Connecting to my Ancestors and Healing Through Music
Me tuning my mandolin in front of Case Vecchie at the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School in Sicily (film photo taken by Lily Green)
I grew up taking violin lessons from the age of 7 until around 14. While I did love my violin teacher (she was an eclectic Julliard graduate, a crunchy Earth-mama hippie with a side of Manhattan-chic), I never particularly loved playing the violin. The music I was taught was classical and Baroque, it never excited me, and I never felt a true connection to it. I could never make the violin sound the way I wanted to. I could never master vibrato, no matter how much I practiced, so the music I played, though challenging and technical, always lacked the beautiful depth that I envied in other violinists. My parents encouraged me to stick with the violin as long as I could, but once my teenage years were in full swing, the violin sat in its case and there it sat until age 31.
I was inspired to open the case all those years later when my dear friend and neighbor Jess was teaching herself to play the harp. Just for fun. Somehow between making food for our hungry kids, cleaning up messes made by said kids, and attempting to homeschool during the pandemic, we tinkered around together on our instruments in her living room purely for the joy of it. I started playing some Irish fiddle tunes, a completely different genre of music to me that was playful and easy. Though to be honest, my violin playing was rusty and I still wasn’t in love with the sounds it made. I still felt a disconnect to the instrument and the music I was playing.
Then shortly after that, during this period of much musical inspiration, exploration, and random instrument acquisitions on her part, Jess introduced me to an old bowlback mandolin that she had found at an estate sale. I had never seen an instrument like it in my life but I thought it was the most beautiful instrument I had ever seen. It looked like something out of a Renaissance painting and I was immediately attracted to its sensual and voluptuous curves and its resonant and complex sound. When she told me that the strings were the same notes as the strings on the violin, meaning I could literally pick up the instrument and begin to play it immediately with all of my violin knowledge, I was completely hooked. As soon as I began playing it, something awakened in me. I felt such a deep ancestral connection to the sound it made that it was actually quite profound. I soon learned that the bowlback mandolin has a deep and ancient history with its roots in Italy, the home of my ancestors as far back as I can trace. The instrument very likely could have been played by members of my family way back in the day in Naples and Calabria. At the very least, its music was the soundtrack to their lives.
The old estate sale mandolin I borrowed from Jess
Jess saw how much I loved playing the mandolin and told me I could borrow it and take it home to play as much as I wanted. I purchased a music book of southern Italian folk songs written especially for the mandolin and began learning them. It was so satisfying to learn to play a new instrument without much difficulty because of my prior violin knowledge. It came so naturally to me. I began playing old Italian songs, songs about love and heartbreak, old fishing ballads, dizzying tarantellas, and songs that were sung to pass the time while harvesting olives and almonds. I even learned some old Dean Martin tunes by ear, tunes I remember growing up hearing my mom play sometimes at home. These songs I was playing soon became little windows into my heritage for me. And much to my surprise, I was quickly able to learn the tremolo technique, which is the quintessential “trembling” sound produced by the mandolin when the strings are repeatedly plucked in a rapid up and down motion. Basically what I had tried (but failed) to achieve with vibrato on the violin, I was effortlessly able to achieve with tremolo on the mandolin. Never before in my life had music been so enjoyable to play!
Learning the mandolin during the pandemic years quickly became a healing form of therapy for me. Not only was I grieving what we were losing as a society and what my life looked like before our lives completely turned upside-down with Covid, but I was also deeply grieving the tragic death of my mom from pancreatic cancer in October of 2020. The mandolin and the joy of bringing to life these old Italian songs made me feel a little bit closer to her and her Italian family. And, using the skills I had learned in all those years of private violin lessons that my mom had paid for and driven me to week after week throughout my childhood, I felt like I was thanking her in a way.
The mandolin I was borrowing from Jess was very old and fragile and I knew I wanted to buy one of my own because I was clearly committed to the instrument. The problem was, bowlback mandolins are incredibly rare and ones that are in good working order are practically impossible to purchase in the United States. They don’t exist in music stores and the few that do exist on eBay or used instrument websites are either in very poor shape or are very expensive. And it is risky to buy an instrument online without playing it in person. I also wanted to buy an Italian mandolin, and those are even harder to find. I realized, after searching the internet for months without any luck, that the only way I could buy the mandolin I wanted was to buy it in Italy. I didn't know when that would happen, as a trip to Italy seemed impossible at that time due to Covid travel restrictions. So I continued to play the old mandolin, hoping one day my dream Italian mandolin would show up in some way.
