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The Story of Brognaturo’s Band Translated by: Carmela Tucci
It was the year………………….
The Story About the
Prized
Band Concert of the City of Brognaturo
At
the beginning of the seventies, something extraordinary occurred in
Brognaturo, a fantastic adventure began in this little town. The Band
was born, a musical Band, and what a Band it was!! I write this story and everything related to the Band because of love. Love towards “My Band” and everything that it represented.
With the birth of the Band, there followed a period of
immense aggregation and motivation and great cultural development. The
Band allowed us to learn enormously and taught everyone involved many
life lessons. We learned about music, to co-exist in a group and work
together as a team, we learned about many new and different villages,
towns, and cities. We lived an unforgettable experience. This reconstruction and the appropriate research have been possible together with the collaboration of Cosmo Carello, Benito Salerno, and Monica Fraietta. A special thanks in particular to Cosmo Carello. Thanks to Cosmo you are able to read about Brognaturo’s Band and this account on the website Brognaturoonline.com. In addition all the members of the band collaborate and assisted with this narrative, graciously providing photos, mementos, historic reconstruction and live testimonials.
Photo
of Tonino Fraietta during
The Band writes and presents its story. Before starting with the story of the Band, it’s my duty to remember and remind everyone who was the principal creator of all of this and to remember some of the protagonists of that extraordinary summer who today are no longer with us: The Maestro Giuseppe Natale The great and unforgettable Maestro deceased at the age of 70 in 1989 Ruggero Scopacasa Trumpet in E Flat Deceased at the age of 15 in 1973 Cosmo Garcea Base in E Flat Deceased very young in 1989 Ernesto Zangari Sax Tenore Deceased very young in 1982 Silvio Filardo Cornet in E Flat Deceased as a very young adolescent Damiano Valente The first tresurer and collaborator of the band Dececead in 2002
Rosso Antonio
The tailor that sewed many of the band uniforms Deceased in
1982
It
was the year………………….
The Story about the Prized Band Concert of
the City Brognaturo Piccolomib (A.K.A. Tonino
Fraietta) Narrates Translated
by: Carmela Tucci .... Brognaturo, Spadola and Simbario are small villages
situated on the Plateau of the Serre Calabre (a geographic area in
Calabria that encompases many villages, towns and cities), very small
towns. The state highway 110 (which is a single road)
crosses all three
towns, and this is the only and most important method of communication. The
cross road known as the “Bivio Angitola” is the path that leads
tourtuouisly and crookedly
from the slope of the Tyrrhenian Sea toward the mountains, rising, and crossing small
villages, it arrives at Serra San Bruno (a larger town in the area) and
it continues to rise until Mount Pecoraro, then it descends and arrives
at Monasterace (another town) on the Ionian Coast.
These
towns have always been out of reach and prevented of great opportunities
for development. These are
the towns that have suffered, endured, embraced and accepted the great
flux of immigration out of the area after World War Two, in addition to
periods of immigration waves that occurred during the sixties and
seventies. They have been greatly scarred by this phenomenon that has
not yet ended. Even today,
there are many people who move away in search of work. They
are small towns with a history of difficult and hard lives, economies
that have never been prosperous, forgotten territories, always out of
the loop of great events and of history. Nevertheless,
sometimes even in small villages, without important history and events,
small miracles can materialize and occur. It
can happen precisely there, where times seems to stand still, where
there is nothing to do, where it seems that destiny has already
condemned everyone and everything, where everyone has been left out of
important things and historical events, condemned a slow and relentless
decline of an entire territory etc….something can happen that allows
all things to make sense. It’s
not true that small villages never have anything to say, that they
don’t have a voice and that they don’t count, and that in small
villages new opportunities can never be born.
The
story that I am about to tell demonstrates exactly this, that important
and extraordinary things can happen even in a small village.
It’s
not just the great individuals that make history, but there are also the
small, unimportant and trivial events and stories that are happen in
small villages, by unimportant and common individuals, in this case by
young men and women…. and their maestro. Numerous
years have passed between the years 1970 and 1971, in the smallest of
the three towns mentioned above a fantastic and extraordinary adventure,
brought fame and notoriety to the small village of Brognaturo. At
a certain point in it’s history Brognaturo is known for more than the
popular dialect saying “Spatula, Brignaturi e Zimbariu, catta nu
pajjarejju e li npittau” (meaning that a shed or shack fell upon
Spadola, Brognaturo, and Simbario and squashed them, because these towns
are so small) a saying known by everyone that underlines in a funny way
that the distance between the three towns is very close.
The
name Brognaturo became famous, in fact very famous in the whole region. What
happened in the small town of Brognaturo at the beginning of the
seventies that was so extraordinary? Let’s
say that what is about to begin and unfold will mark an important part
of Brognaturo’s history. For
many years there was talk about Brognaturo and its “Band”. The
“Brognaturo Band and its young men and women disband many years ago,
yet still they cause and arouse marvel and admiration, they are a
memory, a bit weakened but still today, many remember the extraordinary
adventure of which they were protagonist,
in the years that go from 1970-71 to beyond 1983. Modestly
and proud I am happy to have been one of those kids. I enrolled in a music course when I was nine years old and I
had just turned ten when I played for the first time. Initially I played the Piccolo in Ab and about a year later,
the Piccolo in Eb. I
was also a band member of the “Prized Band Concert City of Brognaturo”.
Let’s
start this voyage down memory lane into the past, let’s take this
fantastic journey together with them, those young men and women, and
children in the band and their great Maestro. We
will retrace their steps, their rising stops that will enable them to be
protagonist of that extraordinary and exciting adventure.
We will see them one by one and we will relive once again in this
story the great magic and emotion that they were capable to create.
They
will tell the story for us….. but most importantly for those that are
very young today and do not know about them, nor know that in a small
apparently anonymous town…..a legend was born, they don’t know that
fifty young men and women between the ages of eight and eighteen, on a
stage, directed by their Maestro, played Bellini’s Norma, Puccini’s
Madame Butterfly, Verdi’s Nabucco etc.
At
the same time as reading this story you will hear the distant echo of a
band. Also, while reading
this story you will hear once again the notes of “Spagnolita” or
Cuore Abbruzzese …..If we close our eyes for just one second, we will
see a group of young men and women who make up the band, dressed in
white uniforms, that appears all of a sudden and unexpected, playing one
of the many symphonic marches that they performed with great capability,
well, certainly it is them, the young men and women of the Brognaturo
Band. To
see a band made up of kids, and young men and women, grouped together in
a Piazza, proud of their uniforms, while they performed a march, is
truly an extraordinary concert. I
assure you that it was truly extraordinary and amazing.
I
remember my first outing with the Band, at the time already well known
and famous, I was a kid and it was 1974.
I was fascinated only with the thought of being one of them, but
to find myself amongst them and ………..to play with them.
I looked around myself, and I saw a sea of young men and women,
some only a little older than me, all in their uniforms, with their
instruments ready to be played, I looked at them one at a time, they
were beautiful in their uniforms. This
is what I mean about an extraordinary performance, and I was one of
them, today I still remember how I felt on that day….I was ten years
old, I was knee high to a grasshopper……..and I had begun to play
with the Band of Brognaturo. ….to
be continued
E-mail: info@brognaturoonline.com
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