Mead papers in the Manuscript Division; folklore collectanea in
the W.P.A. Federal Writers Project collection in the Manuscript
Division; ethnographic film footage which Hurston shot, ca. 1927-
29; an interview on a 1943 Mary Margaret McBride radio broadcast;
a video and various reviews of Ruby Dee's stage production, "Zora
is My Name!"; and a group of photographs of Hurston, primarily in
the John and Alan Lomax collection in the Prints and Photographs
Division.

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Sing Out Board Meets at Library of Congress
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

On April 9-10, 1992, the American Folklife Center hosted a
retreat for nine board and staff members of the Sing Out
Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The group met to evaluate
the past and future of Sing Out!, the pioneering folk music
magazine established in New York City in 1950 by such
folklorists, folksingers, and other contributors as: Howard Fast,
Herbert Haufrecht, Lee Hayes, Waldemar Hille, Aaron Kramer, Ernie
Lieberman, Alan Lomax, Walter Lowenfels, Paul Robeson, Earl
Robinson, Betty Sanders, Pete Seeger, and Irwin Silber.
Sing Out board member Pete Seeger, who is featured in the recent
award-winning film about the Library, "Memory and Imagination,"
suggested the Library as the venue for this evaluative session,
pointing out that he was inspired to pursue an interest in folk
music while serving as a volunteer and assistant to Alan Lomax in
the Library's Archive of American Folk Song in 1938.

.................................................................
Folklife Center News, Summer 1992: Captions

Men carry statue of Santa Rosalia through the streets of
Monterey, California, during the annual Santa Rosalia Festival,
September 10, 1989. (IAW-KL-B118-28/28A) Photograph by Ken Light

The Nick family reunion, Price, Utah, 1982. From left, Kerry Nick
Fister, Paulmina Nick New, Sister Jean Juliano, Josephine Nick
Copfer, Angelina Nick Bonvicin, and Mary Nick Juliano. Photo
courtesy of Kerry Nick Fister

Folklorist Paula Manini (left) records an interview with Eve
Taravella, Louise Williams, and Dorothy Zanini at Taravella's
home in Pueblo, Colorado, as they look through their photograph
albums. (IAW-KL-B195-35) Photo by Ken Light

Italian-American Joseph Cervetto, Jr., plays Columbus at the
Columbus Landing Ceremony held at Aquatic Park in San Francisco,
September 30, 1989. For many years the part was taken by
Cervetto's father, Joseph, Sr. (IAW-KL-B175-14) Photo by Ken
Light

At the Columbus Landing Ceremony held at Aquatic Park in San
Francisco, September 30, 1989, "Columbus" is greeted by a
contingent of "American Indians." The part of Columbus is played
by Italian-American Joseph Cervetto, Jr., whose father played the
part for many years before him. (IAW-KL-B176-3) Photo by Ken
Light

Ralph Montera in his garden in Pueblo, Colorado, where the
vegetables he grows include squash, peppers, beans, garlic,
tomatoes, eggplant, and many others. (IAW-KL-B246-16) Photo by
Ken Light

Folklorist Russell Frank (right) goes "underground" to interview
coal mine manager Joe Carpine at the Twin Pines #2 mine, near
Rockvale, Colorado. (IAW-KL-B288-4) Photo by Ken Light

Women arrange dishes of food on a Saint Joseph's Day table at
Saint Therese's Parish church, Pueblo, Colorado. (IAW-MW-B006-7)
Photo by Myron Wood

San Pedro, California, fish company worker dumps mackerel into a
box on a dock. The fish have just been taken off a fishing vessel
operated by a local Italian-American crew. (IAW-KL-B033-28A)
Photo by Ken Light

Helen D'Ambrosio (left) and Kerry Nick Fister, known as "Tex and
Ted, the Singing Cowgirls," in 1931. "We were absolutely cowboy
crazy," Kerry Fister told fieldworkers. Photo courtesy of Kerry
Nick Fister

Colorado miner Archie Royal (Achille Reali) dressed as a cowboy
in a photograph he had taken to send to his future wife, Albina,
August 4, 1917. Photo courtesy of Albina and John Royal

Maria Daltoso listens to a recording of herself singing that
researcher Jens Lund has just made. (IAW-JL-BWW029-28A) Photo by
Jens Lund

A crate of Walla Walla, Washington's, famous sweet onions at
Virgil Criscola's farm. Since their development in the 1920s,
these onions have played an important role in the lives of Walla
Walla's Italian-Americans. They are now considered a symbol of
the Italian-American community. (IAW-JL-B-WWO28-17) Photo by Jens
Lund

Dedication of the Christopher Columbus statue at Walla Walla,
Washington, October 12, 1911. (copy photo IAW-JL-BWW010-19) Photo
courtesy Doug Breen Saturno

Folklorist Nancy Nusz uses a 35-mm camera to photograph
Apalachicola, Florida, oysterman Cletus Anderson culling his
catch. (FMP86-BDT025-6) Photo by David A. Taylor

The "parlor pianist" cover like this one appeared frequently in a
variety of colors for different songs issued by the Hebrew
Publishing Company. The song "Weiber, macht mir far president"
("Women, make me president"), published here with an added comic
duet, was an encore favorite of performer Bessie Thomashefsky.
Entry 581 (2) in Yiddish American Popular Songs.

Italian-Americans in the West fieldworker Paola Tavarelli (left)
discusses the grape harvest with Jean Conrotto Burr of the A.
Conrotto Winery, Gilroy, California, September 1989. (IAW-DT-
B021-13) Photo by David A. Taylor

Zora Neale Hurston, 1938. (LC-USZ62-79898) Photo by Carl Van
Vechten. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Pictured at a brief recess during the Sing Out retreat are (left
to right) Joseph C. Hickerson, head of acquisitions for the
Folklife Center and member of the Sing Out advisory board; Diane
Petro, the magazine's managing editor; Pete Seeger; and Mark
Moss, the magazine's editor and head of the corporation. Photo by
Reid Baker

Four generations of an Italian-American extended family in
Pueblo, Colorado, with several persons holding cherished
photographs of relatives. Old Ties, New Attachments, an
exhibition based on the Folklife Center's Italian-Americans in
the West Project, is described on page 3. (IAW-KL-B267-22) Photo
by Ken Light

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