Before mass Italian immigration transformed American cities, New Yorkers already knew one sound from the Italian South: the harp carried through the streets by musicians from Viggiano and nearby Lucanian towns. They were among the first Italian street musicians many Americans ever encountered.
Their starting point was Viggiano, in the Agri Valley of Basilicata, where music had become a family trade by the eighteenth century. In a town with few ways to earn a living, children learned early, usually from relatives, and groups left for months or years at a time to perform in Naples, Paris, London, and cities much farther away.
