▷S3E4 The Revolutionary Donkey: Sicilian Folk Music History with Michela Musolino

You can wash a donkey’s head, but you’ll waste your water, your soap, and your time. If you have a woman, a drum, and a duck, you have a revolution. You’ve got more horns than a chariot full of snails. Do you want to know what these sayings mean? Do you think donkeys are cute? Do you like history, music or Sicily? This episode is for you!

The conversation between Modo di Bere host Rose Thomas and Sicilian American singer and folklorist Michela Musolino is centered around two southern Italian folk songs about donkeys: “U sceccu,” and “Lu sciccareddu,” also known as “Sciccareddu lu me cori.”

Learn more about the folk poet Salvatore Adelfio and the text he wrote about the donkey as a symbol of the contadino during the 1848 Bread Revolution in Sicily, and purchase the recording of Michela singing Salvatore’s text, which her friend Rocco Pollina set to music in 1979, at the link below.
https://michelamusolino.com/track/1413193/u-sceccu 

Become a Patreon supporter at any level to hear a bonus recording from Michela of the famous southern Italian tune about a man who loved his donkey just a little more than he loved his wife. patreon.com/mododibere

The Italian version of this episode is coming soon. 

If you’re in the market for a Christmas album, for yourself or as a gift, I must recommend Michela’s album La Notti Triunfanti: https://michelamusolino.com/store

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Check out Season 1 Episode 7 of this podcast to hear more about Michela’s musical work.
Wine Makes Blood: Sicilian-American Folksinger Michela Musolino

https://mododibere.podbean.com/e/michela/

Thank you Carmen for making the donkey sound, thanks to Rocco, Luigi and Raquel for their sayings videos, and a big thanks to Roberto di Filippo (from Season 1 Episode 5) for inspiring this episode with his love and respect for the donkey.

• Expand for auto-generated transcript. (Please excuse errors.)

