Every Saturday, for example, in between the soccer and swimming seasons, my father would start off our weekly music lessons by waking me out of a deep sleep with the sounds of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, O Fortuna bla- sting from the stereo system downstairs, much to my poor mother’s chagrin. Dad, (Daddio as I call him) would teach me how to sing and repeat pitches based on a mixture of the an- cient Guidonian Hand and Solfaggio systems. Something he learned in his brief career as a Seminarian, before he met my mother. He also taught me styles of music from around the world. Some of my favorite lessons revolved around the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Chan- ticleer, Palestrina, Clannad, Enya, Afro-Celt Sound Sytem, Anuna, and so many others.
The first songs I learned to sing were Andrew Lloyd’s Weber’s Pie Jesu and the Welsh song Sun Gaon , which I first heard on The Empi- re Of The Sun soundtrack. I was only about three or four years old, but I could already feel the impact this mu- sic had on my emotions and my internal rhythm. I would dance around the house singing the- se songs at the top of my lungs, ta- king delight in my mother’s growing an- noyance as she attempted to cook our big Saturday Itali- an dinners with me dancing around her feet and getting the dogs to join in. Sometimes, de- feated, even Ma would sing along. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Of course, mu-
sic wasn’t everything in our house. My parents both being academics, stressed the importance of education in our daily lives. They were also fluent in two languages besides their native En- glish, and I have distinct memories of speaking a mixture of Spanish and Italian with my mother, while reading biographies about Hitler’s attemp- ted assassin Count Von Stauffenberg (which our father happened to name our dog after) in Russian, while asking him for more marshmal- lows in my hot chocolate in German. We paired this with several trips out West to North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. There, we learned the history of the American West and the Native Americans through mini lectures during long car rides with our parents, and re- gular visits to the Native American reservations.
Our experiences on the reservations remain to this day some of the most influential experiences of my life.
It took me many years to understand
the extent of the tribes’ suffering and the need for aid. But, it was there that I first heard the incredible music of Native America and the seeds were planted for my pursuit of learning to play Native Ameri- can flute and becoming a Na- tive American Rights Activist. I spent the rest of my “child- hood” touring the United States and Europe with the Elgin Children’s Cho- rus and my partner in crime, my twin sis Dani-now an ac- tress, at my side. Between our mi- schief at Catho- lic School, our endless Nerf and snowball wars with the
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