Fast forward to late 2023, I decided to finally embark upon the journey to culinary school in Sicily (which is a whole other story in itself). One of my priorities when planning my solo trip to Italy was to find a music shop or luthier there where I could buy a mandolin. Through lots of digging and researching, I came across Musikalia, a music store run by a mandolin luthier in Catania, a city at the base of Mount Etna. It was a mere 2 hours from where I’d be based during my six weeks in Sicily. The workshop and music store was no longer open to the public, and it was now only open by private appointment. I contacted Alda, the owner of the shop, and we were in contact regularly up until I was set to arrive in Catania.
When I finally arrived in Catania in March of 2024, I took an Uber (the first time I had ever taken an Uber by myself) to Musikalia, Alda’s mandolin studio. I was nervous and excited. Would the language barrier be difficult? Would I actually find a mandolin that I loved in my price range? The Uber drove along winding narrow highways that hugged the coastline, with il bellissimo vulcano towering above us. Once I arrived at the studio, Alda and her husband welcomed me. They were surprised to see that I had travelled there all by myself. They showed me all of the mandolins in my price range and I began to play each one. At first, I was tremendously flustered because despite tuning the instruments, I couldn't get them to sound quite like I wanted. These instruments, while beautiful, felt foreign to my fingers. I was doubting my playing abilities. After all, I was still such a novice, and I felt a bit ashamed to be attempting to play these instruments in front of these two experienced luthiers. I came all this way to get my dream mandolin and was ready to spend a decent sum of money on one, but was I actually going to find one that I could play well? I finally picked up the last mandolin Alda pulled for me and began to play one of my Italian folk songs. The sound that came out of it was finally something that felt right. Alda and her husband smiled and nodded and said that that was the one for me. They said it suited my tiny hands and delicate plucking perfectly. With much relief, I decided to purchase it, along with a beautiful case lined with soft red velour.
Alda kindly said she’d take me to the bank nearby so I could pay for the mandolin in cash. I squeezed into her old little navy blue Fiat and she drove me to the bank where I took many euros out of the ATM. She then drove me back to the studio to show me the workshop where she and her husband make the mandolins. The workshop and all of the equipment has been around since her father became a luthier, in the early 1900s. I was completely amazed at the entire space. It felt like I had stepped back in time, seeing all of the old tools, some over a hundred years old, that are used to build mandolins. She explained what each machine and tool was used for in the process of creating the instruments, from how the strips of wood are bent into the bowl shape, to how the natural tree resin is melted and used as a glue to put the instrument together, to how the instruments are varnished to become shiny. The workshop was enormous, a never ending treasure trove of piles and shelves of beautiful wooden skeletons of instruments in varying stages of completion. I felt so grateful to be there, I felt such a deep resonance with the whole place, with Alda, and with my new beautiful Italian mandolin that I now held in my hands.
Resin that is warmed and used to glue the strips on wood into the bowl shape of the mandolin.
Shelves and shelves of instrument parts and forms
Alda insisted on giving me a ride back to my hotel in the city center of Catania. She was appalled at how much the Uber charged me and was gracious and happy to take me there herself free of charge. On our drive, in the old tiny blue Fiat, she told me about the mandolin business and how she took it over from her father after he died. She spoke of the dying art of making mandolins and how only a few luthiers in Italy are still making them. She told me what it was like growing up in Catania in the shadows of the volcano, and what life is like there now (she has lived in the same house for her entire life). I hung onto every word she spoke to me as we weaved through traffic, the sparkling blue Mediterranean off in the distance, the volcano behind us, and the many citrus trees dispersed among the backyards of houses in the Catanian suburbs surrounding us.
Unfinished instruments awaiting their parts.
She dropped me off in front of one of the many churches of Sant’Agata in the center of Catania near my hotel. Agatha, the patron saint of Catania, is most revered in this part of Sicily. And as I stood there, in the warm Catanian sunshine, waving to Alda as I held my mandolin in my other hand, I looked up at the statue of Saint Agatha and said a little prayer of gratitude.
Alda driving off in her blue Fiat after dropping me off in front of the church in Catania. I wish I got a picture of her, but I’m glad I at least snapped a photo of her driving away.
In the weeks following, I played my new mandolin when I could while in Sicily and it was such a delight to me. After all, at that point of my trip, I was feeling a bit homesick, and having this new instrument to play with brought me such a deep comfort. When my time in Sicily was over and I returned to Rome for some days before flying home, three different older Italian men on three separate occasions pointed to my mandolin case and with twinkling eyes and lit-up faces asked, “Il mandolino?!” and I would nod and smile and say “Si!” I wished I knew more Italian so I could have spoken to them more about the mandolin, as they each clearly knew what instrument I was holding.
I’m home now, back to real life, full of responsibilities. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about my time in Italy or when I will return. I miss the sunshine of the Mediterranean, the food, the people, the way of life. I dream often of how I can spend longer periods of time there. I am not the same woman I was before going to Italy. I play my mandolin often. And when I do, it brings me back to my time in that beautiful place and, in some magical and unexplainable way, it brings me closer to my people.