  This episode features strong drinks as well as strong language. In this song, the donkey throws himself down on the ground and he refuses to work and he cries out and he says a very famous succinct saying which is Usazio un criri aludiyuno, which means the man who has enough to eat never understands the man who is starving. Mmm. Welcome to Modo di Bere, the podcast about local drinks and local sayings. I’m your host, Rose Thomas Bannister. Today is a very special episode that's all about donkeys, with returning guest Michela Mussolino. Michela is a Sicilian -American singer and folklorist. You can hear a lot more of her music and learn more about her work by tuning in to season one episode seven of this podcast. You can listen to both this episode and Michela's prior interview in Italian. Search for the podcast Mododibere Italiano. You can also watch this episode in both languages on the new YouTube channel for the podcast, youtube .com / @mododiberepodcast. Please go to MichelaMusolino.com and purchase some of her recordings, which make a fantastic gift. She has a lovely Christmas album. Today we have Michela Musolino, who is back. Welcome back, Michela. - It's nice to be here. - And this is a very special episode because it is all about donkeys. - Yay. - If you remember the episode "Horse Crazy" with Roberto de Filippo, who talked about bringing back traditional horse plowed farming to Umbria and also practicing this in Romania, I posted some videos of Roberto in my apartment talking about how much he loves horses and how much he really loves donkeys. And Michela wrote to me, we had just published a beautiful interview with Michela called Wine Mixed Blood, so you can look back and listen to this and hear Michela talking about her folk songs and this amazing folkloric multi -instrumental background. And Michela wrote to me and said, "Oh my goodness, I love Donkeys and Sicily loves Donkeys and we have to talk about Donkeys." That's exactly what happened. Thank you for supporting the show through Patreon. Really couldn't do it without you. It means the world to me. And thank you. What are we going to be talking about today? I saw the interview with Roberto about the donkeys. I was so excited because as you mentioned, we have such a strong connection, Sicilian culture with the donkey. And one of the songs that's in heavy rotation in my repertoire is called "Lucecu." And it's a song about a donkey, obviously. "Lucecu" is one of the dialect words in Sicily for donkey. And it's a pretty cool song. It actually comes from a poem from 1848, when There was a lot of poverty, a lot of problems in Sicily, a lot of social problems. And it was right before the revolution broke out in Sicily, what they call the bread uprisings of 1848. So this was a poem by somebody named Salvatore Adelfio. And he was trying to kind of describe what was happening at the time. And he used this poem, he's the metaphor of the donkey. So In this poem, the donkey is working, and he's working for the boss, for the patron, the patron. In Italian, we say patroni, we say patroni in Sicilian. The donkey just asks him, he says, please, I'm starving. Could you just be, for the love of God, could you just give me a little crust of bread to eat? And the boss says, why should I feed you? You're a donkey. And even if I feed you, you're still gonna be starving. So the song goes on and in this song, the donkey throws himself down on the ground and he refuses to work. And he cries out and he says a very famous this thing saying which is (speaks in foreign language) which means the man who has enough to eat never understands the man who is starving. And that's how that song ends. Poma is from an old tradition. The song was actually it was made into a song by friends of mine but somebody they did it way back in 1979 before I ever even knew who they were my my friend Rocco Paulina who's a Sicilian folk musician and it's a beautiful song because it tells us about history it tells us about human nature it tells us you know the struggle between the haves and the have -nots and it it shows how it's just you know in a moment you could ask somebody please you know just help me No, just, you know, have pity on me. Just, you know, help me, you know? And how we can be kind to each other, but sometimes, you know, the way history is, we don't. But what's really interesting about this song is that there's another song that is very traditional in Sicilian focus. This isn't so traditional. This is kind of one of those songs that you dig up and you introduce and people are like, "Wow, I didn't know this existed in the song." You know, I was thinking about the lyrics today too, the lyrics of Usheko. I tend to focus on the punchline of that song, if you will, or the the moral of that, where we say "Usatsu un criere a ludi uno," which is, you know, the one who has enough to eat, never understands the one who's starving. But I was looking at the lyrics a little earlier today, and there's one part that, when I sing it, I always, I always love to see this metaphor in my head. There's another part of the lyrics where they say "La shira in mano di lo (speaking in foreign language) which means the candle in the hand of the sacristan, it melts just like the snow on the field. And it's a metaphor to try to tell us about how fleeting time is. And when we sing that, the donkey's getting ready to ask, like, just cut me a break. You know, we don't have a lot of time. "Can you just do me this small kindness?" 