A Quote by Chris Rea
The Italian side of my family were gypsies, and we are little hard so-and-sos.
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My family is from the south of Italy in this little place called Calabria. It's a big part of my family, the Italian culture. I grew up around it. My parents speak Italian, and I speak Italian.
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.
My mother's side is Italian; my father's side is Jewish. We're the kind of family where every Sunday night we have dinner with all 19 of my cousins.
All my family back to the 1700s were water Gypsies. My brothers and me, we were the first ones to be born on dry land. All the rest of them were born on barges in the canals.
I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?
I speak Italian and a little bit of French. I moved to Trento, Italy, when I was around 10 to learn Italian. I have family there. I'm trying to restart my French. And then I want to get into Mandarin.
I'm really in touch with my Italian roots. My mom's whole side of the family is there.
In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three rural families whose workshops were side by side in the Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all Italy." Not to be outdone, their next-door neighbors, the family Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The Best Violins In All The World!" At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice which read: "The best violins on the block."
On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it.
Flamenco is Arabic music and rhythms filtered through centuries of gypsies making music. The gypsies themselves came originally from India. And then there is the Caribbean influences... This whole idea that there is any such thing in music that "purity" is bunk, it just doesn't exist. I love that I am playing these rhythms to people. And the next time they hear something that's maybe a little more exotic, I have created a little bridge, and they are going, "Oh, this actually sounds really cool. It reminds me a little bit of that, but it's something different."
I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks.
We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.
I was born into a Turkish family that had acquired Italian citizenship. Many members of the family subsequently became British, French, Brazilian, and German, so there was a bit of everything. It was not uncommon for people in the family to speak seven languages: English, French, Ladino, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, and even Greek.
I eat a little bit of everything and not a lot of anything. Everything in moderation. I know that's really hard for people to understand, but I grew up in an Italian family where we didn't overdo anything. We ate pasta, yes, but not a lot of it.
Most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.
In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.
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