Ever since my twin sons went away to college in 2011 to study advanced French (Amman) and Italian (Jordan), I’ve had three classes of instruction in each of the languages at area colleges to help me understand the bilingual text messages my guys would often send.
On Friday, Jan. 11 it all paid off when I used my limited new Italian vocabulary to get Giordano (Jordan) and I invited to report on Italian R&B singer Linda Valori’s record release party at Rosa’s Lounge, a blues club in Logan Square, owned by Tony Manguillo, Milan-born, who was thrilled to hear Jordan spends his junior year abroad at University of Milan. Jordan asked to take photos. I volunteered to write color commentary.
Manguillo, who emigrated from Italy to the U.S. in 1978 after meeting Junior Wells and Buddy Guy in Milan, later opened this blues club in the true spirit of similar lounges on the South Side where Chicago blues was born. Since then, the New York Times named it “Chicago’s best blues club” and Rolling Stone has called it “a blues mecca for true believers.”
A huge red onstage sign with the word “Rosa’s” greets visitors to this club on Armitage, just west of Homan. A warm-up band, the West Side Soul Orchestra, played a series of blues and R&B songs that showcased each of the musicians, especially roundhouse reedman, “Sax Gordon,” a sinewy player who tried to sing in a deep soulful voice that clearly is not his.
Headliner Linda Valori, on the other hand, both looks and sounds a little like the late great soul songstress Etta James, whom this reporter interviewed three decades ago for a Los Angeles publication. Valori’s poetic phrasing of blues-tinged songs evoked longing and loss. It also showcased her sense of humor. She was here to launch the release of “Days Like This” with Sax Gordon. Backed up by a brilliant young blues guitarist named Lucca Giordano from Abruzzi, both of them defied any stereotype one might have about Italians who play the blues. Then again, as Manguillo might add, my son and I defy any stereotypes one might have of blacks who speak Italian and are fluent in aspects of its rich culture.
Linguistically Jordan is fluent, I know a little, and Jordan’s grandfather, former Cook County Presiding Judge Earl Strayhorn, was a lieutenant in the famous 92nd Infantry depicted in Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, a film about the “Buffalo Soldiers” who liberated a village in Tuscany from Nazi invaders. Jordan mentioned this in August to an Italian language group, “Ciceroni,” which meets at Oak Park’s Mancini’s Restaurant the first Wednesday night of every month.
All of this was not lost on Valori’s co-sponsor, Italidea, the Chicago-based Italian cultural center connected with the Italian Consulate. One of its officers, who met Jordan this summer at Festa Italiana, spoke with him in Italian about Jordan’s junior year abroad at the University of Milan, and how he’s also going to visit parts of North Africa to research the post-colonial experience.
“Benissimo,” he proclaimed in praise.
Ditto for Linda Valori’s stunning performance.