'Cause he says, "For the love of God, "just give me like a little crust of bread to eat." And I thought about that before I'm like, "Wow, that's even more mind blowing "than the phrase at the end we expect, "the moral of the story." Just with the magic of these sayings and what this poor donkey is saying, right? He's showing us that time is fleeting. And in just an instant, you can be really good to somebody. And you can see somebody's life in an instant. So the donkeys are in these songs anyway, donkeys, this song, the donkeys pretty wise too. So we got to play this song. I'm going to play this song for everybody now in the Sicilian language performed by you by Mikayla Mussolino. C 'è tua vezzo ad aspettare panni Che non l 'ho pettito, lo fu dia Paggioni a nomo di lì cristiane C 'è disse qualche tozzo, nivoria Ascire al mano di l 'Isaquistane, sguacchia come la nive alla campia Tu fai le coste, l 'aeroposto è sane, penso un momento a ristorare la mia Rispose tipo un cori, lo patrioni, se fosse pacchia, tavi di acconcesso Mangiare Ma caro è un saputo, ma di un pane non ci trovo nessun Ti runghi un colzotilo, vasti i runi, ma l 'opeti tutto sempre lo stesso L 'usce colp' un portuno, si corpente radisce Non si runghi un colzotilo, vasti i runi, ma l 'opeti tutto sempre lo stesso [Musica] Oh, Michaela, I love that song, and it's such a great tune, and you sing it so beautifully. - Oh, thank you. - I can feel your love. I can feel your love for the donkey. I would love for you to actually, can you read us the lyrics in English to the song? - Real quick funny story about the song. The first time I ever heard the song, a friend of mine, Umberto Leon, played it for me, and I just, he was playing a whole bunch of traditional songs for me. So I just thought it was a traditional song. Well, it turns out, as I said, the lyrics are traditional, but the melody was written by our mutual friend, Rocco Polina. And it was like a surprise to me. I think Rocco's wife was like, when I was talking, I was thinking about recording. She was, oh, that's nice. I'm glad you're recording one of Rocco's songs. I'm like, what do you mean? It's a traditional song. She's like, no, she wrote the music for us. I was like, oh, OK. But when I did this album, we had them translated from Sicilian into Italian, into English. So everybody could, everybody, there's no excuse. Everybody could know what we were saying. The lyrics are, "One day a donkey was starving while he was carrying bread. So he said, 'Dear master, for God's sake, I'd like to have a piece of bread.' And then we say, 'Candles melt in a sacriestine's hands like snow on the fields. And you are a hailing, hearty man. Think of my relief for one moment.' The master sincerely answered. Even if it had been strife, I would have given you a sackful. But it makes no sense for me to give you any bread. Even if I give you a piece of bread, your hunger will still remain the same. But the donkey was defiant. It stretched out on the ground and said, "The man who has eaten enough will never believe the man who is starving." Tell me about these bread uprisings. That sounds like a pretty important historical event. Pretty much they were taxing everything and they even started to text the bread so people couldn't afford it anymore. Basically, people wanted to eat and this was 1848 when revolution started to break out all around Europe, but the real revolution actually started in Palermo. I believe there was a woman involved. I don't have the exact history of it, but there's always usually a woman. There's even a saying in Sicilian, "na fimina nalca e (speaks in foreign language) All you need is a woman and drum and a duck and before you know it, you have a revolution. (laughs) - That's a fantastic saying for Moto G Parade. I am gonna commit that to memory. Thank you. (laughs) Applicable to many situations. - It was a period of great unrest. Salvatore Adolf, he was a folk poet and he actually participated directly in his uprising. So this was kind of his way of creating some kind of anthem to let people know of the situation during that time. But as I said, it was 1840, it was a rough time. It was a time when there was a lot of political upheaval all throughout Europe. You know, it was a strange time in Southern Italy 'cause you were getting ready for the unification, right? The unification would happen about 12 years later. One of the reasons that the unification was able to come through or, you know, that God, he was able to come through and do what he did. And I might be, I might be pontificating at this moment, but I'm sure there's a lot of people who backed me up with facts here. Because you had so much unrest and there was a lot of coordinated unrest coming through in the years prior to the unification. So there was this almost this intentional instability was being sown. And that made things so much easier when the pimontes, they could come come in and destroy everything and take over. It was almost as if unrest was kind of a concerted effort to make unrest and to disturb, to make social upheaval. And of course, who suffers, but the poor, the Contadino, the farmer, they're the ones that are, the working man is the one that will suffer. - And is, how do you say donkey in Sicilian? - We would say, either you could say, (speaking in foreign language) and there, (speaking in foreign language) There's a legend, I don't know how true it is, but there is a legend supposedly that it comes from the word shik, like the Arab shik, because when the Arabs had occupied Sicily, they made it, you couldn't ride, I believe you couldn't ride a horse and you couldn't be armed. You couldn't be armed, you couldn't ride a horse or you couldn't do both at the same time or you couldn't do one or the other both. So, when They were finally, when they were routed, they went after all the horses. The Sicilians went after all the horses. And the Arabs brought in more horses on ships. And the ships got wrecked, and the only ship that made it through was the ship that held the donkeys. So they had to ride the donkeys. - But now I don't know if that's true or not. - Well, bad news is a story. - I really don't know if that's true. - It's like a legend floating around. - Yeah. - But there's also the Sheik, who is very similar to the Turkish word for Dunke, so there's that too. I love this story because they're also in Italian grape names. So many different possible etymologies, which is a really fun thing to untangle all the different versions, but either way, there's always so much rich history going back. I love the text that you sent me with the song that we played because you had the Sicilian and the Italian and the English words, and without taking us through the entire thing, I think this is a lovely example to dip back into that Sicilian language, and maybe could you pick a few lines and show us how the words sound so different from Italian to Sicilian. The part about the candle, right? La sciera. Yeah. What are you talking about that's holding the candle? Can you explain that to me? He's Even an image, like a picture, so he says, "The candle in the hand of the sacristan," you know, "the candle in the hand of the priest," it melts as quickly as the snow in the field. So think about it. How often does it snow, even in the mountains, and it says, "The snow doesn't last that longer." If it does snow, typically the snow would, unless you're up in the mountains, the snow wouldn't last very long. It'd be very fleeting. And it's saying, "Imagine a candle," and I said, "Think of a sacristan with big meaty hands. He's got these little tiny candles, so the candle's not only burning, but his hands are probably melting the wax as well at the same time. I'm wondering if you can take a stanza and read us the Italian and the Sicilian back -to -back, and then just talk to us a little bit about some of those sounds and word endings and show us the difference between the local language and the Italian. (speaking in foreign language) And it's the same to be (speaking in foreign language) So, in Italian, you know, they have this elegance where they can, you know, you can make the eleison between the object, the direct object, and the word. You can make it all one sound, "a ristorarmi," but "a ristorare a mia," and to say we're going to leave it apart. We're going to say, "You have to restore it to me," "la shira," instead of "la cerra," "la shira," we'll be the candle, "manu," again, we make an elazon in my hand instead of an inmano, inmano in one word. Here's one we talked about and we mentioned this, this kind of sound came up before we're talking about wife. Moghera, moghera, moghera in Sicilian. Moghie. So you hear the G more in Sicilian. In Italian when Italian, when you have the GL that diphthong, the more it becomes a double G with an H in it. Well, that's kind of hard for people. Maybe everyone should learn Sicilian instead. Yeah, right. And then, and we say squaglia in Italian. It's a scioglia, excuse me, scioglia in Italian. A squaglia to melt in dialects. So we had that. So Yeah, it becomes "guh, guh," a double G. I can't even make the sound anymore. - I've learned some sayings from people from local parts of Sicily. A lot of times when they write them down for me in my little notebook, I feel like I see some things that I see a little bit in Sardo. Also from Sardinia, I see lots of D's and U's. Could you talk to me about those endings? I feel like every word ends in a U. Is that, and is that a kind of a good hint that you might be looking? - Kind of, instead of an O, there's a U. Yeah, very, very rare you see a Sicilian word end in an O. It's usually a U or an I even. And like E's become I, you almost never see a word end in an E, it would end in an I instead. The double D in Sicilian, would it be, in Italian it would be double L. So bella, Ooh. Yeah. It sounds like a J almost, like a D, J or a D, G. Here's the thing. In certain parts of Sicily, it's a very hard D, bedra. In other parts, there's that G and that G gets bedra, and there's almost an R in it. Bedra. It depends where you are in Sicily. Campanella, double L, campanella, campanella in in Sicily and Bel, so it said double L becomes the D. When my daughter was little, I wanted her to speak Italian with ease. I had to go, I had to solve the code, break the code that my family was speaking in code and I had to study Italian and I was so determined I got a degree in Italian language. But I didn't want my daughter to have to go through that. I wanted her to be able to learn as a child and my former husband was from Italy, so I said, "This is what we're going to do. When we have kids, we're not going to speak them in English for the first couple years." Because everywhere we go, in English, you know, they'll be playing with the kids next door, they'll be speaking in English, but at home, we'll speak Italian, and they'll speak Italian to their grandparents. So my daughter's first words were in Italian, and she would say things, and I was not speaking to her in dialect. I was speaking to her in Italian. my former husband, her dad was speaking to her in Italian. But she would come up with words, she would respond with dialect. So I wondered if dialect became, we speak in dialect because maybe there's a dialect sound instead of a developed language, is it more of a natural sound? Like it was the double D's for her were really natural. And she would, words that should have been in Italian like L word, double L word, she would say in with double D's very easily. And I thought that was interesting. - Was she hanging out with your, with her grandparents and everything? - My grandparents taught her, but I don't think she got that much dialect. I think she got more Italian in dialect. It just seemed like it was more natural for her to respond in these, and even like the word for grandpa in dialect is tata, tata, some people say tata, non -nasami tata, tata, Tata, that came out before anything, that word. And I thought that was like, wait a minute, we never referred to my father or my father as Tata. It was always, no, no, no, no, no. But she came up with, I was like, how does she know this stuff? So I'm not sure if it's a linguistic thing and it's just easier or is there something going on around in the ether? And this kid was like, she had her little antennas out and she's picking this up from her ancestors. I don't know what it is. Well, there's a lot of Sicilian folk rhythms going around in your house. So maybe maybe maybe she was just talking to your drum when you weren't looking, you know. Yeah, but I wasn't even I don't even know if I was even making music that much. I don't even know. I don't know what it was. It was just fascinating when she was a baby. I was like, this is something that, you know, I'd love to talk to linguists about this is are there certain sounds that we make because they're more musical to us or are they It sounds, I don't know. - I love the thought of dialects versus the kind of wider used language as having a certain musicality. When people are talking about Italian, they say, oh, what a beautiful musical language about Italian. And then it's like, well, you haven't seen anything until you hear some of these dialects. Of course, all the dialects are so different. And sometimes they're not even mutually intelligible one village to the next, which is Just an incredible amount of diversity. So to come back to donkeys for a second I wanted to share with you and if I can find some recordings I will to back these these up, but I have learned some sayings in dialect and in Italian About the donkey not from Sicily, but from some different regions So one of my favorites that I learned from my friend Rocco from Lazio So to wash the head to the donkey, you lose water, soap and time. So to wash a donkey's head, you can wash a donkey's head, but You can waste your water, your soap, and your time. I love it. That's great. Of course, we also heard if you go to the Moto D Berry social media and you look for the videos of Roberto de Filippo, you know, he has his own thoughts about like, why are we seeming to the donkey? It's not that they're stubborn. It's actually that they're smart. Smart. And he is a very funny video about this. They say you are stupid like a donkey, but it is wrong, in reality the donkey is smarter than an horse. If you are a good horse trainer, you can ride a horse and you can push the horse. You are on the horse, you can push him to jump down from a cliff to die. Don't try to do that with a donkey, because he will never do that. So who is the smarter horse or donkey? I don't know why we are talking about the donkiness so bad way. I love them. They are really noisy but they are also smart and also cute. Thank you Roberto. My daughter when she was little she we actually got to visit friends of ours they live in live in North Carolina but they have farm in Virginia, um, and they raised miniatures to sleep in donkeys. So when she was little, they had a little tiny saddle. She could ride the donkeys. Oh, I need a picture somewhere. I do. Somewhere. I have this adorable picture of her like playing with the donkeys when she's little, little. We were in Sicily one summer and her dear friend, my, my friend's daughter, she was in a question and she said, come with me to the manager. Come on. Let's, let's go. So I told my daughter, she's gonna love this. Well, she was not really happy. And she didn't want to go back the next day. So I don't want to go back. I'm like, I don't understand. She rides donkeys with. So another friend of ours who's a farmer in Sicily, and he raises donkeys, and he raises the big donkeys. He said, of course, she doesn't want to be around horses. Donkeys have a sweet nature. She would rather be around that. And I, I didn't realize, you know, he said, think about it, horses have a very different, you know, we don't think tend to, we don't, you know, it's an animal. It's a work we don't really tend to think that they have a nature, they have a personality. He's like, yeah, there's a, there's a big difference in the personality. And she really doesn't, you know, she picks that up. She really doesn't want to be around something that's so high strong and can be kind of fierce, you know, but donkeys are much, much sweeter. So that kind of put things in perspective. I can still remember him like saying like, wow, you should know this. I mean, well, how would I know this? Like I don't raise them. They're also kind of fuzzy. I saw some donkeys when I was in Italy and they just a little fuzzy around the ears and I just we would see them driving by on the road and there was some at the agriturismo where where we were staying in Lombardia. They're a very, very sweet the donkeys. Yeah, they are. They look I like I think the fuzz makes them look cute, the little little fuzz around the ears. Yeah, they're awfully cute. But there's another song that's very, very well known in Sicilian folklore, and it's "Ucicoretto mio" or "Ucicoretto di Lume Cori," my little, my little donkey or little donkey of my heart. Oh. There's a version they sing in Calabria, and this is a really well -known song. And in this song, there is always somebody in the band or whoever's singing it or somebody there when and the band plays this song. Some guy always knows how to make the sound of a donkey. Because the way the verses are structured is that there's a pause and you hear the donkey bray. And that's where somebody would like pipe up. So what would happen in my shows, I would start talking about the donkey. I'm gonna sing a song, I'm gonna sing a song about a donkey. And there's usually like some, couple of old guys in the audience would get really excited 'cause they were waiting for somebody in the band to start braying like a donkey. And I said, it's not going to happen here. It's a different song. But actually, one time, I will tell you one time in a concert, I said, we don't even have anybody in the band that could, I said, none of my musicians know how to make that sound. And one of the guys in the audience says, I can, I said, can you really? So he got up on stage and he made the donkey noise. He braided like a donkey. So we gave him, we had these cute little instruments that a friend of mine made, the little Sicilian instruments. And we gave him a gift and a CD. We thanked him for coming up on stage. So that's always how those songs are tied in. But you need to know about the other song, the song where they bray like a donkey. In it, the the singer keeps talking about his beautiful little donkey, his beautiful little donkey. And I love my donkey, but they killed my donkey. And now he's distraught. And he says, you know, when my wife died, I cried, but I wasn't, I didn't really have sorrow in my heart. But when my donkey died, Oh my God. Yeah. Well, here's why. And here's why a donkey is so important, right? And even why did Salvatore Adelfio use a donkey as a metaphor for the peasant, for the contadino, for the working man? Why? Why? Because the donkey was crucial for survival in Sicily. If you had a donkey, you could live, you could farm, you could support your family, you could feed your family, and why would they use a donkey is a metaphor for the peasant. Well, the donkey could do backbreaking work. Dunkeys are very strong and they can do incredible work. They don't complain, they just keep working. They don't stop. Dunkeys can go for long periods without stopping to drink water. They can work in incredible heat. Dunkeys can go for long periods without food. So there's somebody that can pretty much subsist on almost nothing, just a little bit of grass and do this backbreaking work and just survive. So that was used as a metaphor for the peasant. And the Contadino, we say the farmer, the working man. And also the donkeys, why would the little guy in the song be inconsolable? Well, you can always find another wife, right? But if you're a donkey, if you don't have a donkey, you can't maintain a wife. You can't have kids. You can't have a family. So the donkey was always first. Crucial, it to this, to this existence once upon a time, when we were an agrarian society. Donkeys before Emolio. Yeah, right? Primo Luceco poi la moglie. That's why I just love these songs so much because, you know, they're fun, you know, they're fun songs or they make you think about history. But the reality is they show a way that we live that we tend to forget, you know, how we had, you know, important it was to have these these how crucial it was to have something like this to have these little these animal theorists. So I'm definitely gonna have to find a little donkey sound effect or possibly just interview someone in the audience to see if they can make the donkey sound. Oh we can find that. I can find that for you. Oh yes. Don't worry about that. Okay all right send me send me the donkey song. (singing in foreign language) (squeaking) - Actually what we did one time, we did do this song a couple of times and what we used to do is, we used to have our clarinet player just like make some sounds on the clarinet. It wasn't as good as a donkey break. - You just gotta go, "Babba." - Yeah, it wasn't as good, trust me, it wasn't as good. - Can you do it? - No, I'm not gonna do it. (laughing) - All right, all right, all right. - You did wear the donkey earrings, though. - I did, I have-- - Oh, let me see. - I have his pair of earrings, they come from, they're from Palermo, I have to remember the name of this drawer, it just went out of my head. - You can send it to me, we can put it in the show notes. - I will definitely, and they were handmade in Sicily, and I brought them back, I can't get my light off now, I brought them back from my daughter, they're actually my She's very kind to me and she looks, 'cause I let her wear my stuff and she lets me wear her stuff. So there's a little, I don't know if you could see it, there's a little, I got it, how close can I get? 'Cause I'm like, there's a little donkey on here. - Oh my goodness. - A little donkey. - Those are amazing. - And I love them. I love them and that's, this one has, I believe this one has a babalooch. Maybe that's another show we have to do. - What's a babalooch? - A snail, a loomaka, babalooch. - Babalooch. I learned a saying from Palermo, the phrase translated to you have more horns than a chariot full of snails. And I think it used that word, right? And he explained to me that like in many cultures, the horns are the symbol of a cuckold, like a guy who's somebody sleeping with his wife, but that in this part of Sicily, it meant kind of like a badass. I don't know, it just, it means the person's a badass. He kind of did like the horns, like the rock star horns. I just had this image though of, I think he meant like cart. He said chariot. So you have more horns than a chariot full of snails. And I'm just imagining a chariot full of snails. Like, somebody needs to put this on a t -shirt. I was gonna say, this would be a great picture. Like, you could sell like, really colorful, kind of like the Grateful Dead, you know? So I have a friend here who works with Roko actually, who taught me the donkey saying he's from Katania. And I told him about the saying and I said, "Oh, I learned a Sicilian saying, can you show it to me?" First of all, he had no idea, which I should have known 'cause they're totally far away from each other. He said, "That's not a positive thing." And then I met a guy from Puerto Rico, but he was talking about one part of Central America. It's the Cabrón. It's like an insult, and it means like a cuckold, like someone sleeping with your wife. You're a sucker or something. But then he was like, but in this other country, Cabrón means like a badass. And I was like, oh, I knew it. After the guy from Catania was like, that's totally wrong. I was doubting my comprehension of this conversation. but then I found out there's another example. - Cabrón is the word for bastard, but in Puerto Rico, you could be like, "¿Cú eres cabrón, you're a bastard?" Or, "Este está bien cabrón." This is the shit. "Este está bien cabrón." "Tú debes bien cabrona." You look amazing. So guys, if anyone knows a reverse cuckold badass comment from somewhere else in the world, please you can send me a message. We want to know about this category of sayings. I also have been collecting, it's a great icebreaker, I will sometimes ask what do you say when you have a hangover, when you've had too much to drink the night before. Now this is interesting to me because I've noticed in Italian that sometimes Italian dialects, that sometimes the word for hangover is the same word for drunk. I've had a lot of fun with this because a lot of times the phrases involve animals. We could do a whole episode about hangover sayings, not just from Italy, but my favorite, the king of all of these, and I'm gonna play a recording here because I know I have it. I met some wonderful, jolly, angelic, in a sense, but very down -to -earth farmers from Piedmontet, who are going and saving from obscurity and possible extinction, the Nashutuk Grape. It's a white grape, and it makes this fascinating, textured, delicious, savory wine. And I had an absolute blast with them at Veenitli last year, and again, this year, I saw them. Instead of the donkey carrying you, when you've had too much to drink the night before, you are carrying the donkey. That's what it means. I'm such a bad state. It's like I've got a donkey that I'm carrying around. So it's a little reversal and I thought that was really funny. Do you have anything else to share with us about donkeys in Sicily or elsewhere in your life? Well, this is, I don't know how important this is to show, but it's something sweet that happened in my life. We had, You used to have a garden center where I used to live in Northern New Jersey and they had a farm, you know, they had farm animals and they encouraged all the kids to go play with the farm animals and that was open to the public. So anytime we had to get, you know, buy your plants, buy your mulch, buy whatever you need, your garden tools and then put it in the car and then you walk around to the back and the kids could play with the animals. So my daughter loved it because they had miniature Sicilian donkeys. Oh, my God. And you could feed them. It was so much fun. It was beautiful. Well, years go by and one of my musicians calls me says, Listen, I got this gig. If you want to do it, it's for this couple. They're they're making the 50th wedding. There's Sicilian. They used to have a folk group. And they want to have do want to have music. I'm good friends with their son -in -law. And I said, Yeah, sure, why not? It was one of the most fun Gigs I ever had and I you know one of the things I said, please tell me if there's any song that they really want And we'll make sure we do them because we want to cover whatever we want them to be This is their day when well as it turns out the son -in -law was the owner of the garden center And I was like wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute like what like how lie You know you're like I had no idea that these people were all related and he's like yeah Those are our dunkeys. I'm like, oh my gosh That's my daughter, you know when The entire, for our entire childhood, we were there like every week with these donkeys. And it turns out years later, I was singing for their family. We had no idea that we had this connection between the, you know, between the donkeys. So that was, so there's donkeys everywhere. - Did you sing the donkey song? - I sang Ushako. I didn't sing, I didn't sing the one about being that it was an anniversary. I didn't think they wanted to hear the one about, you know, if my wife died, I really didn't cry that much. And I didn't cry with - - That's true, that was very, that was sparing a good curatorial decision on your part. Yes, no, good, good call, good call. - We did do Ushaku, 'cause it's a fun song. It's a, and people love, it's really a song that people love, 'cause, and I am, and like I said, I just think it's such a beautiful song because it's using, uses the Dunkees at metaphor, you know, Dunkees teaching us a lesson. - So the, I think that's an, that is a really important message that's really hitting home for me this week. Thank you so much for sharing it. Yeah, you can make such a big difference just by, just by not being a jerk. Yeah, and it doesn't makes a huge difference. Yeah, and an instant in the blink of an eye, you could change somebody's life. You can be good. And, you know, you think about it, right? We this song came out at the beginning of a revolution, but had the people been allowed to have bread, I mean, something so basic, you know, can we just afford to have bread? Can you stop taxing us because we can't eat right now? You know, stop taxing the very food we eat, you know, how the whole face of history might have been changed, you know, that everything's like, you know, history's all like on a full -crum, right? And that's, I guess, what the Dunkie's telling us. At an instant, you could change things for the better. - That's true. Just takes a piece of bread. Just a little piece of bread, guys. Not much, just, you know, throw me a crust here. Exactly what he said, just, you know, you're well fed, just give me, let's just give me something. You were saying that a friend of yours wrote the music, so back in the day, was this only a poem? Yes. Wasn't said to music, and then your friend said it to music? Yeah, historically it came from a poem, so the poem was written during that time of the Revolution in 1848. There was actually, Delphiou had a, there was a series of poems that he had written, not necessarily all about the revolution, but in that period he had there was a book to hit written of poems. My friend for many years he had a folk group in Milan, all these Sicilian guys moved from Salinunta down in Neutrapane and they moved up to Milan. Around 1979 he made lyrics, excuse me, he made a melody for he composed the melody. And what's funny about this song, even before I started to record, even before I recorded it, because it's gone around, this song has gone around Sicily and a lot of people think it's a traditional song. And it's like, no, it comes from a traditional poem, but it's really, you know, it was composed. It was a modern composition, a modern melody, but it's such a powerful song that people hear it and they think, well, it must be traditional. It's pretty iconic, I have to say. Your friend did an amazing job. He did. That's my friend, Rocco Polina. So what's going on these days with your music? I'm getting ready to get on the road, which as you know, if we're not on the road, we feel like we're shriveling and we're, we're stagnating. I do like to be on tour, it's true. But here's something that's really cool. And I think this will go wonderfully with your podcast with Modo de Berra. When I got down in Memphis, I said, you know, people need, you know, I need to become part of this community. I want people to know who I am. I don't want to just like be on the fringes. So I started contacting all these organizations and Tennessee has an arts commission or something like that, or our Tennessee Arts Council, so I contact them and they have a Folklife division. And I've been in correspondence with them and they said, well, you know, we're gonna have a project coming up. We're gonna, and I didn't understand what this was. I thought I was just going only for seminars. I was just gonna listen to people and meet people. So I was like, oh, this'll be great. I signed up for whatever this was. I made a proposal, whatever. Well, apparently I'm in part of this incubator for projects now for the Tennessee Folklife Institute. And I came in with the idea that, well, Sicilians and Italians have made music historically since antiquity, and it's documented on the Italian Peninsula that we've been making music since pre -Christian times. When they came to the US, what did they do? Well, a lot of people in my audience say, "Okay, this is fantastic. We love this history, but what happened when the Italians got here? What did they do? What happened when the Sicilians got here?" I wanted to see what happened with the Italian immigrants here in Memphis and making music. So now this is a project I'm doing and I'm collecting interviews from Sicilian Americans and Italian Americans here in Memphis and how music influenced it and how, whether they made music as a hobby in their family, as a tradition or whether they were part of the music industry here in Memphis. For example, the first record store in Memphis was started by two Italian American guys. Dallas bought his first record from that store. That's wild. So I have no idea where this is going to go. I don't know what's going to happen. This whole thing I started because I just wanted to find music and I was saying I could find some music that Italian Americans are making in the Memphis you know and how the Memphis sounded. So because I love to collect songs I'm like how can I put it in my show how can I give this to the audience. So now I don't know what I'm doing I don't know where this is going to wind up but I'm like documenting interviews now and collecting interviews from people I'm putting this out there if anybody's listening and you have a connection to Memphis And a connection to music or somebody in your family had a connection to Memphis and music. Let me know come talk to me I want to interview you want to document it if you have you know stories You want to tell I'm here to listen so this is something I'm working on and I'm trying to figure out how to make can I make a Show out of this what can I do because I'm also working on some new music for a lot of my tours this year And we're taking Sicilian traditions and we're putting them a continuation of that album that I put out at Christmas where we're mashing them up with American traditions from the South. It's like South crashes into South. And it's a lot of fun. We're gonna see how that unfolds and what happens. And I'm thinking in my head, I don't know how to do this now. And again, whoever's listening, you know, I'm thinking I need to make, I know everybody's doing podcasts now, but I think I need to do some kind of concert or show on like televised or filmed. I think I need to do something. I don't know how to put that together. Well, you know, MotoDBerry has a YouTube channel and we are doing MotoDBerry TV and we are filming stuff, so let's talk. That sounds like an amazing project and I've never been to Memphis. How can people get in touch with you if they want to write to you about Memphis and Sicily and music in Memphis or if they want to buy your records and find out when you're playing next, where can they go? - Easiest way to find me is to go to my website, michellamusolino .com. There's a contact page. I have a page for concerts, like on my upcoming shows. I have a store where you can buy my albums. You can buy them in physical or download and like tell everybody, you know, digital is fantastic. But if you own the actual physical CD, no corporation will ever erase it from your playlist. I would have had vinyl, but I couldn't get my hands on vinyl. I look at all your beautiful vinyl behind you at your studio, and I couldn't get my hands on vinyl for almost a year, so I couldn't press the album in vinyl. Maybe next show, I'll press it in vinyl, we'll see. - That would be great just in time for the holidays. - Miquelamusolino .com, or come to a show and meet me at a show, which I'm looking forward to. I can't wait. I just can't wait to see people in the audience again. I can't wait to connect with the audience. It's, that's, you know, as you know, it's so much fun to have a live audience. You know, It's wonderful we do things online. I even learned the magic of having, when you have to videotape something or when you're doing a live broadcast online, the magic of actually having a live audience, it changes the whole world. - We should do a show together, either in Memphis, New York or somewhere. Okay, let's do it. Yeah, let's set this up. I really appreciate you for sharing this with me. I wanted to tell you one more donkey saying that I learned On my most recent trip to Italy, I was in Polagia, which is a little village that got swallowed up by the slightly bigger village of Berbano. We spent three afternoons at the local bar. Everyone was telling us we had to meet this legend, Mario. He, among many other songs and sayings, he taught me the saying. Basically the tale is this woman was trying to tell has been that he was drinking a little too much. And he responded to her in dialect, silly woman. I'm not like the donkey who drinks only when he's thirsty. Which I just thought was so funny. I'm a civilized creature. It's here at Moto D Barry. We started the show with all the sayings about how water was not good to drink and that you should only drink wine. So we know what he's talking about drinking. Maybe in Pallaja, the donkeys even drink wine. Well, who knows? It was so fun to talk to you about this. Thank you so much for sharing this really sweet interview with us. I totally want to go pet a donkey now. I know. Send me your donkey stories. Thank you so much for checking in and listening to this episode. Send me a message. Tell me something about a donkey from your life. I want to hear everything. Thanks again, Michaela. Thanks for having me. And wherever you go and whatever you like to drink, always remember to enjoy your life and to never stop learning. Support us on Patreon. Grab the newsletter at MotorDBerry .com and subscribe to the YouTube channel at MotorDBerry to watch the travel show MotorDBerry TV. "Music for the Show" was composed by Arcilia Prosperi for the band O. Purchase their music at the link in the notes.  

Theme music composed by Ersilia Prosperi for the band Ou: www.oumusic.bandcamp.com

Produced, recorded and filmed by Rose Thomas Bannister

Audio and video edited by Giulia Àlvarez-Katz

Audio assistance by Steve Silverstein